India’s Most Fearless: True Stories of Modern Military Heroes

by Shiv Aroor

  The helicopter had been airborne for 25 minutes and was flying above the river plains when Sqn Ldr Puri put it into a gentle descent to 4500 feet. Almost immediately, the chopper flew into a pall of haze and visibility dropped drastically.

  On the controls, co-pilot Gupta quickly checked with Sqn Ldr Puri if he could escape the haze by descending further. The request was immediately declined. There was a reason why Sqn Ldr Puri wanted to ‘hold height’ till the helicopter had crossed the Brahmaputra plains. Several reasons, actually.

  Firstly, the higher they flew, the better their chances of being in range for radio contact. Sqn Ldr Puri wanted to remain in touch with Tezpur as much as he possibly could, since he was transporting the area commander and it was likely that ground control would want frequent updates. Secondly, higher flying altitude also had the benefit of greater airspeed and fuel efficiency. Finally, descending further would make the cabin uncomfortably warm. In the absence of air conditioning, the higher the helicopter flew, the cooler the cabin would be. Descent was therefore ruled out.

  The Mi-17 was halfway to Tezpur and cruising comfortably at 4500 feet when Natasha broke her silence once more.

  ‘We were about 55 km from Tezpur, flying over marshy land and paddy fields south of the Brahmaputra, when the distress sequence started,’ Sqn Ldr Puri remembers. He had correctly deduced that the warning was not a grave emergency, but what happened next made it clear to him that the situation on his hands was what was classified in helicopter flying as ‘rarest of the rare’.

  Sqn Ldr Puri instructed his flight engineer, Sergeant Surjeet Singh, to investigate the failed service tank pump to confirm Natasha’s warning. Just as he did so, Sqn Ldr Puri noticed that the helicopter was not flying steady and straight, but was slightly inclined to one side.

  ‘The artificial horizon ball (a cockpit instrument that reveals the aircraft’s orientation relative to the earth’s horizon) had jumped to the left at a steeper angle than normal. There was a feeling of being rotated to one side,’ Sqn Ldr Puri remembers. This was definitely not good. Quickly, he cautioned his co-pilot to steady the machine and fly straight so their passengers would not experience any discomfort.

  The noise of the Mi-17’s rotor might be too loud for any conversation that is not conducted through a headset, but it is also the most reassuring noise when you are suspended in mid-air.

  ‘The noise made by the constant churning of 2 engines, the main gearbox grinding and the rotors beating the air into submission is deafening,’ Sqn Ldr Puri remembers. ‘But imagine being in a helicopter when all that reassuring noise suddenly falls silent.’

  The silence arrived in a heart-stopping moment. Sqn Ldr Puri threw the map to the floor and stared down at his cockpit instruments in alarm. The main rotor’s revolutions per minute had dropped below 88 per cent and the power generated by both the engines was rapidly winding down. In seconds, the helicopter would be stripped of all engine power. Sqn Ldr Puri had flown hundreds of hours in Mi-17s and other types of helicopters in service. He instantly knew what was coming.

  ‘One of the worst nightmares for twin-engine pilots. That’s what it was.’

  Taking back control from his co-pilot, Sqn Ldr Puri pushed down the collective lever to his left. In a helicopter flight, lowering ‘collective’ would lessen the burden of staying airborne that is imposed on the rotors. With both the engines dying, the control input Sqn Ldr Puri had just provided pushed the Mi-17 into autorotation, a situation where the main rotor turns by virtue of the air moving up through it, rather than powered by an engine.

  ‘For a fraction of a second, it was hard to believe that both the engines of our aircraft had failed and we were auto-rotating. It was something which happens next to never in a twin-engine aircraft. Both the engines going off together is perhaps the rarest of rare emergencies,’ Sqn Ldr Puri says.

  Jostled in the cabin with his wife and staff, Air Marshal Hari Kumar stepped up to the cockpit. A professional pilot himself, he was fully aware of what an in-flight emergency could be like. Cool but serious, he asked the pilots if everything was normal. Sqn Ldr Puri nodded back, but he knew that things were anything but. The other senior officer being flown that day, Air Vice Marshal Manvendra Singh, was a veteran Mi-17 pilot. Singh had been Sqn Ldr Puri’s station commander at Udhampur in J&K and his contingency commander during a deployment to the Democratic Republic of the Congo for UN peacekeeping duties.

  The crew knew, therefore, that their passengers would be quite aware of how dire the emergency was. All-out panic appeared imminent.

  Meanwhile, Flight Lt. Gupta, in disbelief, busied himself attempting to figure out if it was the autopilot that had malfunctioned to push the helicopter off its steady bearing. But if the 2 dying engines were not enough of a nightmare, the situation was about to deteriorate exponentially.

  Two generators of the Mi-17, which drew power from the spinning main rotor, were now failing too. This meant that every instrument and system on board the helicopter would soon suffer the equivalent of being simply unplugged. Natasha chimed in with the inevitable announcement.

  ‘The cockpit voice warning came on announcing the failure of the first and second generators, with the chattering sound of warning lights flashing in the background. Autopilot had failed and our compass system had also switched off. Every system on board was dead,’ Sqn Ldr Puri remembers.

  The chopper had begun to plummet through the sky at a rate of 10 metres per second. The steady death of rotor power made it an unwieldy, un-aerodynamic object that was jerked about by wind currents as it fell. Sqn Ldr Puri ordered Flight Gunner Ajeesh to ensure that the passengers were seated and secured as he decided on his next course of emergency action—a possible crash-landing in a paddy field. As he fought to steady the lopsided, falling Mi-17, he scanned the ground, which was now 3500 feet below, for a safe clearing. He knew that touchdown at this rate of descent would be violent, if not a complete disaster.

  ‘I hunted for a landing ground. We were flying over marshy land and flooded paddy fields. It had rained too. I could not identify any spot for an emergency landing,’ Sqn Ldr Puri remembers. The in-flight emergency had become a matter of life and death. Flying the ‘dead’ chopper now, he fought to keep it steady and in a gliding path for a few more kilometres in the hope that a clearing would present itself. He reduced airspeed to give him and his crew a few more seconds in the air as they fell towards the ground.

  All preparations were being made on board for an emergency crash-landing. Flight Engineer Singh began turning off all systems to lower the chances of a fire breaking out on impact with the ground.

  But Sqn Ldr Puri stopped him.

  ‘Hold on,’ the pilot called through his headset to his 3 crew mates. They stared at him. The Mi-17’s rate of descent had crossed 12 metres per second. Sqn Ldr Puri paused for a moment, running the scheme in his head once more before issuing the order. It was a huge risk, but it needed to be attempted.

  ‘Let’s try to relight and restart the engines.’

  Drawing on years of training in the most critical in-flight emergencies, Sqn Ldr Puri was convinced that the Mi-17’s 2 engines had died from fuel starvation. He ordered the Flight Engineer to switch on the fuel bypass valve. But for the actual reignition of the engines, the crew would need a small on-board auxiliary power unit to be primed and ready—a process that would consume 30 full seconds, a frightful expense in the circumstances. The Mi-17, now at below 2500 feet, was falling so fast that it would smash into the ground in less than 90 seconds.

  Those 30 seconds felt like the longest the crew had ever experienced as they waited for the auxiliary power unit to be charged and readied. Not a moment too late, Sqn Ldr Puri called out for the first engine to be relit and restarted.

  The helicopter was now descending at an even more alarming rate. They were barely 600 feet above ground and less than 20 seconds from impact when they realized it.

  Their plan had worked. The first engine had been successfully
revived. In a flash, Sqn Ldr Puri ordered his co-pilot to pull up his levers to crank up power to the main rotor. Seconds later, the rotor began feeding on fresh power and spinning faster, rising to 98 per cent full speed. Raising the collective lever, the helicopter was now flying on a single engine brought back from the dead. Fifteen seconds from impact with the ground and near-certain death or crippling injury to all 16 on board, the Mi-17’s rapid descent was slowed down to a shuddering hover.

  From the moment the engines died till the time the Mi-17 stopped falling, just 2 minutes had passed. In that time, the helicopter had dropped 3500 feet. Sqn Ldr Puri remembers being able to clearly see power lines and cattle grazing in fields from that height. But the emergency was not over yet—the helicopter’s terrifying fall had been halted, but it was still only flying on 1 engine. Spotting a rice field that was flooded with water but clear of obstructions and power lines, Sqn Ldr Puri carefully manoeuvred the Mi-17 towards this possible emergency landing zone.

  As the helicopter recovered delicately from its auto-rotating flight and began to hover, the second engine too came alive.

  ‘On hearing the Flight Engineer confirm that the second engine had started up, I asked my co-pilot to neutralize the levers. We had just witnessed a miracle,’ says Sqn Ldr Puri.

  With both engines back to their steady hum and the reassuring roar of the rotors coursing back into the cabin, the Mi-17 slowly climbed back to 2000 feet.

  ‘An emergency landing was still an option, just to be sure that nothing else happened to the helicopter. But I decided against it,’ Sqn Ldr Puri remembers. ‘My co-pilot had informed me that the nearest location was in fact our destination, Tezpur.’

  Breaking their 120-second radio silence forced by the emergency, Sqn Ldr Puri and his crew now contacted Tezpur air traffic control, informing a dumbstruck officer at the other end that their Mi-17 had just recovered from a twin-engine failure. After a stunned pause, the officer asked if the Mi-17 needed assistance.

  ‘I laughed to myself. What assistance could we get up there?’ Sqn Ldr Puri remembers thinking.

  The revived engines were spinning the Mi-17’s main rotor at a reassuring rate. But the fuel bypass valve that Sqn Ldr Puri had ordered to be activated before the emergency recovery procedure had a disturbing effect. Aviation kerosene fumes were now billowing directly into the passenger cabin. This was a problem. With not long to go before they landed, Sqn Ldr Puri was dead against changing any of the emergency settings that had saved the helicopter from crashing. And yet, he could not ignore the comfort and safety of his VIP passengers. Deciding against fiddling with the engine parameters, Sqn Ldr Puri ordered Flight Gunner Ajeesh to open some of the cabin’s blister windows for ventilation. The roar of the rotors became even louder, but in came some welcome fresh air to dissipate the fumes.

  Carefully controlling the Mi-17 at 2000 feet, Sqn Ldr Puri and his crew flew the helicopter straight to Tezpur, landing 20 minutes later safely amidst a ring of crash tenders and firefighting vehicles that had been deployed by the panicked ground staff.

  Smiling and relieved, Air Marshal Hari Kumar, his wife and staff disembarked from EASTERN 1. While Sqn Ldr Puri and his crew sealed their helicopter and handed it over for a mandatory investigation by an Air Force inquiry team, the passengers proceeded to their destination a few hours later on board 2 Indian Air Force Dhruv helicopters.

  Sqn Ldr Puri and his men would spend the rest of the day with bewildered officers at Tezpur, wondering how the crew of EASTERN 1 had saved an Mi-17 from twin-engine failure. The pilot’s command and control over those 120 seconds would go on to become a legend, not only at his squadron, a helicopter unit at Mohanbari, Assam, but among the larger community of chopper pilots in service as well. It reaffirmed the Indian Air Force’s flying training as being among the best in the world. And while a flight safety team from the Air Force would go deeply into the reasons why the dangerous failure took place at all, it would also ironically burnish the Mi-17’s credentials as a machine rugged enough to return from the jaws of disaster.

  Helicopters are not just tricky to fly; when they go out of control, it is virtually impossible to recover them. The fact that the crew was able to bring their chopper back just 15 seconds from a certain crash-landing was testament not just to the skill of those flying, but to the machine itself. The incident was therefore considered a vindication of India’s decision to bet big on the lumbering Soviet-era design for present and future operations.

  Those 120 seconds on EASTERN 1 would also be textbook material for the Indian Air Force flying cadets, a disturbing but powerful indication of just how important their training could prove to be. For Sqn Ldr Puri, this was a poignant reminder. His own training had been anything but smooth.

  As a young cadet at the NDA in 2000, shortly after the Kargil War, Vikas Puri had failed maths in his first semester. Certain that the cadet was headed for humiliation, Vikas’s Divisional Officer, Maj. Sajan Moideen, had sent a letter to his father informing him that his son, with no real mathematical acumen, needed to switch from science to the social studies stream if he wanted to pass out with his batch.

  Vikas’s father, Vinod Kumar, was furious, but decided to respond to the letter. In a letter to Maj. Moideen, he began by saying:

  Girte hain shahsawaar hi maidaan-e-jung mein

  Woh tifl kya girenge jo ghutnon ke bal chale?

  (It is only those who ride a horse in the battlefield who fall How will they fall who crawl on their knees?)

  It was a letter filled with hurt, but with a no-nonsense instruction. Quoted by Maj. Moideen years later in a blog post, Vikas’s father had written,

  My son has dreamt to become a pilot and by shifting his stream to social studies you are taking him away from his dream. Vikas may fail, but he will learn. I have handed my son over to you. Do what is required. You can kick him, kill him, but I want to see him as an air force pilot.

  His new licence to ‘kick’ Vikas into shape worked. Maj. Moideen applied an enormous amount of pressure on the cadet. It worked, but only partially. Vikas managed to barely pass his physical training tests, but his academic performance that semester was an unqualified disaster. He had failed completely. His marks in the mathematics paper were so low that the NDA decided to put him on a relegation list—equivalent to detaining a student for the semester.

  Maj. Moideen received the news with horror. What would he say to Vikas’s father? What explanation was possible, given that the man had put his son’s future in someone else’s hands? Maj. Moideen decided he could not see his cadet relegated. It would destroy whatever will he had to work hard. Every bit of work he had put into the young man would be a waste. Mustering every emotion at his command, Maj. Moideen made a case for Vikas to be allowed to reappear for the exam instead of being held back for the whole term. The Academy agreed.

  Vikas took the test again a few days later—and passed. He went on to graduate from the Academy 3 years later and proceeded to flying school, choosing to be a helicopter pilot. Vikas Puri would fly for 13 years without an incident before the death-defying mid-air encounter 4500 feet above the Brahmaputra.

  Ten months after his leadership in the cockpit saved EASTERN 1, Sqn Ldr Vikas Puri was decorated with a Vayu Sena Medal for gallantry. The citation read:

  In this fearless and courageous effort, he not only saved 16 invaluable lives but also a precious war waging asset. He showed exemplary valour, bravery, maturity, exceptional professionalism and situational awareness in tackling one of the gravest emergencies in a Mi-17 helicopter.

  14

  ‘Could Taste the Blood on My Face’

  Wing Commander Gaurav Bikram Singh Chauhan

  Pokhran, Rajasthan

  19 February 2013

  Blood flowed down one half of his face from a deep gash between his closed eyes. He lay flat on a stretcher, his head tilted back by a neck brace that had been strapped on a few minutes earlier. Wading through a clutch of officers at the Jodhpur tarmac, Avantika
Agarwal, 6 months pregnant, was calm in the only way she knew to be. As the Air Force personnel watched cautiously, ready to step in if she needed them, she made the final few steps to the stretcher, not pausing once. She would hold herself together in those minutes. And in that late winter dusk, through the bandages and blood, Avantika noticed something else. He was smiling.

  Wing Cdr Gaurav Bikram Singh Chauhan had barely seen his wife that week. The Air Force station in the heart of the Thar Desert was in a high state of alert and activity. Combat aircraft from across the country had arrived there to prepare for a first-of-its-kind show of strength, code-named ‘Iron Fist’ a few days later.

  Pokhran, the playground for the event, had been made famous by India’s underground nuclear tests several years before. Iron Fist had nothing to do with nuclear weapons, but would involve an extended, relentless demonstration of brute air power that would include the use of real live weaponry. An audience comprising the country’s leadership, diplomats from several countries and the global press had been invited to witness Iron Fist from a safe distance. The purpose was to serve a reminder to India’s neighbours and the world that a peace-loving country could still wreak considerable damage on those who mistook that quality for weakness. If the exercise was provocative politically, as military drills often are, it was an enormous task for the Air Force. Over 100 aircraft were set to fly at Iron Fist in razor-sharp corridors that afforded crews zero margins for error.

  Aircraft showing off their strength at the desert firepower show would include the MiG-21, Mirage 2000s from neighbouring Madhya Pradesh and Jaguar fighter bombers from Ambala. Raising the pitch at the exercise with a list of live precision bombing runs would be the Indian Air Force’s most formidable front-line jet, the Russian Sukhoi Su-30MKI. It was one of these that Wing Cdr Chauhan and his flying mate, Sqn Ldr A.R. Tamta, strapped into earlier that Tuesday, 19 February 2013.

  With Sqn Ldr Tamta flying and Wing Cdr Chauhan the designated weapons systems officer in the rear cockpit, the big fighter, India’s largest, was fitted out with 18 100-kg bombs—6 on each wing and 6 slung on to hard points on the aircraft’s belly. The 2 men had been cleared for a night training flight that involved a bombing run from an altitude of 7000 feet.