E-Paper
India’s Most Fearless 3: Service chiefs recall biggest challenges faced in career
The most gripping of these was Air Chief Marshal VR Chaudhari’s account of piloting a MiG-29 jet without a canopy at a speed of 1.9 Mach or close to two times the speed of sound
The three service chiefs on Tuesday recounted some of the biggest challenges and difficult situations they had faced in their careers at the launch of the book “India’s Most Fearless 3”, which features 10 stories of the courage and fearlessness of military personnel.
The most gripping of these was Air Chief Marshal VR Chaudhari’s account of piloting a MiG-29 jet without a canopy at a speed of 1.9 Mach or close to two times the speed of sound. The three service chiefs were responding to questions about the most challenging situations they had faced at an event for the launch of the book.
“Every day in the life of men and women in uniform is a challenge...but I think all of us have had some scary moments. The one I can spend a few minutes on is describing my own experience of flying without a canopy in a MiG-29 at an altitude of 12.3 km at a speed of Mach 1.9 when the outside temperature was minus 53 degrees,” Chaudhari said.
He told the audience that included senior military officers and the families of several personnel recognised for their bravery that he was conducting an air test on the MiG-29 when the “canopy flew off”. The “time of useful consciousness” in such a case – or the time left after an explosive decompression at such an altitude and speed – was only six seconds, he said.
“That was the time available to take a decision. So that was when I put the aircraft in a dive. I was already at Mach 1.9, close to 1,700 kmph. But the idea was to get down at the earliest...I had to get into a foetal position to avoid the wind blast and I brought the aircraft down finally,” he added.
Admiral R Hari Kumar, the navy chief, spoke about being on tenterhooks when combat jets from the aircraft carrier he was commanding were at the limit of their endurance during an exercise. But he said that every operation out at sea was a challenge and a learning experience.
Referring to the tactical exercise, he said it was “really nail-biting” when the jets returned to the aircraft carrier. “When the aircraft came back and landed, they were almost with hardly any fuel left in the tank,” he said.
The army chief, Gen Manoj Pande, spoke about how soldiers are motivated by the ethos of “naam, namak, nishan” or honour, loyalty and identity to make the greatest of sacrifices in the line of duty. “These are the three things which inspire and motivate our soldiers to walk into situations where you are facing death,” he said.
This attitude is fostered through years of training and facing difficult situations and getting inspired by the tales of heroes such as those who figure in “India’s Most Fearless 3”, Pande said.
The book, authored by Shiv Aroor and Rahul Singh, the defence correspondent of Hindustan Times, is the third in a series and includes true stories of courage of Indian military personnel. Among them is the story of an Indian Army medic who treated both Indian and Chinese soldiers during the deadly Galwan Valley clash of June 2020, the crew of an Indian Navy destroyer that rescued hundreds from Cyclone Tauktae in the Arabian Sea, and an Indian Air Force pilot who ejected from his jet less than two seconds before it hit the ground.
