When Indian Air Force flew to the rescue just hours after 2004 Tsunami hit & more stories of skill and courage in the IAF

Wing Commander Arijit Ghosh (Retd) on his graduation day at Air Force Academy in December 1986 (extreme left) and now. (Photos courtesy Wing Commander Arijit Ghosh [Retd])

Twenty years ago, on 26 December 2004, an earthquake off the coast of northern Sumatra in Indonesia topped 9.1 on the Richter scale and set off waves as high as 30 meters (98 feet) in places. The waves rippled through much of South-East Asia and South Asia. And while most of the 2.28 lakh casualties from the disaster were reported from Indonesia, the tsunami caused loss of life and property as far as Thailand, the Maldives, Sri Lanka and India. (Years later, boats given to fishermen as compensation for the vessels they had lost at sea could be seen beached on Chennai's Marina Beach - a grim reminder of the horrific day and the destruction it brought.)

(GIF source: Vasily V. Titov, chief scientist, NOAA Center for Tsunami Research (incorporates the former Tsunami Inundation Mapping Efforts [TIME], NOAA/PMEL - UW/JISAO, USA; via Wikimedia Commons)

Less than 24 hours after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami hit, Indian Air Force Group Captain Erat Krishnaprasad (EK) led a team of rescuers - with aid supplies - to the Maldives. They set out from Vadodara at 5.30 am on December 27, a Monday. By the time they had completed their mission on January 3, the team had flown 100 hours. Their last rescue mission: carrying back 58 Indians from Car Nicobar to Chennai in an Avro Hawker Siddeley HS 748 designed to fit 25 people in all. Some of the passengers had to sit on the floor of the aircraft for the long journey home, even as the aviators had to manage the extra load and the extraordinary conditions.

Wing Commander (Retd) Arijit Ghosh recounts this story, among others, in his book 'Air Warriors: True Stories of Valour and Courage from the Indian Air Force' (Penguin 2024) in painstaking detail. For example, Ghosh, who commanded four Indian Air Force units over his career, explains that the aircraft used in rescue missions to tsunami-hit areas by EK's team lacked flight management systems and inertial navigation systems that are standard in aircraft today. The handheld GPS was unreliable after a point when flying over open seas, and the small runway strips made things harder for the team. To top that, they had to use physical Jeppesen maps (Jepps) to hop across islands they'd never heard of before.

In a phone interview, Ghosh talked about the view from the ATC tower, how ground staff can tell one aircraft apart from another just by listening to the sound of the engine - and how this ability helped India in the 1971 war, why the MIG-21 was a great fighter plane, and how EK led the team which flew all over the Maldives and from Car Nicobar to Chennai on critical rescue missions in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami. Edited excerpts from the interview:

Increasingly, one is seeing books releasing on wars in India and abroad and about the missions and courage of the Armed Forces. You took early retirement in 2010, and you are sharing these stories in book form now in 2024. What purpose do you feel these stories and books serve in the world today?

If you talk to any fauji from the Air Force, from the Army, from the Navy - to talk to anyone of them, they'll be able to tell you 10 different stories of things that happened during their career and which, probably, the outside world would never come to know, something that they responded to or something that they did, stories of bravery, stories of courage.

(Being in the Armed Forces) is more like a calling than a profession; I've used that word in the book as well. If you see the Kedarnath rescue or the (2004) tsunami rescue, why would someone who's just doing their work on a professional basis and being paid for it, go into that kind of situation?

There's a story about the tsunami rescue in the book where an Anro which is authorized to fly only 25 passengers flies out 58 passengers in one go. Why would someone take that kind of risk? People need to know about that kind of bravery, that kind of courage, that kind of commitment. Part of the reason why I wrote this is because I wanted to bring out these stories into the public domain

That's an interesting point; the Armed Forces get called in for emergency rescues during natural disasters. Is there any sort of special training that you get for extreme climate events, for times when you are sending jawans into areas that have floods, earthquakes, tsunamis?

There are some training courses that we do with different rescue agencies which give us a grounding for that kind of thing. But basically, if you see, if it's a flood-relief situation or an earthquake relief situation like what happened in Bhuj where the runways developed cracks and people were stranded. In most of those cases, the regular fixing aircraft cannot land and it's only the helicopter which do the bulk of these missions. We call them mercy missions, actually.

Usually, the pilot is flying his aircraft there and landing there, rescuing people. And obviously there could other people in the aircraft, could be from the Army, could be people who are trained in disaster relief who can help in getting those people out. So it's a team effort at that point of time. The pilot is flying the aircraft, getting it there. Or if you have to give them the medical supplies or blankets, which is usually what happens during these emergencies during the first response times. And people who would then be trying to get people out of that situation and to safety. So the basic role still remains the same as far as the Air Force is concerned, which is to fly the aircraft into that disaster zone and get people out as much as possible. And there are other people to assist him to do that. There will be doctors, there will be paramedics, there would be some army people who would be like slithering down from helicopters using ropes and trying to pull out other people who are stranded on rooftops and things like that. So as far as the Air Force is concerned, the pilot is just holding at that point of time over that particular area.

So, it's all in a day's work for the IAF?

Yes, yes. It's like part of the normal day at work. If you read that tsunami relief story, it becomes very clear. The crew of that Avro aircraft (led by EK) were told that you take off for Thiruvananthapuram at 5.30 in the morning tomorrow. They got the relief supplies from Trivandrum. They were given a destination, to fly from Trivandrum to Malé (Maldives). Midway through the mission, they were told that no, you don't go to Malé. Go and land at another small island which you would have never heard of till then (Hanimadhoo); take the supplies there. So that's what they did, and then that continued from one place to another. Ultimately culminating in that rescue of 58 passengers when they were only authorized to fly 25 people out of Port Blair.

It was like a normal day at work for them in the sense that they were just flying the aircraft from one place to another, getting there, landing in very difficult situations... That's where the training kicks in. You just concentrate on flying that aircraft, reach the particular place and land there even when landing is on a runway which is much shorter than what you actually need to land in the normal course. Those are the kind of challenges which are occupying your mind rather than thinking that you are also exposed to the danger equally of being swept away (by the waters).

In your book, you don't just talk about the fighter pilots and their missions but also what about goes on on the ground...

Yes, generally when you talk about the Air Force, you do end up talking about flying missions. But a lot of that is made possible by the effort that goes into it behind the scenes; the maintenance people, all the people in the air traffic control tower which is where I was most of the time, even the administrative officers and clerks, and people who make day-to-day life possible for everyone in the Air Force so that they can concentrate on their side of the work.

People in Galle, Sri Lanka, held a prayer meeting on 26 December 2024, in remembrance of the victims of the 2004 Tsunami. (Photo by Namrata Agarwal/Moneycontrol)

Can you paint us a picture of what things look like in an air control tower? Does it ever get tense during peacetime?

Usually there's an early morning detail which takes off. Now, in a squadron, typically, there are 18 aircrafts and on a fighter base, you would usually have two squadrons on the airfield. Both these squadrons would be flying a morning detail each. Which means 18 from one side and 18 from the other side. Even when it's not all of them, at least 8-10 of them from one squadron and 8-10 of them from the other squadron, depending on the serviceability, would be taking off roughly at the same time.

So usually working hours used to begin at 7 am (Ghosh took retirement in October 2010, after serving for almost 24 years). We used to have a flying briefing which everyone attended. Everyone would assemble in the operations room before 7 - usually officers would come in by 6.55-6.56 and the commanding officer would walk in around 6:59. The briefing would begin sharp at 7 o'clock. Anyone could set their watches as per that. The briefing would have the meteorological reading for the day; the expected weather, surface wind prevailing, etc. If there was any obstruction on the runway... So full picture of what the day would look like.

By 7.30, everyone was out of the room and moving to their respective areas of work. Usually, the early morning detail would be airborne by about 7.35-7.40. As I said 18 aircraft from one squadron and another 18 from the other squadron would be taking off roughly at the same time. So we would have like 20 fighter aircrafts taking off roughly one after the other, at a gap of 30-45 seconds. Everyone would go to their sectors, do their exercise for the day - it could be a low-level navigation sortie, or something like that - whatever was planned for that day for that.

All these aircraft would have roughly about 45 minutes of fuel, because anything more than that would make the aircraft heavier and less maneuverable. Which meant that all of them would then be coming back at the same time, all wanting to land at the same time and all of them low on fuel because they would have finished most of the fuel doing those exercises. So when they're heading back for a landing, almost every one of them has got a red light blinking in their cockpit which indicates that they're low on fuel and they need to land on priority.

So then we had the unenviable task of getting 20 aircraft back, one after the other, within a very short period.

Indian Air Force Wing Commander Arijit Ghosh (Retd) in 2010.

How does this compare with civil aviation?

What usually happens with a civilian ATC is that you've got various reporting points around the field, 360 degrees around the field, some 5 kilometres away, some 10 kilometres away, some 20 kilometres away. And what the civilians ATC officer does is, they ask the aircraft that are coming in for a landing to report over those reporting points. And depending on who has arrived first, the officer stacks them up in that order, with a height separation of 1000 feet between each aircraft. So the one who reported first would be the lowest in the stack. The next one would be 1000 feet higher than that and so on. They will keep orbiting around that point, holding over those reporting points. And then from each holding point, the ATC will clear one-one aircraft to come into the airfield circuit pattern, which is like a right-hand rectangle. So the aircraft comes in and then lands.

Whereas here in the Air Force, we cannot afford that luxury because we cannot ask the aircraft to hold; they're all already low on fuel; if they run out of fuel, they'll crash. So all of them have to be given priority landing. It's a very tense 15-20 minutes for the air traffic controller in the ATC tower. Every day, every day you face that situation and every day you make sure that you give these clearances to land.

The civilian ATC officer, as I said, would clear only one aircraft into a circuit at one time, whereas in our case, we used to give landing clearances saying that 'You are clear to land. But there are three aircrafts on the runway and you are the fourth one in the queue.' So three of them have already landed at different places on the runway and you are the fourth one in the queue. And behind him there would be two more with a little bit of separation between them, which means that no one is holding anywhere, everyone is coming in for a direct landing and everyone has to be given priority so that there is absolutely no scope for any kind of delay because they are already so low on fuel. So that's the tension which happens every day, thrice a day. You would have an early morning detail, then an afternoon detail around, say, 12 o'clock, and then there would be evening flying and night flying also which is in darkness. So again, there you have the kind of situation where you have a whole squadron of aircraft trying to land at the same time - 2-3 times in a day, you would have this situation where you're trying to recover 20 aircrafts at one time and you cannot make anyone go around and say that okay, you do one circuit and come back again for a landing - the aircraft doesn't have that much of fuel. So you have to give him a direct landing. He makes an approach, and he lands.

During war time, it must get even more hectic...

Absolutely. War time, in any case, there's no question of asking anyone to circuit. Because sometimes these aircraft are coming back with bullet holes, their fuel tanks will be leaking or their instruments could be hit or something like that. There are many times when you have bad weather, and the aircraft could have serviceability issues in the sense that his compass may not be working or the communication equipment with which he walks to the ATC, it's called the radio telephone (RT), may not be working. All those things are called aircraft emergencies, and you have 'let-down' procedures for that. If this happens, what do you do to get them back? In bad weather, th epilot cannot see the airfield. If his instruments are not working, the compass isn't working he doesn't know which direction to fly.

For the pilot, it's a pretty tough situation because he doesn't know what to do at that stage. Then whether the air traffic controller can see him on his radar (is another possible complication) - there's an instrument called an automatic direction finder. Whenever a pilot goes up, the needle on the automatic direction finder points in the direction in which the aircraft is flying. So you know basically which direction the aircraft is heading towards. Accordingly, you also know the direction of your runways and you line both of them up through a series of maneuvers which you tell aircraft to do - you tell them to turn at so and so rate for so and so seconds. All those calculations have to happen very quickly during that time, to get him aligned with the runway. Sometimes the pilot doesn't have a functional altimeter, so he doesn't know what exactly his altitude. So again, you try to work out what is his altitude, you give him descent slowly and get him down through the bad weather part of it so that he can actually see the runway in front of him. At some point in the book I mention these are called radio-controlled let-downs. In the book I mentioned my first such let down and I said that it was such a thrill when the pilot said that the runway is 12 o'clock, which means that it's right in front of him.

You have a fun story in the book about Squadron Leader M.L. 'Bounty' Bountra. Could you recount that story for us?

When you live on an air force station for long enough, you get used to hearing the different sounds that the different engines make. So when you hear the sound, you know, okay, this is an An-32 aircraft, or this an An-12 aircraft, or this is a MIG-21, because all the engines make different kinds of sounds. Especially those of us who are in the ATC towers, we hear them more often than the others. So it becomes like second nature to us that without even looking up, just by hearing the sound, we know what is the aircraft which is flying. And we can tell with a lot of confidence.

In 1971, Squadron Leader ML Bountra was getting a haircut in a salon outside when he suddenly heard this aircraft sound. He knew that there's something amiss because this was not a sound which he was used to hearing on an Indian Air Force airfield. So he looked up, and found this aircraft with the Pakistani Air Force green markings and roundels. And it was actually Starfighter, an American aircraft which we never had in our inventory in the Indian Air Force. So that was the first read of the 1971 war as far as his unit was concerned. That aircraft was coming in to try and destroy their radar. He was the radar controller, basically.

Why were they trying so hard to destroy the radar even before anything else had happened on the ground?

The radar picks up these incoming tracks... you get these dots on the radar screen, they're called blips. There are different kinds of information which come out of the radar at the same time. Each blip will tell you about the height (of the aircraft), it will tell you which direction the aircraft is flying in, and there is also an option where, if it is a friendly aircraft, there is an electronic signature which you can access which tells you what aircraft it is, what its call sign is and things like that. Now obviously if you're coming into enemy territory, you turn off that transponder so that information would not be available to the controller from the other side.

If you find a blip which is unaccounted for, or a track which is entering into your air space which you have no information about in terms of a flight plan or in terms of an ADC number, you know that it's a hostile track and you need to scramble your own fighters to meet that aircraft and negate that threat. Also there are anti-aircraft guns on the ground which are manned by the army. You need to pass that information on to them.

In civil parlance, there is something called the civil defence. So in the towns and cities, in an area which is approaching wartime, night time you need to switch off your lights. So, there's a blackout. During the '71 war, every night in Punjab there was a blackout which was imposed from the dusk till the next morning because aircraft which are coming in for a bombing raid try to stay as low as they can so they are below the radar coverage area. So sometimes the radar cannot pick them up if they are flying at 150 feet or even lower - flying a tree-top level basically. So if he has lights to see, then he can probably see that it is this city or that airfield.

Also there is a civil defence organization which needs to pass on that message, and stop the traffic on the roads if there is any traffic which is on the road. They need to impose a blackout and ask people to get the positions of safety.

Most of us in India are not living in a state of war-preparedness constantly. What kind of inertia is there at the start of a war in terms of transmitting the message from an Armed Forces base to a civilian population, to tell us that we can no longer drive with the headlights on at night or switch on the lights in our homes at night or other wartime precautions?

That may sound strange in peacetime, but when you have a war situation, then it's something that you just do because it's protecting the lives of those people. So you just pass on that instruction. The civil defence organization has its own set-up and they impose these kinds of blocks on the road and they activate all that immediately when the siren is given.

One hears about the courage that it takes for fighter pilots do complete missions, but a lot of courage is also required of the people who stay back at the base. From your many experiences, could you perhaps share one to illustrate what kind of courage that takes? Also, you talk about lots of different types of aircraft in the book, from liberators to hunters to MIG-21s, etcetera. Do you have a favourite plane, and what do you like about it?

Okay, I will talk about the courage first. Military flying, Air Force activities are inherently dangerous things. You have the families in the air force station as well. Especially when an aircraft is in an emergency or a squadron moves into a war zone or dangerous location, there is a lot of tension for everyone. Because you have friends, you see them every day, and then suddenly you hear that his aircraft is missing or he moved into an area from where he may not come back. All those things play on your mind, and there is always a fear that the unknown might happen.

Having said that, most of the time the training that we have is such that we are just doing what we have to do at that point of time. There is no time to think because everything happens so quickly. The time frame is too short. Sometimes a matter of just a few seconds - 30 seconds is a lot of time in the air, actually, to respond to any kind of an emergency. So, you do not really have time to think about what might happen or have time to be afraid of a particular situation. You just know that, okay, at this point of time, this is the situation, and this is how I need to respond to it. That 'how I need to respond to it' has been drilled into you by your training.

And favourite aircraft and why?

Favourite aircraft would be a little difficult to say because you generally like each aircraft in the sense that whatever is flying has got a different characteristic, it's got a different role, it's got a different set of people flying it. So to pick one over the other... each of them has got its own missions, each is doing a particular kind of role, and you are rooting that that mission is successful and they come back safely.

Let me rephrase that question slightly, and feel free to replace the name of the plane with something else that you prefer, but tell us one thing that you love and hate about the MiG-21, for example.

It's an advanced aircraft capable of doing twice the speed of sound as its top speed. The MiG-21 was a great aircraft. The only problem with it is that unfortunately we operated it for far too long. The first MiG-21s came to us before the 1965 war; the first set of people who went to Russia to train on those aircrafts. We've been flying those aircrafts from 1964 till today; obviously there have been technical upgrades, and various things that have changed over the years, but the basic technology of the aircraft still remains the same. And especially with the disintegration of the erstwhile USSR - the aircraft factories were in different countries of the erstwhile USSR. So a particular part would be manufactured in one country and another part would be manufactured in another country. So when the USSR disintegrated, the availability of spare parts for these aircrafts also went down tremendously because in many of the smaller erstwhile USSR countries, those factories may have shutdown as well. Basically the reason why the MiG-21 picked up a lot of adverse publicity towards the end of its life in the Air Force especially was because of this - serviceability was always a concern because it was an ageing aircraft. You had you had this aircraft from 1964 onwards, you were flying it from 1964. So it was like a good 60 years that the aircraft had been in service with the Indian Air Force. And that for a fighter aircraft, obviously its performance is much more intense compared to like a transport aircraft, that's a very long time to be maintaining one particular brand of aircraft.