by Mike Edwards
Harjinder’s concerns were being pushed further and further to the back of his mind. In fact, he was starting to take Nanda’s negativity as a personal slight. Again he offered an observation; ‘You have got a parachute, haven’t you? What are you worrying about? In any case, we have to stay in the aeroplane. How the hell can we get out?’ Nanda admitted later, at that point he could have murdered Harjinder. It wasn’t too much later when a different IAF pilot proved you could bail out of a Lysander!
The Lysander shook, but nothing moved; nothing ripped. Soon they were approaching Peshawar, where all came out to watch the return of the wayward child, their wounded soldier. Harjinder found Jumbo waiting for him at the airfield. He came and shook hands with him, glowing. He told him; ‘I have just heard that No. 28 Squadron have pranged (crashed) three aircraft between Karachi and Kohat. Fancy that! We had no prangs!’ he added with a wink.
The next day, the Warrant Officer Engineer of No. 28 Squadron, an old timer, came to find Harjinder. He wanted to discuss the issues they were having with their own Lysanders. It was becoming very apparent that the aircraft had a weak spot; its tail-wheel. These inflatable tyres were bursting left, right and centre. The hard, dusty landing strips in India were littered with small stones that were slicing these tail-wheel tyres to pieces. The RAF Warrant Officer told Harjinder that they were already out of spares, so his plan for the next burst tyre was to stuff the carcass with straw. Not a particular good idea. Harjinder was already forming a plan in his mind with regards to this weak link. Something had to be done because the conditions in India were taking a toll on these “modern” aircraft even faster than Harjinder had feared. Within a month of their conversion course, the heads that had been held high had dropped once again. Their Lysander tail-wheel tyres were now all damaged, and no spares were available. Then, the news arrived of the sinking of a cargo ship off Gibraltar. The battle in the Mediterranean was a fearsome contest, with the Royal Navy escorting the desperately-needed cargo ships against the ships, submarines, and aircraft of the Germans and Italians. That particular cargo ship was the one holding all the Lysander tail-wheels earmarked for India; all the eggs were in one basket and that basket was at the bottom of the sea. The excitement of the previous month evaporated. Both the IAF, and RAF, Lysanders were grounded at Kohat.
Meanwhile, at Peshawar, another milestone was ticked off. No. 3 Squadron IAF was formed, but they knew that the issue of the Lysander tail-wheels would not bother them. A year after the Battle of Britain had come to an end; the modern RAF Spitfires and Hurricanes had fought the Luftwaffe to a standstill to finally dispel the invasion threat, this newest of IAF Squadrons was to come into existence still in the biplane era. No. 3 Squadron IAF would get the few remaining hand-me-down Hawker Audax biplanes.
When it was confirmed that their replacement tires were lost, Harjinder was called into Jumbo’s Office in Peshawar. The order given by Jumbo to Harjinder was very ‘unmilitary’. He produced one of his well known, disarming, smiles and instructed Harjinder to use his ‘magic wand’. Harjinder had been brooding on this problem and told Jumbo that he was prepared to do his part, to do his ‘magic’, provided Jumbo was prepared to trust him and fly an aircraft with a wooden, yes wooden, tail-wheel. It seemed that Harjinder wanted to drag aviation back to the age of horse and cart, so he added that he would guarantee its safety. Jumbo didn’t flinch, didn’t pause; ‘I would fly it even if there were only one chance in a hundred of success. We must prove to the RAF that No. 1 Squadron can keep going while the RAF remains grounded.’
It seems that rivalry was foremost in Jumbo’s mind, more than the thought of possible combat requirements!
Harjinder asked for 24 hours to sketch a design for his ‘wooden wheel’. It was a complicated business, not just a case of a block of wood, a hammer, chisel and some sand paper! The description of the design is best left to Harjinder; ‘The wheels I designed were internally sprung with 3/8 inch shock-absorber cords sandwiched round the hub in helical grooves. There was a central disc of mulberry wood which would not crack easily and on either side were rubber discs and steel shims held by counter-sunk bolts. On the outer periphery was a steel band shrunk on to the wooden disc, like a tonga tyre (the cart drawn by an ox, used extensively in India). These “wooden wheels” were produced at Khair Mohd Motor Works at Peshawar.’
Although Harjinder was fairly certain of success, he confessed to gnawing doubts. If they had a mishap, what would happen then? The IAF, only recently equipped with Lysanders, would become the target of much criticism and ridicule. You can see his point. The letter of apologies to Command for destroying their new aircraft, having fitted wooden wheels, would have made for an interesting read. Jumbo knew the risk, but he was not a man to shy away from taking chances; ‘Only dead men take no risks’ was the phrase he used when Harjinder confided his doubts to him. After this short, perfectly weighted comment, he told Harjinder that he had full confidence in his abilities as an engineer: ‘Do not even let me know how you made this wheel. I will try one out for you.’
The phrase ‘make do and mend’ was being widely used in the UK, as the success of the German Kreigsmarine submarines strangled the supply routes to Britain. The phrase wasn’t being taken too seriously by the RAF Chief Technical Officer, Flying Officer Wood. He had been told about Jumbo and Harjinder’s plans, and told them up front that they were playing with fire. He didn’t stop there; ‘I have never before met such a mad-cap like you, Flight Sergeant Harjinder Singh. You will face a Court Martial soon, because on takeoff, or landing, this wooden darn thing will split into two. The flattened wheel will not revolve and it will tear the tail end of the structure (he didn’t know Harjinder could put tails back together if called upon!). Then, by friction on the tarmac, it will catch fire. The whole aircraft will then burn up. I tell you again, you are mad, and your Squadron Commander is equally mad. I tried to warn him of the danger, but he seems to have blind faith in you. Anyway, you will not find me a party to this unholy alliance.’
Harjinder did not discuss the matter further, but responded: ‘Sir, I am fully aware of all the eventualities that can arise, but I have allowed for all of them.’
Wood dismissed Harjinder with a wave of his hand. With his eyes closed, he said; ‘Go to hell if you want to: it is your own funeral.’
To Flying Officer Wood’s credit, after his opinions had been fully aired, he made no attempt to stop Harjinder, no direct order to stop the plans, no report higher up the chain of command. He took the only path he could in order to give the IAF the space to carry out their ‘madness’. He took a week’s leave and left the station. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil!
On 9th October 1941, K-9180, the first Lysander with a wooden-tail-wheel, flew. There could only be one choice of pilot and rear seat observer. Jumbo and Harjinder took the aircraft into the air. They carried out several ‘touch and go’ landings. No tail was ripped off, no aircraft bursting into flames. It was so successful, so normal, that as the engine fell quiet, except for the metallic ticking of the cooling cylinders, Jumbo turned in his seat to half face Harjinder and instructed him to equip each aircraft with one such tail-wheel, and to make some spare ones.
Jumbo gathered the IAF personnel together. He insisted that the wheel was to remain a secret, and told all the pilots and Airmen not to discuss this project with anyone. If anyone persisted in asking questions, refer him to the designer he said. He then asked Harjinder to paint the whole wheel with black paint to conceal the details of its construction. Was that a lack of brotherly conduct within comrades, or the best way to show the IAF in the best light? He did add to Harjinder; ‘Let them first acknowledge our superior technical standard: then we might tell them.’ Might? In his defence, there may have been a war on, but the war hadn’t reached Northern India yet! Jumbo was still thinking of the IAF first; beating the Japanese was secondary!
The flurry of IAF Lysanders taking to the sky in Peshawar again meant that the news travelled to other near
by stations. Within a few days, the Warrant Officer Engineer of the RAF Kohat Squadron, came knocking and asked to see Harjinder, probing for details of his design. ‘It is made of wood; that is all there is to it’, was Harjinder’s reply.
The Warrant Officer returned to his Unit, and went straight to work in the carpenter’s shop to turn out his own version of a wooden wheel on the lathe. It was fitted to one of their aircraft and off it went. It was never going to be strong enough for the job, and on landing, it split along the grain. The Lysander swung round in a full circle, and ended up with a damaged tail unit. Harjinder doesn’t write if he felt any guilt about the damaged RAF aircraft, but since no one was hurt, and IAF’s standing climbing rapidly, I doubt he had. Thereafter, No. 28 Squadron gave up using wooden tail-wheels and the grounding of the whole Squadron was confirmed. The personnel must have watched with bewilderment as the IAF continued to fly a full day’s flying programme, day after day after day. It may have been underhand keeping this information to themselves, but it certainly paid a handsome dividend because, when the opportunity came, it was not the RAF, but No. 1 Squadron IAF, who were chosen for the air display at the ‘War Week’ being held in Calcutta.
November 1941 saw IAF No. 1 Squadron depart for Calcutta. There seemed to be a constant stream of bad news from the front. The Royal Navy Cruiser named after the city, HMS Calcutta, had been sunk in June as they had prepared to leave their base. As No. 1 Squadron stopped en route to Calcutta, news broke about the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, sunk trying to keep Malta alive. However, for the IAF Squadron, this job in Calcutta was to be ‘a wonderful time, flying sorties every day, doing aerobatics and other star turns’. The IAF mixed in with their RAF brethren easily and soon, any initial misgivings of the Indians being amongst them, was swept away with a great friendship. General Wavell came to congratulate the IAF, and Jumbo introduced Harjinder to him as the first Indian Air Engineer. Harjinder wrote in his diary about how he burst with pride as he stood to attention, listening to the praise for him and his Air Force.
The contribution of the IAF, and the RAF, to ‘War Week’ was reported as the highlight of the show. It was tragic that on the 1 December, a very unfortunate incident cast a shadow on the events. One of the RAF Hawker Audax aircraft, K3686, was carrying out aerobatics over Calcutta to wow the inhabitants. The biplane dived down for speed, engine at full power and propeller at maximum revs. The pilot pulled the nose of the aircraft up from the dive and continued skywards to start a loop. As the nose reached the vertical, the engine chose that moment to let out a metal on metal screech before coming to a halt. The pilot was not much more than a passenger as the plane ran out of speed towards the top of his loop, the aircraft approached the upside down position, the airspeed rapidly decayed to nothing. One wing dropped and the nose fell through the horizon to point directly at the ground as the aircraft started to spin. The pilot obviously put in the full control inputs to bring the rotating aircraft out from the high speed rotations but in the time taken to stop the spin, there was not enough height to come out of the inevitable dive. For the people at the War Week demonstration, the Audax disappeared behind the buildings, But for those in Amratolla Street, who had been craning their heads skywards towards the racing of an aero-engine and the whine of the wind through the flying wires, they now had to flee as the silent, silver machine accelerated towards them, and crumpled with a sickening thump at their backs.
On 8th December 1941, Pearl Harbour was to earn its unfortunate place in History. Hoping to catch the Americans unawares, the Japanese planned to bomb the US Navy aircraft carriers moored on this Pacific Island. By an incredible stroke of luck, that turned the tide of war, the American warships were at sea and therefore saved from the carnage. However, the immediate result was that America found itself at war, standing alongside the British Empire. The Japanese war machine was turned up to full speed, and spread in all directions. On the same day that the Japanese Navy launched their attack on America, the Japanese Army crossed the border into Siam (Thailand), Malaya, Hong Kong, and the Philippines. If they continued marching in that direction, it would be Burma next. The Army of Burma seemed powerless to stop the Japanese, but surely the virtually impenetrable landscape of the country would be the barrier to keep them at bay – at least, that was what the British High Command believed. If Burma was overrun, it would be India, the Jewel in the Crown, which would be next. When the news broke, Harjinder and team were still in Calcutta. Jumbo was like a war horse scenting battle; eager to jump into the fray. However, Harjinder was not so sure. The case of Harjinder’s recent dealings with the School of Technical Training had brought out a strong anti-British bias in him. He didn’t want to fight a war for the British.
Jumbo knew of Harjinder’s feelings and tried reasoning with him; ‘Harjinder, if we do not fight in this war for the damned British, we shall be nothing better than a flying club when the war ends. We must fight, and we must aim to expand the IAF while the going is good. After the war is won, India will be a Dominion, and we shall have to run our own Air Force.’
Harjinder replied; ‘The British will never give us Independence.’
‘In that case, we shall fight the British; whatever it is, we must learn to fight now. A Free India without an Air Force would be a helpless country.’
Jumbo’s focus was on the best way to achieve Independence. For now, if the Japanese came, he would fight them, if it meant that his beloved IAF would grow. For Jumbo, it was a means to an end. They must have doubted an eventual Allied victory, when two days later, the news filtered down of another Japanese victory. The Royal Navy flagships in Asia, the battleship Prince of Wales and Battle Cruiser Repulse, were sunk entirely through the use of Japanese aircraft, off Kuantan in Malaya. The British fleet, under Admiral Tom Phillips, had been in action without air cover. The method of warfare had changed, and the British military was lagging behind.
The orders now came thick and fast; they were to return to Peshawar as soon as possible and to prepare for war. Meanwhile, Harjinder had formed a plan in his mind to score off the RAF. On the way down to Calcutta, when they had touched down at Lahore to refuel, he had seen a damaged Lysander there, N 1212, belonging to No. 28 Squadron. It had been classified as Category ‘E’; that is, beyond repair. Harjinder had not been able to get the image of that aircraft out of his head. It pained him to see the way in which the RAF was quick to discard an aircraft. They didn’t feel the need to cosset every single machine, as the IAF did. Harjinder’s reputation, with his ‘magic wand’, was soaring, and he had worked on aircraft in a worse condition. He couldn’t leave this one alone.
He informed Jumbo of his plan to go on ahead to Lahore, and repair the crashed Lysander. Then, when the Squadron passed through, they could place their moral claim on it and bring it into the family that was No. 1 Squadron, IAF! Harjinder’s zeal was not just to see an injured bird take to the sky again, or indeed to have an additional aircraft on the squadron, it was more to make No. 28 Squadron RAF smart with humiliation!
With all their cloak and dagger rebuilding operations in the past, these two men had become thick as thieves, so it was little surprise when Jumbo fell in with Harjinder’s suggestion. So off he went to Lahore, two days ahead of the others. He took the best of the technicians with him, Mohd Siddique. Operation Humiliation was underway.
Arriving at Lahore, Harjinder’s first port of call was the Chief Technical Officer, a young Flight Lieutenant. When Harjinder told him about his intention, he was quite incredulous; no one had ever before suggested repairing a Category ‘E’ wreck. ‘Try, if you dare’, he sportingly challenged him, thinking Harjinder would slink away and forget the crazy idea.
Naturally, they did better than try; they succeeded, and soon resurrected the Lysander back into flying condition. When Harjinder asked the young Flight Lieutenant to come to see the result of their efforts, he would not believe his own eyes at first, full of doubt and suspicion. Not believing this Indian Flight Sergeant could do su
ch a thing, he made him check, recheck, test, and demonstrate for a full hour. At last he was satisfied and he played his role in the proceedings. ‘It’s all yours, old boy, I want no part of it. Officially, I have not even seen the repairs.’
The Indian Lysanders appeared low in the sky at Lahore, as they arrived from Calcutta. As per normal procedure, they circled the airfield before splitting off one at a time to come in for landing. Harjinder had the ‘new’ aircraft waiting in the open for Jumbo. The IAF Lysanders parked around the new member of the flock, almost in a protective huddle. Harjinder proudly showed his handiwork to Jumbo, who beamed with excitement over the additional Lysander that No. 1 Squadron now possessed. He agreed that it should fly with the rest of the gaggle to Peshawar, and since Flying Officer Rup Chand, the Adjutant, was a spare pilot, he was asked to fly it.
When they took off from Lahore, the superstitious number of aircraft didn’t pass everyone by. Someone remarked: ‘There go the unlucky thirteen.’
Jumbo, quick as a flash replied; ‘Unlucky for the Royal Air Force, not for us. They are the ones who are gnashing their teeth.’
Jumbo loved every minute of Operation Humiliation.
Harjinder admitted, ‘I was never happier in my life than seeing the thirteen Lysanders circle over Lahore. We broke off into three flights of four each, with one to spare. As we neared Peshawar we reformed again, and Majumdar ordered the formation tightened until it looked as if all the Lysanders were part and parcel of one huge aircraft with numerous propellers. We kept on circling over the Cantonment, actually showing off, and inviting the Officers’ Mess inmates to count the number of aircraft.’
