Warbirds of India

12 Feb 2010: A very early example of a MiG-21 that served in the Indian Air Force has been re-discovered.  Sandesh Kanchan (aka ghostrider) had correctly identified the MiG-21 displayed in Artillery Center Deolali  as an early MiG-21 PF (Type 76). Previously the aircraft was reported as a MiG-21FL. 

The following was posted on the Bharat Rakshak Forums.

Harry passed away in May 2007. Cause is heart attack. Link to the news item I was his classmate in college. He did have an amazing knowledge about military technology as ascertained from his interaction with a defense scientist at the IIT-Madras tech seminar on the LCA in 2004.Â

B Harry (Harish Balaji Kannan) was a regular contributor to this website as well. He was one of the few Indians to have an interest in Warbirds and thus he would regularly go out on Warbird Hunts. Dozens of his photos can be found in the Chennai section and other places.  He went "off the scope" in May 2007. Harry valued his privacy very much. So much that he was accessible only by email or by IM. The result was that his demise went unnoticed for so long. and Sadly, we found out about this only now.

RIP Harry.

 

Note on Sources for Pre Independence Losses: The data for the pre-1947 crashes has been built from several sources.

Operational losses are taken from the Official History of the Royal Indian Air Force 1933-45 (Ed by SN Gupta , pub by MoD India) but the names could only be confirmed after referring to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Web Site at www.cwgc.org .

How accurate are these figures? The Figures between 1979 till 1996 cover 60% of all the losses. all figures prior to 79 are just indicative and in no way qualifies as comprehensive. All the incidents before 1994 have been covered by reports from news papers and sources. The Years 1994, 1995 , 1996 are not covered and we had to refer to secondary sources for the figures. 1997 and 1998 have been covered by a Statement released in the Parliament on 11 Mar 99. All figures from April 1999 have been collected by news reports from the Internet. To give you an idea of its coverage, Here are the 'reports' against the available data.

The Hindu reported in May that an aircraft engine was fished out by fishermen off the Beypore coast at Kochi in Kerala. The Radial Engine, which appears to have come  off either an Avenger, Hellcat or a Corsair was later heli-lifted by the Navy to one of their bases.

A Photograph of the LCA Tejas first prototype "TD-1" being cannibalised for usable spares. The aircraft is officially "withdrawn from use" after 233 flights.

Colonel Ajai Shukla, who writes the popular Broadsword Blog reports that the first LCA Prototype / "Technology Demonstrator 1" is in the process of being canibalised and used for spares for other aircraft.

The attrition page have also been re-coded to make navigaton and querying more intuitive. Now you can click on the Aircraft name to retrieve a listing of records for that type. Alternative, if you find the Date field to be a hyper link, clicking on it will retreive the records for that particular year.

An year-wise listing for the IAF, PAF and WW2 can be accessed from this link

An aircraft typewise listing for the IAF, PAF and WW2 can be accessed from this link