The Air OP pilots were mainly tasked to carry out reconnaissance and observations to assist the artillery units. They formed a vital part of artillery functioning, before the Army Aviation Corps was created in the mid-1980s.
The pioneering helicopter pilots
Although Joseph Samuel, now better known in the Army and aviation circles as Sam, was on leave when Capt Sanjay Kulkarni and his platoon went on to take control of Bilafond La on 13 April 1984, and Sam returned to plunge straight into operations in June that year.
He remembers: “We had no idea what Siachen was. We didn’t even have proper detailed maps. We were using some maps left over by the Brits from the 1850s! They were beautiful maps, accurate and made with the help of theodolite. I don’t how they did all this.
“Our main challenge was since nothing was recorded, there were no benchmarks. There was no precedence of flying there, so we didn’t know how to approach, where could we land, what were the landmarks, how much weight we could carry, nothing was known! So we had to formulate our own standards. How much could we go in, that was always the question, since there were no refuelling facilities available? Each helipad had to be organised, mapped, and a name given to them. And what were the helipads like? May be four jerry cans arranged in a square formation so that we could spot them from a distance,” Sam recounted over breakfast in Delhi in February 2014, nearly three decades after the pioneering work he and his flying mates undertook!
Samuel Joseph in a Cheetah on Siachen, 1984
“There were no manuals. So we had to come to our own conclusions about optimum loads, hovering power required etc. We used to start early. We used to take provisions and bring back a lot of casualties. Most of the early casualties were because no one knew how to live at that altitude,” Sam recalls.
He still remembers how in the early days, everyone was groping in the dark about locations and deployments. One incident has stayed with him forever. In the winter of 1984, the new Task Force Commander, Kulbir Singh who had replaced Pushkar Chand, one day told Sam to go and confirm some reports about Pakistani troops having built some bunkers and staying put on a peak near Sia La.
“He told me that on the left of the peak at Sia La some intrusion had happened. Why don’t you go and have a look? So off we went. Ten minutes of flying couldn’t show us anything, so we skirted the spur and started coming back when we located a trail of black spots. Lagta hai Ibex hai (Looks like an ibex, an animal found only on Siachen). As we neared the spot we suddenly saw 12 tents. Our first thoughts were: ‘Our chaps are very much here. Don’t know why we are panicking.’ So we went lower and then saw a bunker, just 400 yards from Sia La. We waved at the chaps, 10-12 of them with a machine gun visible. We were just 50-100 feet above them. So convinced that everything was under control we came back to base and I told Col. Kulbir, ‘Sir kuch nahin hai. Our chaps are sitting there, well entrenched.’ He said, ‘our chaps? Don’t be funny. Where? We have no bunker there!’ I showed him the spot on the map. He immediately called Sia La to check on the deployment. They said they were not at that spot at all! So I offered to take him up there. As we neared the spot I was a little more careful and kept the chopper much higher. The moment Col Kulbir saw the tents, he exploded, ‘Those are Pakis’.
“We instantly came back and there was total panic. The Pakistanis had intruded without anyone noticing! A whole squadron of MiG-23s was moved from Adampur to Leh with the intention to bomb them. The next day, we inserted some 55 additional soldiers at Sia La.” A big skirmish followed.
The pilots kept innovating. Sam remembers another incident around Gyong La. “Gyong La was becoming a bit of a bother since it was lightly held. One day, Col Pushkar Chand (the first Task Force Commander) said he had sent a party towards G-3 (Gyong glacier). His troops, the Vikas (regiment) boys with the Ladakhis, were the most suited for the mountains. Pushkar Chand wanted to go and see where his troops were, so we took off.
The early years, pilots landed on unknown mountain tops
Rare sighting of Ibex in the higher reaches
“There is a big bowl. We searched the entire bowl, the climb is steep from 11,000 feet we are suddenly climbing to 17,000. We couldn’t find the boys. Suddenly on the ridge I thought I saw some guys. So I told him, sir wahan to nahin hai? (Are they there?) Pushkar Chand said they can’t be there. I had told them not to go there. So we went nearby and realised that the Vikas boys had indeed climbed what looked like the toughest ridge and had plonked themselves there! Pushkar Chand exploded: ‘Oh bloody hell, they have gone there!’ He asked me, can we land there? I said let me see. From the sky, the ridge looked only about 50-60 metres long and just about 20 feet wide. And about 200 yards away from the line of sight of Pakistani fire. We managed to go and land there! The tail (of the Chopper) was sticking out of the ridge! Now Pushkar Chand wanted to stay back for an hour with the troops. We went back and then picked him up later. That’s how we opened Gyong La 3.”
Sam recalls those days very fondly. “Hats off to the guys on the ground though. They braved inclement weather, lack of sufficient food and fought courageously. Those were great days,” Sam, who is now a prosperous entrepreneur and social activist based in Bangalore, says. Thirty years later, many may have forgotten Sam and his pilot friends like retired Brig. Baljit Gill, Maj Gen Vinod Tiwari, Col Poovaiah and Col Mike Pereira from the Army Air OP organisation, but in the tightly knit Army fraternity, they continue to be regarded as heroes and pioneers.
The approaches to Khardung La, one of the toughest passes
Army convoy finding their way up to Khardung La
Helicopter with skiis are a great advantage on the glacier
Come sun or storm, helicopters are the lifeline
VII
The Air Warriors
‘Flying here is certainly not for the faint hearted’
3 June 1990: Two Cheetah helicopters of the Indian Air Force (IAF) are on a regular air maintenance run to the Siachen glacier. As was the routine by that time—six years into Operation Meghdoot—the first shuttles were to Amar and Sonam posts, the two highest helipads on the glacier, located at altitudes in excess of 20,000 feet above mean sea level.
Flt Lt. B. Ramesh and Flying Officer Naresh were leading the run and were supposed to land at Sonam. Flt. Lt WVR Rao and Flying Officer Suresh Nair, in the second Cheetah, were scheduled to touch down at Amar, not very far from Sonam.
Rao, now employed with the Tatas in Jamshedpur, remembers that day to be slightly warmer than usual at about 10 degrees Celsius, high for the glacier, but understandable in the summer months. “At those heights, when the temperature goes beyond 5 degrees Celsius, the ‘density altitude’ at Amar and Sonam is actually close to 23,000 feet, the ultimate limit at which these helicopters can and should fly. But, in those conditions we could carry barely 5 kg load on the Cheetah. The rising temperatures can have such an impact on the load carrying capacity of the helicopters,” he remembers.
Rao and Nair landed normally at Amar, but as they revved up to take off, the helicopter engine ‘surged’ and the machine just sat down on the helipad. “Amar is hardly 3,000 metres from a Pakistani post located at a lower altitude. Even as we were struggling to figure out what went wrong, shelling from the Pakistani post started. Remember those were pre-ceasefire days,” Rao reminisced.
Stranded at 21,000 feet
The two pilots quickly ducked inside the bunker and sent a message to the other helicopter not to come towards Amar, since shelling from the Pakistani post had begun, but Flt Lt Ramesh would have none of it. He made two quick runs to Amar and evacuated Rao and Nair one by one, since it is inadvisable for any one not acclimatised properly to stay at 20,000 feet for more than 15-20 minutes. “Ramesh landed on snow since the helipad was already occupied by our machine. He held the chopper on partial power, lest his helicopter too toppled over and lifted us away even as the ever present danger of Pakistanis targeting the helicopter remained,” Rao says, recalling those terrifying minutes.
/> The pilots were back safely at Base Camp, but the problems for the Air Force were just beginning. The chopper was now stuck at Amar, a juicy target for the Pakistanis. Moreover, how does one repair a helicopter at 21,000 feet? How would the technicians get there? How long would they take to acclimatise? Normally, when Army jawans get deployed at Amar or Sonam posts, they spend at least 10 days at gradually increasing altitudes to get acclimatised. That luxury was however not available to the IAF technicians, since the Cheetah was a sitting duck at Amar and it needed to be extracted as soon as possible.
Air Force technicians in front of the stranded helicopter
As senior Army and Air Force officers both in Leh and Delhi put their heads together to find a quick solution to this unique problem, troops of the Sikh Light Infantry unit deployed at the Amar post constructed a snow wall overnight, a snow column really, to shield the helicopter sitting smugly on the Amar post from any Pakistani firing!
The narrow confines of Amar Post
Construction of the snow wall was just the beginning of the innovation employed to retrieve the stranded helicopter from the Amar post. A team of technicians, led by Fl. Lt G. Sreepal was selected and inducted onto the glacier. Because of the urgency to repair the helicopter as soon as possible, the technical team was flown to a post at 15,000 feet for initial acclimatisation. Normally, the first stage acclimatisation for Army soldiers begins at 9,000 feet. After three days of stay there, the technicians walked to a post that is located at 18,000 feet. Finally, they reached Amar on 10 June, a week after the helicopter had soft landed on the post! At the post itself, additional facilities had to be created for the arrival of the Air Force technical crew. Meanwhile, the soldiers on the post had to keep replenishing the ‘wall’ with fresh ice lest it melted away due to the strong sun, a common feature during summer months!
Now the problem of carrying a replacement engine to Amar still remained.
Rao remembers: “The bosses had to select an aero engine with the least starting temperature. To carry it wasn’t easy. The most powerful of the available Cheetahs with the least fuel consumption was earmarked for the airlift of the engine. Now came the question of fitting in the engine in the smallish Cheetah. To overcome the problem of space, the co-pilot’s seat was removed, the engine was strapped in and the co-pilot’s seat screwed in again. At the Base Camp, strapping the engine to the floor was easy since there were enough helping hands to secure the aero engine. But the same task at Amar became a challenge, since the pilot would have to unscrew the seat himself and would have had to remove his gloves, a dangerous thing to do in those extreme cold conditions. Moreover, flying with cockpit doors open—an extremely hazardous act at 20,000 feet plus altitude—was an additional worry since the cold gets accentuated at that height by the wind chill factor.”
Despite the hazards, the most powerful of the available Cheetahs was readied. It was stripped to the bare minimum. “Out went the tail rotor guard, doors, passenger seats and the radio bay panels. The radio transmission set was removed and so was the battery after the engine was started; we put in only two bottles of oxygen instead of the standard four that were normally carried. But that was not all. In order to save on weight, the helicopter carried fuel sufficient only to fly one way to Amar. It was planned that the refuelling for the return journey would be done at the post itself, even when the rotors would be running and the spare engine would be offloaded,” Air Commodore Anil K. Sinha, then a Squadron Leader and Deputy Flight Commander, recalls. Wing Commander Goli, the Commanding Officer and Sinha, decided to take minimum fuel for two helicopters that were to fly into Amar that morning.
The spare engine
As they prepared to fly to Amar, the weather closed in, but Sinha and Goli went up to another helipad at Dolma, some three minutes flying time from Amar and waited. As soon as the clouds cleared, Sinha flew to Amar, delivered the tools , batteries and other essential equipment before Goli landed with the spare engine. “Perhaps seeing hectic activity on the post, the Pakistanis started firing as Wing Co. Goli landed with the spare engine. It was still off-loaded, refuelled even as the engine was still running,” Sinha recalls.
Meanwhile at Amar, ground troops were preparing for the engine change. First, they physically shifted the stranded helicopter to the very edge of the table top helipad, so that the incoming helicopter with the spare engine could land and hold till the aero engine was off loaded. On 11 June, the ‘half-acclimatised’ technical crew had removed the damaged engine from the stranded helicopter.
The technical crew worked through the evening and night of 12 June, taking help from the Sikh Light Infantry troops to change the engine.
Now came the critical part: fly out the repaired helicopter.
It was Friday, the 13th.
Because of the myths associated with the date and day, the CO, the late Wing Commander Goli was not sure if the operation should be carried out that day. But, eventually all of them decided that no matter what happens, they will fly out the stranded chopper that day itself.
In fact, because it was a day of ‘Jumma,’ Pakistani troops were perhaps busy with their Friday prayers. Cleverly, the men on the post and the Air Force decided to fly out the helicopter around noon, when they knew the adversary would be busy with the afternoon namaz. As Rao says:“Friday, the 13th did not prove to be unlucky for us at all!”
Anil K. Sinha in less ‘adverserial’ circumstances
Sinha was designated to fly the stranded chopper back. He remembers: “Normally, when you are taking off, you have space around the helicopter. Here there was no such luxury. The helicopter had had a heavy landing after its seizure, and we did not know how deep it was embedded in the soft snow. In my mind, there were many questions. Will the engine start? Will it last the flight? Will I be able to extract it and take it back to the Base Camp safely? As these questions swirled in my mind, I took a deep breath, started and revved the engine and took off. As we landed safely at Base Camp, there were impromptu celebrations!”
Flt Lt WVR Rao and Flt Lt. B. Ramesh quickly followed up with a sortie and flew the technical crew back to the Base Camp.
Even today, 24 years later, the unparalleled feat plays out in the minds of those who accomplished it, as if it happened just yesterday!
Says Sinha, who went on to win a Vir Chakra for gallantry in the 1999 Kargil conflict: “That night we had a wild party at the Base Camp. We were doing back flips and somersaults. We were so happy and proud.” Concurs Rao, who left the Air Force in April 2012 and now flies helicopters for the Tatas in Jameshedpur: “We were almost delirious with joy. After all, how many Air Forces in the world can boast of such a deed? I remember after that long and most memorable party, my voice was so hoarse that I permanently gave up smoking!”
The Air Warriors on the glacier
The events of 13 June 1990 will also go down as one of the best examples of jointmanship between the Indian Army and the Indian Air Force! Both Sinha and Rao say that without the incredibly committed and selfless Army soldiers on the Amar post, it would have been impossible to even think of changing the engine. “On the first day, when the chopper sat down and we came to the Base Camp, the Sikh Light Infantry troops on the post, at their own initiative removed the rotor blades of the helicopter, and built that snow wall to keep it out of sight of the enemy! All this without any training. But, a more incredible feat was yet to come. On the day we were changing the engine, the portable crane that was airlifted to Amar for hauling the engine up (remember the helicopter engine is located above the passenger seats at a considerable height), broke into pieces because of extreme cold. These brave and extremely fit Sikh Light Infantry troops physically lifted the 182-kg engine at 21,000 feet to help us repair the helicopter,” Rao said with justifiable pride.
Party scenes at Base Camp on 13 June 1990
Sinha added: “The rapport between us and the Army soldiers on the glacier has to be seen to be believed. Without total trust in each other, we can never function
as efficiently and effectively as we have done all these years!”
Rao also recalls the simplicity of the soldiers. “Many a time, the troops used to say they had a craving for aloo parathas. So, on the days when we were coming from Leh, our wives, on short visits to Leh, used to make them early morning, and in our first flight we used to carry the aloo parathas for the troops on Amar and Sonam. The sheer joy on their faces on receiving the parathas was priceless!” Almost every helicopter pilot who has operated on the glacier would have a similar a story or two to share. Some remember how eager the soldiers are to receive letters from home.
In fact, a standard practice among the helicopter crew is to carry the mailbag in the very first sortie of the day, since it is the lightest weight they can carry at the beginning of the day when the helicopter fuel tank is topped up full. The coordination, the camaraderie and the brotherhood of soldiers is on full display at Siachen, an emotion that civilians will never be able to fathom or understand!
The engine change and recovery of the helicopter from Amar Post is just one of the many incredible feats achieved by the Siachen Pioneers, as the 114 Helicopter Unit is universally known. Established at Leh on 1 April, 1964 (is the Golden Jubileee Year of the unit), it has the unique distinction of being perhaps the only helicopter formation that has been deployed in an operation continuously for three decades!
Beyond NJ 9842 Page 10