An Ode To My Beloved First Love: MiG-21

MIG21 will be decommissioned on Friday, September 26.

I joined the 76th Course of National Defence Academy, in June 1986 and passed out of NDA in June 1989. For the next one year, I was undergoing training in Air Force Academy, Dundigal, for first half, and subsequently at Air Force Station, Bidar, before getting Commissioned in Indian Air Force in June 1990.

Getting a hang of the “beast”

My first sight of my first love was at Tezpur, where I was on a rickshaw from Mission Chariali to Air Force Station, Tezpur. The sight of a MiG-21 take off shook me….. “will I be able to master this beast?”

It took me six months in MOFTU (MiG Operational Flying Training Unit) and six months in 52 Squadron (The Sharks) to get a hang of this beast.

For the transformation of my perception of the MiG-21 from a beast to a semblance of beauty, took me another six months in 101 Squadron (The Falcons of Chhamb), my first Operational Squadron.

Getting into the groove

One thing that was clear in my mind after the initial six months at 101 Squadron was that this aircraft was more than a beauty, and I will need more understanding of it, more practice, and more importantly more supervision from my peers, to make it do what I wanted to do with it, in combat/strike situations that I would potentially encounter.

The next six months were spent under a keen eye of my Squadron seniors, to achieve “Fully Operational” status. Believe me when I say that these seniors that I am talking about were brutal when it came to OPS Training, even though, they were sweet as sugar off the Operational Area!

By this time, 101 Squadron was tasked to train the young MiG-21 pilots coming in from the Air Force Academy, and I was posted to 17 Squadron (The Golden Arrows). Although I was fully operational on the MiG 21 by now (about two years of flying the machine), 17 Squadron was where my skills were honed.

The squadron had a newly assigned role of Fighter Reconnaissance (FR), and there were whole different aspects of training that needed to be done, Low/Medium level FR, Valley flying, Valley FR, Ground Attack and the works.

The squadron was commanded by a Commanding Officer, who did calculus to go to sleep! He and another senior Squadron Leader were the ones who made the SOP for FR.

The entire training syllabus (Which was formalised by the CO and the Deputy Flt Cdr) took me another six months to master. Immediately after this, my operational progression to lead 2/4 and more aircraft started and by the end of four years of my career flying the MiG-21, I felt that I had mastered the beauty.

Versatility is the name of the game

The squadron role was such that we were required to be a part of any Army or Air Force exercise that was being conducted anywhere. Apart from this, we also had to do two detachments a year to our Op. Locations (two of them) to maintain familiarity with our Op. Areas. With this kind of a schedule, one detachment of 2/4 aircraft was perpetually out of base throughout the year. This gave us plenty of opportunity to hone our skills.

Who dares, maps an area of interest

There is one particular detachment that I remember distinctly as being the most important that I took part in. It was in the Kashmir Valley.

Those days, there were no satellite pictures to give you an overview of the area of interest. And with the insurgency in the valley at a peak in 1994, the Army was dependent on local human intelligence and 1:50,000 maps of various towns and insurgent infested areas in the Valley to plan and conduct their operations.

We were tasked to try and see if we could film the entire towns of Sopore, Shopian, Baramulla and parts of Srinagar. A senior Flight Lieutenant and myself, a Flying Officer at that time, were tasked by the CO for this mission. It was the first time that this was being attempted.

To cover a small town of Sopore, we were required to carry out multiple straight runs, with each run having a percentage of overlap, and to a specific scale required for identification of the smallest of objects, flying at approximately 150ft from the ground, at a ground speed of 840 km/hour, in a suspected shoulder -fired missile infested area.

We filmed the entire towns of Sopore and Shopian. The films were analysed, printed and a mosaic of approximately 16X16 feet was made, where even the number plates of vehicles could be read clearly.

The Army had tremendous successes in these two towns thereafter. Imagine the skill level required to achieve the overlap in the second run without the GPS. That was the kind of training and skills this beautiful machine demanded. It speaks volumes of the training standards. It’s not by fluke that MiG-21 has shot down every single Western platform our western adversary had in its inventory ever.

Mishaps

After a very satisfying tenure at 17 Squadron, I was posted to MOFTU, a training squadron that I had passed through six years earlier. During one of the training missions with an Under Trainee MiG-21 pilot, I had to eject from my aircraft sustaining spinal injury on 24 September 1996.

Although I came back to flying the MiG-21 again, in February 2000, I had to carry out a wheels up landing in a MiG-21, as the landing gear did not come down despite all my efforts.

The back injury sustained during the ejection in 1996, made me unfit to fly the Ejection Seat Equipped aircraft in the year 2000. My love for the MiG-21 was such that unable to get back in a MiG-21 cockpit again, I decided to take premature retirement in the year 2002, after serving for about 12 years.

MiG-21, even when there was another option

The MiG-21 was my dream aircraft to fly from the time I saw it take off in Jamnagar when I was eight years old. We were on a family vacation and were coming back to my home town. This was in the year 1976.

In the year 1996, at the time my posting came to MOFTU, I also had been detailed to undergo a conversion to fly the Jaguar. I had a choice, and I chose to continue flying the MiG-21.

This beloved aircraft, once you have mastered it, is a beautiful aircraft to fly. There is a saying in the IAF: “You don’t strap in to the cockpit, you should be strapping the aircraft on to you. That’s when you will get the feeling of oneness”.

With the MiG-21, that feeling comes on automatically when you strap in.

(G Vasant Ghanate was Squadron Leader in the IAF.)

Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.