What You Don't Know About the Aircraft Fly-Past on 26th Jan 2022

The Republic Day Parade on 26th January 2022 is going to be different, for two reasons.

This year is the 75th anniversary of India¡¯s independence, and also the 50th anniversary of the end of 1971 war, which resulted in a resounding victory for India.

With 75 aircraft of different types taking part, the fly-past this year is reported to be the ¡®largest and the grandest¡¯ till date. So, if you¡¯re an aviation enthusiast, like I¡¯ve been for half a century, don¡¯t miss the event on your TV.

If you have read the series of my articles on the 1971 war, explaining the exploits of the Indian Air Force (simply and briefly - that¡¯s the USP!), you¡¯ll be aware of the major air actions of that war. Some of those actions will also be on display on IAF¡¯s tableaux, including this painting.

My friend, Fighter Pilot turned Aviation Artist, Group Captain Deb Gohain, has immortalised this and many other such moments of history in his paintings.

Painting by Group Captain Deb Gohain

This painting shows our paratroopers jumping out of a formation of Dakota aircraft over Tangail in Bangladesh, to cut off the retreating Pakistani Army.

One Dakota and two Dornier transport aircraft will fly the Tangail formation to commemorate the strategic paradrop that surprised the Pakistani Commanders and led to the speedy fall of Dhaka.

The venerable old Dakota, which first flew in early 1930s, is no more flying with the IAF. The one that will fly over the parade is lovingly and painstakingly maintained flying fit by the personnel of IAF¡¯s Vintage Aircraft Flight.

Similarly, the Meghna formation of a Chinook heavy lift helicopter with four Mi-17s will re-create the innovative use of helicopters to move our Army troops across the Meghna river in Bangladesh.

Painting by Group Captain Deb Gohain

One IAF tableau will have a large model of the Gnat airplane, that, after it downed many of the much more advanced fighters of the PAF, was nicknamed Sabre Killer.

Painting by Group Captain Deb Gohain

Another tableau will feature a model of the MiG-21 fighters that achieved air supremacy over the then East Pakistan right in the beginning, and helped speed up the end of the war by an accurate psychological blow with a strike on the Governor¡¯s house.

Painting by Group Captain Deb Gohain

In addition to all the IAF¡¯s frontline aircraft, Army and Naval planes too shall participate in the fly-past, like they always do, because Air Power of any nation includes all its flying assets, including those of the civil airliners.

The only aircraft that took part in the 1971 war, and is still flying in the IAF, in its newer version, is the MiG 21. But it is not a part of the fly-past.

In the days of ¡®Atmanirbhar Bharat¡¯ the much touted indigenously manufactured Tejas aircraft is also not flying over the parade.

Wondering why?

You probably know that the ill-informed call the MiG-21 a ¡®flying coffin.¡¯ I flew it for 21 years, and even if we know better, it¡¯s still a single-engine fighter plane, vulnerable to something as unpredictable and unavoidable as a bird hit. The small delta winged plane, flying purely by the brute force of its engine, can glide no better than a brick.

Ditto for the Tejas, because these two are single-engine aircraft.

And this is also the reason Suryakiran, the IAF¡¯s 9 aircraft team that creates such fluid poetry with their amazing close formation aerobatics, will not participate, because they fly the single engine Hawk aircraft.

With thousands of people packed together on Raj Path, we just cannot afford to have a bird hit to a single-engine aircraft.

So, the decision to not fly them in the fly-past is a victory of pragmatism over sentimentality.

In the earlier years, we did fly single-engine aircraft over the RD Parade; but those days, firstly, we had little choice because there weren¡¯t any twin-engine fighter planes in the IAF, and secondly, there was plenty of open space across the Yamuna to glide to, and force land or eject over, in case of any trouble. That space is not so open anymore.

Map

Interestingly, the first time we had a ¡®Made in India¡¯ airplane fly past over the republic day parade, was when a Hindustan Trainer-2 (HT-2 which I too flew in 1982) took part in the parade in 1953. Here¡¯s an abridged version of the press cutting, dug up from the archives by a friend who is not a pilot, but the son of one, and is an aviation history enthusiast.

By Anchit Gupta

The Republic Day parade has thousands of participants, including school children, and the timing of the fly past, despite great discipline, is flexible. So, our aircraft have to adjust, and have to advance or delay their arrival by a few seconds - yes, seconds!

The fly-past is a huge and complicated exercise involving hundreds of aircraft, thousands of personnel, tens of bases and precision in seconds.

The planes must fly past the dais, accurately, not only at the given time but also at the given speed and height, exactly over the given point, which actually is not over the Raj Path, but slightly north, over the canal that runs parallel, so that the spectators and the cameras can easily see the aircraft formations flying fast past them, without craning their necks.

Map

But there lies a problem.

In January, the visibility is very poor in Delhi. Even after using modern navigational equipment, since their accuracy is not adequate, the formation leader must see that canal and align the aircraft with it, while the other members maintain their positions close to the leader.

This is not at all a straightforward task.

Mistakes do happen sometimes, though extremely rarely, but, using split-second decisions and lightening reactions, we recover and carry on!

From personal archives of a veteran.

This photo is from the long past, when two formations came too close because of poor visibility, but the pilots acted fast and saved the situation.

One of the many complications in this exercise used to be - of all things - the units of measurement. Some aircraft had instruments measuring height in feet and speed in miles per hour, while the Western origin airplanes measure height in feet and speed in knots (nautical miles per hour) and the Russian planes display height in metres and speed in kilometers per hour!

Another reason is because the airplanes come to overfly the parade from all over the country. Smaller planes come from closer bases like Hindan and Sarsawa; while others fly in from Agra, Adampur, Ambala, Halwara, and Jodhpur. I know of Naval long-range aircraft flying all the way from Arkonam near Chennai, 1800 kilometers from Delhi, flying 3 hours each way to spend 10 seconds over the dais.

It is a tribute to the professionalism of the people involved, that all the planes fly accurately and on time.

Reports say this would be the largest and the grandest fly-past ever. Well, I know of larger fly-pasts on RD Parade, and some veterans remember having flown in a fly-past comprising 144 aircraft.

So, this may not be the largest, but it sure is the first one with so much historical significance.

Don¡¯t miss it!