The Hindu Business Line : Are MiGs flights of farewell?

HOW should it feel to be the mother of a handsome fighter pilot who is not only excellent at what he does but also so full of life that he charms people where ever he goes? Heartbreaking, at least for Nirmal Jamwal as her son is no more.

Yet another victim of the scary frequency of fighter plane crashes in India, Flight Lieutenant Dipankar Singh Jamwal, who died when his MiG-21 suddenly went down during a low-level training sortie at Uttarlai in Rajasthan, had everything going for him till that fateful June 4 morning. The next day, all his family got was his pea-cap perched proudly on his flag-draped coffin which contained whatever the rescuers could pick up of their favourite son from the crash site.

Is that the way Flt Lt Jamwal, `Chimpu' to his loved ones and `Jammy' to the Indian Air Force (IAF) fraternity, should have died?

A mama's baby, winning kudos for his flying skills, interests ranging from loud music to calligraphy and a steady girlfriend who he was to marry to in the next few months. Can any 25-year-old want more?

Jammy's ability to be the naughty brat were legendary in the IAF. From inspiring kids of fellow officers to break glasses instead of keeping them back to dancing through the nights, he did not need an occasion to get excited.

His parents' house in Jammu was the forced stopover for almost all of his numerous friends visiting the Vaishno Devi shrine. If he was on leave, he would himself accompany his guests, often making several trips to the shrine in a spell of leave.

As a cadet at the Pune-based National Defence Academy (NDA), he was the most active member of the `Nautanki Party', the bunch of cadets who typified that soldiers could excel in softer skills too.

At an inter-collegiate fest, Dipankar suddenly decided that the NDA team should participate in the dance competition. Bright coloured dungarees were procured within an hour from the Academy and the NDA team went on to bag the second prize by doing some impromptu back-flips and somersaults to contrast the well-choreographed performances of 66 other teams.

His family remembers another interesting anecdote. As a kid, he was told that he should not cheat in exams, nor should he allow someone else to copy his work. In one particular exam, Dipankar returned with just 1 mark. Perplexed, his parents insisted on seeing his answer scripts, and were aghast to find that it was completely blank, that the lone mark was given in grace. Ask him all the questions, and the answers were rattled out in full speed. So why did he not write anything? Because his best friend wanted to copy from his script. As cheating was bad, and he could not refuse anything to his best friend, he decided to turn in a blank answer sheet.

As a fighter pilot, Flt Lt Jamwal had an excellent record. He was in love with his aircraft and flying, with numerous pictures in different poses of himself and the MiG-21. He even rejected the idea of upgrading to a safer aircraft saying the MiG would "never me him down". Unfortunately, it did.

While the family will take a long time to reconcile to the tragedy, it is only a matter of time till another young pilot loses his life and Flt Lt Jamwal is relegated to being a cold statistic in IAF history.

For those unaware of the statistics, the last three decades have seen nearly 600 aircraft go down, killing over 200 pilots. That roughly translates to the entire IAF fleet getting lost without even fighting a war. Flt Lt Jamwal was the second pilot to die in a fighter crash since January this year, which has seen four jets go down.

According to IAF officials, pilot error, technical faults and bird hits are the three main causes for the high number of crashes in India. Technical faults arise from poor maintenance of the fleet or from equipment failure. Pilot error is often induced due to the absence of an Advanced Jet Trainer for stage three of fighter training that forces rookie pilots to suddenly graduate from slow-flying Kiran or Iskaras to the MiG-21.

"Often, the young pilots are unable to take the sudden transition from the subsonic aircraft used in stage two of their training to the supersonic MiG-21. It is a perfectly fine aircraft and is going to be air-worthy for many more years to come. Only, it is a very unforgiving aircraft if the pilot loses concentration and commits a mistake," says an IAF official.

Ask Nirmal Jamwal if that makes any sense to her.

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