by Mike Edwards
By the time they landed, all the Indian personnel, and most of the RAF on the base, were scattered around watching the new fleet. From their cockpits, the aircrew saw the sea of faces, beaming up at them. The Station Commander, who came down to receive them, was more than a little confused, ‘Jumbo, where did you get the thirteenth aircraft from? You left here with twelve only.’
‘Sir, we felt that since there is a war on, we can ill-afford to lose a weapon, and such a weapon as an aircraft. The RAF does not feel the same way. Harjinder and his gang have showed their skill this time to the RAF boys at Lahore. I don’t know all the details, I only had to fly the aircraft. He will tell you the rest.’
Harjinder was taken aback but, blushing and stammering, he told the full story of how he came to repair the 13th Lysander. At the end of it the Station Commander shook hands with him and said; ‘The IAF is lucky to have you.’
They all felt that their standing within the Royal Air Force was further raised and they walked about with their heads held high again. The pilots showed their appreciation in a special manner, breaking Air Force law to do it. As only an NCO, and not an officer, Harjinder should not have been in the Officer’s mess, let alone accept the multiple beers but they all wanted to buy, to show how strongly they felt. Harjinder was not one to take praise and accept it as most people would. He thought his contribution; ‘rather over-valued and so felt determined to do more and better things for them.’
The ‘thank you’ only spurred him to do more.
The pilots did get into trouble over the celebration, but Harjinder didn’t find out until years later. He discovered that as a result of being invited to Mess, the officers involved had been hauled up before the Station Commander, because officers were only allowed to entertain NCOs in the Officers’ Mess on Christmas Day. Flight Lieutenant Niranjan ‘Joe’ Prasad, the ex-Army Gurkha Officer, found a novel excuse. He took the blame squarely on his shoulders, then added that he had invited Harjinder because, in the Army it was common practice to invite the Sergeant Major of the Unit for a drink. Further, he was unaware that he had contravened any laws and was dreadfully sorry. How he justified the entire pilot force being there with him was not mentioned!
They knew that it would not be long before they received their orders for active service in the spiralling World War. The unbelievable speed, and scope, of the Japanese successes in Malaya made it obvious that soon, they would be spilling over the border and into Burma. By taking the capital, Rangoon, they would have an ideal port to supply their forces instead of the long overland route through China. The allied air forces available to defend Burma were woefully deficient, so it looked certain that the IAF would get their chance of combat soon.
The Squadron activity built up as preparations were made. One day, Pilot Officer Henry Runganadhan was despatched, on some long-forgotten task, in a Lysander to the RAF Station at Kohat. At first, it seemed strange to Harjinder to be told, in a telephone call from Henry, that he had missed his lunch. Why drag him away from his work on this petty subject of missed meals? Then the rambling Henry got to the point, and the reason why he missed lunch. He had broken his Lysander, he could not face the other pilots in the Mess, and so had hidden alone in his room with just his guilt for company. On landing, Henry pranged the Lysander, leaving it broken, astride the runway, for all to see. Unfortunately for Henry, Squadron Leader Aspy Engineer was in command of No. 2 Squadron IAF stationed there, and Aspy could not bear any embarrassment for the Indian Air Force. He had dealt severely with Henry.
As always, there was nothing more important to Harjinder than the good name of the Squadron, and in particular, the IAF pilots. Henry’s report of the damage wasn’t very specific, but Harjinder understood it included the undercarriage, wing and propeller. He could now fix damage like this in his sleep. He thought that with his current band of men he could handle that. He sent for eight Airmen, and the spares required. They climbed aboard two trucks and, leaving plumes of dust in their wake, made straight for Kohat. As the trucks shook over the rough roads, a plan was made, and rehearsed, time and time again. With no official sanctioning of their trip, they knew there was trouble ahead, and they needed a plan of action. When they reached the police checkpost between Peshawar and Kohat, the guards stopped them and they were not allowed to proceed unless they presented the authorisation. The plan swung into action to negotiate their way around the road block. The occupants of one of the vehicles dismounted and engaged the guards in conversation, whilst the second vehicle slipped under the barrier and raced towards Kohat at breakneck speed. The guards shouted and gestured at the runaway driver, and then turned their attention to Harjinder. As they angrily protested to him, Harjinder upped the ante and pretended to be even more furious than they were. With a booming voice, he cursed the driver of the runaway vehicle to hell and back, promising he would have him court martialled as soon as he caught him. So saying, Harjinder tore open the door of the second lorry, jumped into the driving seat, and drove away in apparent hot pursuit of the first vehicle. After all, he had a promise to keep.
And there was Henry, cutting a sorry figure, waiting just outside Kohat. He took them into the RAF Station as the sun was setting. There was little time to waste. The lorries sped over the airfield and on to the runway where the offending Lysander was forlornly abandoned. Before the dust cloud behind them could settle, the technicians were already spilling out of the cabs and straight into their various, pre-allocated repair jobs. The all-important tea was summoned from the kitchens. All through the night, broken pieces were removed, and new pieces riveted, screwed and bolted into place. As the sun rose at six o’clock the next morning, the rays of light illuminated a complete Lysander. The aircraft engine was tested it then taxied into wind and, with a very grateful Henry at the controls, it took off for Peshawar. Harjinder loaded the shattered parts into the trucks and told the equally shattered people to wait for him on the Peshawar Road, five miles from camp. It was time to head over to Aspy, and Harjinder’s mischievous side was looking forward to playing with him.
Aspy and Harjinder knew each other very well from their time on Wapitis in the North-West Frontier. Harjinder strolled, perhaps a little too nonchalantly, into his office! Harjinder went to say hello to the Commanding Officer, but Aspy, still furious about the accident blurted out; ‘You think No. 1 Squadron is fit to go to war? You will crash all your aircraft and walk back from Burma. Look at that aircraft Henry crashed yesterday. Your pilot has put all of us to shame.’
Impassive, he chuckled inwardly and waited for the fury to calm down before saying; ‘Sir, I do not know what aircraft you are talking about. My Squadron has all its Lysanders at Peshawar and they are all serviceable.’
Aspy’s voice raised a couple of octaves; ‘Come on, Harjinder, don’t pretend you don’t know about your blasted Henry and his pranged Lysander.’
So saying, he got up and pointed with his finger towards the airfield where, naturally, he imagined the broken aircraft was still sitting astride the runway. Suddenly he retracted his hand; ‘Oh! Perhaps they have finally managed to tow it into a hangar.’
And with that he instructed Harjinder to accompany him to the technical area.
A comical pantomime ensued, as the IAF personnel searched all their hangars, all of the neighbouring RAF hangars, even the Chief Technical Officer’s hangar, but guess what? No broken Lysander! Finally, Aspy turned to Harjinder, puzzled, and asked if he knew anything about it. ‘Have you dismantled and carted it away?’ he hazarded a guess. Harjinder, with a small smirk on his face answered; ‘I don’t know about that, Sir, but I did see one Lysander takeoff this morning and head for Peshawar.’
Aspy checked with Flying Control and discovered that Flying Officer Henry Runganadhan had, indeed, taken off with his Lysander. He placed the phone receiver back on the cradle and looked directly at Harjinder. However, Harjinder could not keep it in any longer and so shyly confessed what they had done. Aspy was forced to concede; ‘Hats off to No.
1 Squadron. If that’s their tradition, they will really do well in Burma.’
They did.
December 1941 was busy. Not even Harjinder magic could rectify the event on the 20th. Pilot Officer Paljor Namgyal returned from his training flight, and from some distance away, he lined his Lysander up for landing. In all the activity nobody paid much attention to his approach. If they had they would have seen him too low to make the runway. Whether there was a down draft of air, or just an error of judgement, no one knows. What was clear seconds later was his Lysander hit the ground short of the airfield. The Lysander tumbled end over end on impact, giving the pilot no chance of survival. The Prince of Sikkim was dead, and the IAF had their first fatality on the Lysander. This time there was nothing Harjinder could have done. With the massive build-up for the move to Burma, and no doubt combat in the near future, another aircraft was allocated to the Squadron and life continued without a pause. The RAF tradition of celebrating Christmas day was still a major part of the IAF’s December, but this year, there was to be no celebration. Following Palijor’s death, the news of the capitulation of Hong Kong to the Japanese came through. The news of British success at Benghazi, in North Africa, seemed of little consolation. The Japanese had been lampooned in the press as small, shortsighted, bumbling soldiers, but their reputation was now becoming that of an unstoppable force here in the East.
January 1942 was off to a bad start, it seemed, with the Japanese taking Manila on the 2nd and Kuala Lumpur on the 11th. Then the Japanese Fifteenth Army, under Lieutenant General Shojiro Iida, launched an attack from Northern Thailand over jungle-clad mountain ranges into the Southern Burmese province of Tenasserim. The British had thought the jungles impassable, but the low tech approach on the ground, using beasts of burden and bicycles, worked for the Japanese. The order for deployment finally came for No. 1 Squadron of the Indian Air Force; it was time to move, time to fight!
They loaded up all their ground equipment on a special train to Calcutta, en-route to Rangoon. The non-existent, spare RAF Lysander, brought up from Lahore, threatened to become a problem until Harjinder had a brain wave. Why not split it up into its major components and take it to Burma as well? Jumbo laughed heartily; ‘That means we are virtually stealing it.’
Harjinder pointed out the advantage of having such a rich reserve of spare parts, and Jumbo fell in with the plan. Jumbo Majumdar had come to have a great respect for Harjinder’s judgment and advice, which was reciprocated in the high regard Harjinder held him. It was the perfect relationship to have on the eve of combat.
They loaded the aircraft, its fuselage and engine in one crate in one wagon, and the wings in the other. Everyone pitched in to help with the ‘stowaway’, including the driver, Corporal Tara Singh, who was only too glad to help, turning a blind eye at the same time.
It was never a good sign when an Equipment Officer came over from Air Headquarters, and this one wanted to know what happened to the 13th aircraft from Lahore. Jumbo, either off the top of his head, or with a pre-planned story, threw him a curved ball. He told him that since the aircraft in question landed at Peshawar, they had nothing but bad luck, so they decided to break it up and use it for spares. He sent for Harjinder and instructed him, with full military pomp, to show this officer where he had used the spares. Harjinder took the baffled Officer on a tour of the IAF hangar, pointing to various aircraft explaining how the complete aircraft had been distributed amongst the gathered flock – this piece of undercarriage is from the extra plane, this engine was from that plane too, on this plane we used the wing; on and on he went. He may have been a little over-zealous allocating the 13th Lysander’s parts leaving the visiting officer with the impression that the Lysander had started out with 3 wings, 2 propellers and a handful of tail-wheels!
In January 1942, at the age of 10, the IAF entered the World War II. Harjinder now had the job to divide his men between those who flew to war, and those who went by train! He placed the majority in the ground party, under Flight Lieutenant Rup Chand, the Adjutant. The heavens opened up, as if to comfort the parched ground, the day they left for war.
Left behind was the air party. Harjinder remained with his brood of 12 Lysanders. There was never any doubt about whom he would fly with as the Air Gunner.
This was the IAF entering the World War, and it seems only right that the names of the participants should be recorded:
Jumbo was the Squadron Leader with Harjinder.
There was the ex-army officer, Flight Lieutenant Niranjan ‘Joe’ Prasad with Sergeant Ghyara.
Flight Lieutenant Prithipal Singh was back, having been sent away earlier by Harjinder’s Subaltern’s Court Marshal. He was with Sergeant Cabinetmaker.
The fiery Pilot Officer Moolgavkar was paired with Kartar Singh Saund.
Pilot Officer Satyanaraya was with Ghulam Ali, the gunner who had survived Mehr ‘Baba’ Singh’s crash in the North-West Frontier, and subsequently shot at by their own Tochi Scouts.
The other Pilot Officers were Rajinder Singh, Jitendra Deuskar, Homi Ratnagar, Rustomjee, Yeshwant Malse, ‘Andy’ Ananthanarayanan, P.S. Gill and finally, Henry, ‘I missed lunch, and by the way I crashed my plane’ Runganadhan.
While waiting for the big move across India, and into Burma, they carried out full war load tests on their aircraft, carrying all the normal combat load of ammunition. The rain that was ‘a good omen’ continued, and there was mud everywhere, leaving only the main runway fit to land on. Jumbo, Pilot Officer Malse, and Harjinder were standing near a hangar one morning, when Jumbo turned and announced; ‘Malse, you know what I dreamed last night? I woke up with the sweat pouring down my face because I dreamed that we had been debarred from going to Burma as there have been too many crashes in our Squadron.’ Then, again in my dream, I heard Harjinder telling me: ‘Sir, do not worry. Even if all the aircraft crash, I shall wave my magic wand and I shall repair each one within 24 hours.’
Jumbo had barely finished speaking when Malse shouted; ‘Sir, look, there is a crash.’
They rushed forward from the hangar side and sure enough, Pilot Officer Andy Ananthanarayanan had touched down on the semi dry runway but had not been quick enough to catch the swing of the tail in the wind with his rudder pedals. As the back of the plane tried to overtake the front, the Lysander tipped up onto its wing-tip until coming to an abrupt halt back on its wheels.
Harjinder did a quick mental audit of the situation, deciding that the pilot would be ok, but the aircraft was definitely damaged. Jumbo Majumdar leapt into action as they were due to fly out any time now, and they needed a full Squadron, otherwise his nightmare might come true. He began to ring up Air Headquarters for a quick replacement, and was still cranking the field telephone handle, when those still outside saw a second Lysander coming in to land; trying to squeeze in alongside Andy’s abandoned aircraft. Pilot Officer Ratnagar had seen Andy’s fate and tried to keep the damaged, stationary Lysander to his right. However, he had strayed into the kutcha, the mushy rain-fuelled bog, and his fate was sealed. The left wheel dug into the waterlogged ground, flicking the aircraft left, sticking the right wing straight into the runway. The Lysander tripped up on to its nose, shattering the spinning propeller. Now they were two aircraft down before their imminent deployment. However, not all the Squadron’s aircraft had returned from their training flights. Hardly five minutes elapsed, before there was a third Lysander starting the approach to landing, this time with Pilot Officer Satyanaraya flying. He was greeted by two broken aircraft on the runway in front of him, so he headed to the left of his two stranded Squadron mates. All knew what was going to unfold, but stood powerless. The moment the sliver of light between wheels and ground disappeared, the kutcha grabbed at the flying machine to claim its third victim. The crashed aircraft were laid out across the runway in a perfect air display formation, frozen in place.
Harjinder describes the next few minutes; ‘My thoughts were for Majumdar. I knew that this would break his heart. At that time we were st
anding by to move to active service at 24 hours’ notice. All our tools, equipment, and ground party, including all technicians, excepting me, had gone by rail party to Burma. I rushed out and looked for Majumdar who had gone away somewhere. I tracked him down in the Station Commander’s office. I was so excited that I went in without any formality, nor did I remember to salute. I caught hold of Majumdar’s hands and blurted out: “Sir, don’t worry, even if all of them crash, I shall repair them.” By this time Jumbo was too stunned and bewildered; partly because of his dream, and partly because all his previous dreams had been about showing off the IAF flag in Burma, which now seemed to have disintegrated.’
Harjinder heard him speaking on the phone to Air Headquarters: ‘I have to report another crash, Sir. Yes, yes, I know… No I am in my full senses; there are three aircraft crashes.’
Harjinder wrote that he had never before seen Jumbo look so dejected before.
There was nothing to be done by standing in the office, so Harjinder left him and began to plan for repairs. He knew they had to do something to get those aircraft going. His earlier exploits now seemed child’s play, or at least the warm up for this, the main event.
The Squadron Commander No. 28 Squadron heard about the IAF’s misfortune and came over to see his unfortunate Indian colleagues. The RAF were due to move into Burma with the Indians, and, having operated with them for so long, there was a great mutual respect. After offering his sympathy, he asked if there was anything he could do to assist No. 1 Squadron IAF to get back on their feet again. Harjinder was grateful for his offer but told Jumbo that No. 1 Squadron had always been proud of its traditions; it always did its own repairs. He asked Jumbo to put all the pilots at his disposal, he would repair all three aircraft, in three days, without any help from the RAF. This time Jumbo did not smile, cheer up, or rib Harjinder about his magic wand. He was too anxious, acutely aware that they were at 24 hours’ notice. Anyway, he ‘spared’ Harjinder the embarrassment of refusing his request, and told Harjinder to do the best he could. There was no conviction in his voice or his body language. Jumbo could see his dreams for the IAF lay broken with the Lysanders sitting in frozen formation on the landing ground.