AS I watched the proud and dignified ceremony of ‘Colour Presentation’ to the Army Aviation Corps (AAC) by the President on October 10 on the TV screen, my mind wandered both to the charismatic Army Chief who had created this new entity 33 years ago, as also to the intrepid four gentlemen officers who on August 14, 1947 had clandestinely created its nucleus.
A few days after the Government announced Gen K Sundarji as the COAS designate, he took a 14-day sabbatical with an Army establishment at Panjim, locked himself inside their guest suite, dictated to his stenographer and refined an 80-odd pages document titled ‘Army Vision 2020’. And the first demonstrable fruition of that vision was the inauguration of the AAC in 1986, an attribute which had its origin in the French army during WW I.
However, AAC’s legacy in the Indian Army is embedded in a charming act of daring piracy! During the fading days of WW II in the Burma theatre, it was decided to train Artillery officers to fly slower aircraft, enabling them to direct fire of their guns beyond the ‘contact battle zone’ to disrupt movement of enemy reinforcements and logistics chain; they were given the designation ‘Air Observation Post (AOP)’ and by December 1946, five officers had been trained in the UK and posted to the only AOP squadron in mainland Asia, at Lahore.Four among that nucleus, Captains Butalia, Govind Singh, Sridhar Mansingh and Sen, had a premonition that at the midnight hour of August 13, 1947, Pakistan would assign all assets of the AOP squadron to itself. So, taking the law into their hands, they flew out at the crack of dawn on August 14 in four Tiger Moths, landed at Amritsar, flagging the de facto and de jure creation of Independent India’s Army AOP establishment! Quite inexplicably, Butalia was inducted into the newly created Indian Frontier Service but fortunately, another trainee, Major Sahane, would fill the vacant slot.
Come October 1947, the AOP would be baptised by fire on the battlefield all through the J&K war. The very first assignment they performed was of great historical significance when on October 27, Prime Minister Nehru deputed Baldev Singh, the Defence Minister, and Maj Gen KS Thimayya, DSO, to witness the signing of the ‘Instrument of Accession’ by Maharaja Hari Singh and they would be flown to Srinagar and back by Sridhar Mansingh.It became an obsession with this new breed of foot-soldiers to spot and silence enemy guns, unmindful of hostile anti-aircraft gunfire. Maj Sahane would disable or silence several Pakistani guns in the Rajouri sector and would receive the AOP’s first VrC for gallantry. Similarly, unfazed by the intensity of mortar and gunfire at Naushera, Mansingh would land and evacuate to Jammu the fatally wounded Brig Mohamad Usman, MVC. In due course, Mansingh too would be awarded the VrC for conspicuous gallantry.
Perhaps the maverick among these pioneers was Govind Singh. A quintessential episode which this veteran recounted is the stuff of legends. When his flying instructor in the UK declared him as ‘lacking flying aptitude’, Govind would confront him with his inimical earthy logic thus: “Sir, I come from a village in Garhwal where no one has seen a bicycle yet, much less ride one. So how do you expect me to fly solo in the same time-frame as your countrymen?” Govind won the much-deserved reprieve!
Govind as a flyer would become the toast of the AOP. When dared, he landed on a hockey field. And on another occasion, he flew under the bridge spanning the Darna river (Deolali, Maharashtra) and then performed a steep side-turn to clinch the wager! Happily, the progenitors of those pioneers, now in the avatar of AAC, are a true reflection of AOP’s magnificent credo: ‘Unarmed and Fearless into Battle’.