by Mike Edwards
SPITFIRE SINGH
A True Life of Relentless Adventure
SPITFIRE SINGH
A True Life of Relentless Adventure
The Biography of AVM Harjinder Singh
MIKE EDWARDS MBE
© Mike Edwards, 2016
First published, 2016
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Dedication
For my long suffering wife, Clare,
who has put up with yet another of my projects.
For my daughters Ella and Gracie.
When asked, ‘Where is dad?’, no longer the answer,
‘tip tapping on his computer as always!’ … or is it?
Contents
Preface
One Rebellious Beginnings
Two Training to be a Sepoy
Three Eating Off the Floor
Four Death Comes to Visit, Death Comes to Stay
Five The North-West Frontier Province
Six The World is at War; Not that the Warring Tribes Care
Seven A New Aircraft but Old Prejudices
Eight Into Burma
Nine The Fighting Retreat
Ten To India: To England: To Jail?
Eleven Spreading Wings, Clipping Wings
Twelve Independence! But at What Cost?
Thirteen Command!
Fourteen Kindred Spirit or Dangerous Liaison?
Fifteen Reuniting Old Friends
Epilogue: The Greatest Disgrace?
Acknowledgements
Preface
‘Indians will not be able to fly and maintain military aeroplanes. It’s a man’s job; and all you have done is bring the greatest disgrace on yourselves.’
– Air Marshal Sir John Steele
Air Officer Commander-in-Chief, India, 1931 to 1935
Delhi, 2012
Being in the Marshal’s living room is like being permitted access within his memory banks. Bookcases creak with the browned covers of old books, intermingling with the splashes of bright colour, almost gaudy in comparison, of newer volumes. Statues, plaques, ornaments and other exotic gifts are on every shelf, but the main focus in the room is an action-packed painting behind him of an enormous, silver biplane on operations over the brown, rocky, moonscape, scrubland of Afghanistan in the 1940s. As he talks you can see the crystal clear eyes glaze over, his voice’s tone cuts through the background noise as he is back to his days as a young man. We are riding along with him as we taste time travel.
In the living room at his home, the 93 year-old Marshal of the Indian Air Force (IAF), Arjan Singh, DFC, is dressed in a comfortable light linen shirt and trousers. Gone is the blue uniform with the braid, stripes and medals from our previous meeting. The short walk from the air-conditioned car is enough to have my shirt sticking to my skin under the suit jacket. Once inside the house, the air-conditioning unit keeps the hot, humid, Delhi temperatures at bay, but its gentle whir requires me, and Group Captain Maheshwar, to lean forward to hear the softly-spoken Marshal talk. Together, we listen and stare wide-eyed at this opened doorway into history.
He takes us back to when he was the thrusting young buck, joining the one and only Indian Air Force squadron. In that gentle, whispery voice of his, he recounts how his expectations were brought crashing to earth as he was made to clean and polish the Wapiti for days before he was even considered to fly it. The Indian Sergeant was not only in-charge of the technicians, he also had the big biplanes in his care and he was not going to let the young Pilot Office Arjan Singh near the plane until he was satisfied that this newcomer would pay enough respect to his aircraft. Marshal Arjan Singh admits that this Sergeant, another Singh, could be quite fearsome to the young officers joining and he, for one, was certainly frightened of him at first. The more experienced pilots showed no fear of Sergeant Harjinder Singh, just the utmost respect towards him. We talk more about Harjinder Singh and how he flew as the Squadron Commander’s rear gunner as well as cosseting these machines on the ground as if his own meagre funds had purchased them! The Marshal can recall the first flight with Harjinder Singh as his own tail gunner and directs his personal Staff Officer to the correct logbook, from his bookcase, and even the correct page of that log, all from memory!
Harjinder had been summoned with all of the other 200 IAF personnel, to be on the receiving end of that ‘pep’ talk in 1934 from Sir John Steele. Harjinder had already defied the odds to be where he was. This shocking talk only hardened the edge to Harjinder’s resolve and set his life, already one of controversy, on the path of relentless adventure. A life over lawless Afghanistan, to the jungles of Burma against the Japanese, to the Empire’s heart in UK and to the unthinkable battlefields against men he saw as cousins and brothers.
The Marshal deftly demonstrates his ease with time travel by effortlessly bringing us right back to present day. He asks me if I knew that Harjinder was responsible for the vintage aircraft I was flying last time we met. I am a novice of time travel compared to the Marshal, travelling back only a few months but the images and memories are vivid; I know they always will be even if I get to rival the age of this icon in front of me.
When we first met, the Marshal’s tall slender frame was immaculately uniformed. Wisps of fine white hair poked out from the Indian Air Force badged turban. The bushy snow-white beard under his aquiline nose bearing the scars from 1941. Was it an incredibly well-aimed bullet, or just sheer bad luck that shot through the Hawker biplane’s fuel pipe, leading to a lucky escape from both, the inevitable crash, and, equally inevitably, the vicious tribesmen hunting him down?
As usual, the parade in Delhi was at the Hindon Air Force base. The crowds looked out over the parade ground onto the line of modern aircraft facing them. Behind these dormant aircraft was a gigantic cloth backdrop in Air Force blue, gently rustling in the ever-so-slight breeze. This massive splash of colour in the brown landscape formed a stunning backdrop to the parade ground and hid from sight the taxiway and runway beyond. The TV news cameras were rolling with the live broadcast and the camera shutters clicked and snapped as the 80th anniversary celebrations edged towards their conclusion. All bar one of those parked aircraft had the dull grey colours of the IAF, designed to blend in with their enviro
nment. The big, Russian-built Sukhoi Su-30 fighter, the dart like Mirage fighter and the rotund C-130 Hercules were all there.
The British Jaguar ground-attack aircraft looked uncomfortable on its ungainly undercarriage, not happy to be on the ground; this aircraft only looks natural, and very business-like, in the air. The new boy in the IAF, the British-built Hawk trainer took its rightful place. Both those British-built aircraft came under the BAE umbrella and are both powered by British Rolls-Royce engines. Those are the present-day links to Britain that stretch through 80 years of IAF history.
Right in the centre of those warrior-like aircraft, diminutive, and completely dwarfed, was another British aeroplane. This collection of wood, metal and fabric is the Grandmother, or even the Great Grandmother, of those menacing machines. Even the companies that built this aircraft, and its engine, are the distant ancestors of the British-based multinational giant responsible for the present-day brutes surrounding her. This old lady made herself felt by virtue of her bright yellow colour, and her aging, graceful beauty, making the green, white and saffron IAF roundels leap out at you from the pages of history. She is a tiny 1940s Tigermoth, open-cockpit biplane, all wire and fabric. Referred to by all simply as the ‘Tiger’. Her name is apt in terms of her existence in India, but there is not a hint of the striped hunter, with unbridled power, that, according to the news, still prowls the countryside not too distant from the perimeter wire.
The gentle breeze that nuzzled the open ground carried enough heat to raise a sweat, even at that early hour, and brought a promise of furnace heat by mid-day. The sky was a hard, cloudless, piercing blue. The constant Delhi dust-filled haze blurred the horizon making the border from ground to sky indistinct, giving the heavens a painted, unreal, retro cinema studio feeling. The 250 Sky-warriors, Airmen and women of the IAF, started to march off the parade ground. As the echoes of the applause began to fade a strange sight unfolded. From behind the blue fabric backdrop, six Air Force technicians made an unexpected appearance. Their marching was awkward, self-conscious, as if aware that the eyes of everyone in the crowd had swivelled to focus solely on them. To the amazement of the crowd, the tail of this old yellow biplane was lifted shoulder high by the last two. Once steady on their shoulders the technicians marched off the parade ground, pushing the Tiger nose-first, giving the impression of the old lady chasing after the Sky-warriors as the military band struck up with the music of the British group, the Pet Shop Boys, at full volume. The musical choice of ‘It’s a Sin’ seemed a strange one. A comment on the Tiger being manhandled away, or aviation in general?
Out of sight behind the temporary blue backdrop of the parade ground, standing on the sun-browned grass, was a group of pilots in green flying suits together with two British Engineers in borrowed black, IAF Engineers’ overalls. The small stature of the overall’s original owner left James, the senior of the two Brits, with a strangely high pitched voice as he mumbled something about not the way to treat a week-old vasectomy operation. Under the supervision of these two engineers, the Tiger has spent sixteen months being restored from the skeletal, semi-abandoned machine left in an Air Force hangar in Delhi into this ‘better-than-new’ stunning machine. Only two weeks before, I had taken the Tiger on its post-restoration test flights in an equally blue sky, but on a cold, crisp, British September day.
From the group of pilots, two walked forward from behind the screen, over the dusty grass to the Tiger. We stepped up onto the black walkway on the bottom wing and swung our legs into the two separate cockpits. I climbed into the back seat with Wing Commander ‘Kool’ Kulresthra, an Indian Air Force Test pilot, in the front ‘passenger’ seat. There had not even been time to train him on this aircraft type so, with helmet, goggles and gloves covering the majority of my skin, I masqueraded as an IAF pilot even down to the small Indian tricolour badges proudly worn on my shoulders!
Reaching around in the seat, to take the straps from the technicians, caused stabs of pins and needles from my still stiff back and shoulder muscles. The previous morning, at the nearest metro station to Hindon, I stood waiting for the IAF transport, having caught the first train of the morning. No transport was waiting for me at the station and only after a barrage of missed calls and sms messages did I have the salvation of a technician being sent on a motorbike to collect me. Time was short so I utilised the time changing into my green flying suit on the steps of the metro station.
If a white face, a Gora, on the metro attracts attention anyway, a semi-naked one getting changed makes you the highlight of the early morning rush hour! The little Hero Honda bike snaked through the traffic, getting me to the aircraft side with only seconds to spare for the flypast rehearsal.
With Delhi’s media attending in force to see the old lady take her place in the 80th anniversary flypast, I wasn’t going to let anything spoil the Tiger’s moment of glory, so, after our rehearsal, I opted to sleep on the floor in a nearby room. The sleeping arrangements had been a success even if the body didn’t think much of it now.
The flypast to celebrate 80 years of the IAF was awe inspiring. The transport aircraft flew down the length of runway from right to left of the crowd. Then the fighter formations came head on, directly at the crowd, throwing anti-missile flares out before they pulled up to split, screaming to the left and right in a crescendo of noise as their engines’ roar caught up with their darting images.
The question that spun around in my head was do I start the Tiger’s engine immediately and risk it overheating as we wait, or do I risk delaying, only to find that the engine won’t start on cue? Not an uncommon occurrence with this 70-year-old engine. The Tiger has no brakes, so wooden chocks are placed in front of the wheels to stop it rolling forward when, or was that if, the engine started. We tried to wait, we tried to be patient, and trust the newly-restored engine, but the need to do something was just too great!
From the back cockpit I raised my left hand, forefinger in a rotating motion pointing directly up into the glassy blue heavens which was the signal to start the engine, to get on with our mission. One technician, chosen because his shoulders look like they could carry the world upon them, stepped forward and placed his hand on the propeller. The Tiger has no starter motor, so this was engine starting 1930’s style. Four times the propeller was turned to suck fuel from the fuel tank in the top wing into the cylinders. The technician positioned the propeller and shouted ‘Contact!’ I saw ‘Kool’ reach outside his cockpit to flick his ignition switches up and ‘on’ and then I did the same with the set in front of me shouting ‘Switches on!’ The technician swiftly pulled the blade downwards, stepping to one side as he did so, in order to keep clear of the lethal propeller as it surely must burst into life. However, the propeller did half a turn, the usual click from the ignition magneto was good, but nothing more happened. The technician stepped back into his position, placed his hand on the propeller, and threw himself into another attempt; a click but – nothing. Back for a third go with an extra, theatrical flick of the wrist as he stepped aside. The blade did its standard half turn but there was not even a hint of life. He stepped back into place keen to keep at his task, but time and time again, try as we might, we had no sign of life from the engine.
Anxiety levels rose inside the cockpit, and I could feel it emanating like rising smoke from the team outside; nobody was making eye contact.
The technician was told to pause for a few seconds. None of this was his fault as was emphasised by the dark patches of his exertions spreading across his uniform in the relentless Delhi sun. After a brief pause, I signalled him to continue again from the beginning. Sensibly, our man had a brief pause in order to compose himself. He sweated harder as he felt all eyes of the team boring into his shoulders. ‘Contact’!
He arched his back slightly as he flung all his effort into the downward thrust of the propeller blade and the following side step. This time his effort was greeted with a cough and a puff of grey smoke from the exhaust. The cough from the engine kicked
the propeller blade over another half-turn and then a second cylinder fired with a wheezy cough. Two more coughs in rapid succession and the coughs start to merge. The individual propeller blades accelerated into a blurred disc and the engine noise settled into a satisfying rumble. That took forever! Did we miss our takeoff slot? Were we literally late on parade?
I twisted in my seat, pushing against the shoulder straps and forcing the aching muscles into action so I could look back over my right shoulder to see how much of the flypast had gone. I had no idea what had been happening outside the bubble around me, the Tiger, and the technician. How far behind were we? Could we still catch the end of the parade? However, the flypast had only just begun! Time, which seemed to blur like lightning as the engine refused to start, had become, painfully, slow. The aircraft of the flypast seemed to dangle in the sky. There is no engine temperature gauge to look at in this old girl, just an over-active imagination of oil reaching boiling point in the tank, metal about to rub on metal, an engine about to seize…
The anti-missile flares thrown out by the display aircraft seemed to be aimed directly at us, sitting entrapped in a fabric-covered, dope-soaked, wooden tinderbox, and surrounded by dry grass for added comfort. The effect of the flares was spectacular, but surely, it was madness in this dry landscape! However, the flares seemed to flicker and die before touching the ground. With time now on my hands I found myself wondering, perhaps unfairly, if that was by luck or by design. My only other thought was, ‘come on boys get a move on before my engine boils over!’
Mentally I ticked off the different fighter types as they screamed overhead, until we had the final group appear as dots on the hazy horizon. The Sukhoi Su-30 fighters split to the left and right and a second later one lone aircraft pulled up to point vertically up, rolling as he went, becoming a small dot again in seconds. That was the long-awaited signal. I waved the wooden chocks away. I pushed the little green throttle forward to accelerate the engine from its steady rhythmic throb into its own version of sheer unbridled power! Of course there was no bang and screech of metal grinding with metal from the engine; everything was perfect and so our waiting game was over. Then came the easy bit; the actual doing, no longer the waiting.
