KOLLIGAL STORY

When IPKF war started, I was floating around in ASTE, doing this and that, nothing of any serious consequence.

At the height of the IPKF war, out of the blue, Maj Gen Atma Singh came to call on me unannounced, just like that. He was then DG Army Aviation.

I fell down. I never had such senior officers call on me before. Usually I was marched up to them and the bugle was blown.

'Our convoys and road opening parties get ambushed if they don't have air cover', he told me without preamble. 'If the Mi-25s are overhead, no convoy is ever ambushed', he paused for a deep breath. 'There are only few Mi-25s, just two or three of them left, and so they refuse to do convoy escort'. He looked at me, one of those looks that penetrates the heart and soul. I shook my head like a Japanese doll and kept shaking it. It was neither the time nor occasion to  discuss potential or  limitations of air power with him.  And in any case, I didn't have anything new to tell him, he knew it all, more than I.

'We approached HAL (Hel Div, B'lore). They have built two swivelling trusses on our Cheetah, to take on two of our MMGs, but the ruddy thing doesn't fire and we are we are in a fix'. He told me. 'I want you fix them immediately and send them into combat'. All this was said in half Punjabi, with profusion of the nuances of that colourful language.

General Atma Singh Sir said 'immediate'.

So I  immediately took him to see my boss Philip Sir, then CTP, who had few days earlier marched me into his office to reminded me that the E in ASTE stood for Establishment and not Experimental.  He had blown the bugle and stopped me from my daily endeavour to do stupid experimental things.  That was to appease the then STE who had complained against me for fooling around on my own experimenting with thermal  imaging systems. The kill joy STE was not around and Atma Singh was at his convincing best. And if you mentioned war, Philip Sir was the kind who would jump up from his ejection seat like chair, to stamp the sky with glory. In short, he gave a tacit nod to me to go solve Atma Singh's problem, even if the E in ASTE wasn't anything Experimental. At that time I had neither herd of my predecessor venerable KL Narayanan in 65 war, nor exploits of Kilo Flight in 71 war, who armed helicopters. I was just a clue less idiot with a silly undeserved ETP tag, trying to be socially useful and productive.

I put Gen Atma Singh behind my Bajaj scooter, cut across the runway like a bat out of hell, and we went to take a look at what was bothering the Indian Army. Immediately I was pounced on by venerable Col PVK Choudhary, my venerable 'Dorm Com' from 'Ranjit' Section in Rimc, two and half decades earlier. Atma Singh vanished like a bad dream. PVKC in Rimc had punched me in the tummy to inculcate soldierly behaviour. Now he was the mighty CO of 31 Air Op Flt, itching to go to war, like all Rimcolians / ex NDAs. I was quite sure that if I didn't measure up to him, he would punch me again.

'Bugger, I want you to sort out the problem immediately', he told me in the same Dorm Com fashion even before I could cock an eye at what ailed them.

Everyone in the army said 'immediate', and that was not an order to be disobeyed. There was a war going on, though not in Bangalore.

There were about 40  odd personnel from HAL (HC Div) milling about an armed Cheetah without its side doors. It had sideward firing MMGs, one on either side, on swivelling truss (standard MMG tripod swivelling truss modified a bit) and mounted on the floor board of the Cheetah. The HAL crowd were scratching several body parts including their heads, with no idea what to do. It didn't need experimental design engineers to have done what they did;  and in any case HAL too didn't have an E in their charter which said experimental.

PVKC explained their moral dilemma in clipped military parlance.  Firstly the ammo belt had to be fed manually into the MMG in the air, by the same man who was also supposed to aim, trigger and control the fire, a task usually done by an assistant when this gun is fired by infantry on ground. Secondly, when butt tested (fired into sand bags) on ground,  the super-heated spent shells and links were being ejected and falling all over the place due to slip stream;  some on the pilot, some on the man who was firing, and the rest headed straight for the tail rotor, all of which was giving PVKC and his team heebies and the jeebies.

'Start up the a/c, let us take it to ASTE' I suggested. HAL didn't march up or measure up ;  reason why the Army came to  me.  'Daud Ke Chal', I comanded myself, like the Roman 'Centurian Pontius Phokusall' in Asterix comic.  It was obvious to  me that some modifications were required, which I was sure that the very energetic CRPO in ASTE would approve faster than design engineers of HAL, even if HAL or ASTE didn't have an E that said Experimental !!

So PVKC and I hover taxied across the runway and brought the Cheetah, minus side doors, but with two burley infantry soldiers manning the MMGs from both sides, sitting on the rear seats. After we  landed in the safe sanctuary of my domain in ASTE, I went and tried to swing the guns to and fro, and upwards/downwards. There was excessive and dangerous freedom of swivel that would permit inadvertent firing through the rotors if the helicopter was in a turn and more silly freedom backwards than firing forwards. So I got the guns and trusses dismantled, sketched three basic modifications. One to the truss to limit its freedom to fire upwards in turns but fire down wards (- 120  / + 90 deg along longitudinal axis), give more freedom  to fire forward and restrict freedom too much backwards (+ 15 /- 45 deg along lateral axis) by simple mechanically welded butting on the swivel.

The second was to modify truss with two  simple slides to take a standard ammo belt metal box, that would be mounted on the gun truss itself, which would then feed the gun belt automatically. A slip on, slip off, arrangement which could be done by the gunner in the air, if he carried spare belted ammo boxes.

The third was a canvass (actually thick double layered car seat) chute like a windsock, attached to the guns, that would collect the spent shells and links, send them down wards instead of all over the place. The CRPO approved my design modifications 'immediately' because the mods were on the army MMG and not on the helicopter. I told you that he was a zestful maverick, unlike the STE with non-combatant DNA, who didn't like an extra  E in ASTE.

The simple mods on the truss and railing for ammo boxes were done overnight at the local EME workshop, the canvass chutes were made by a 'Mochi' in Dumlur, the one who usually repaired my wife's shoes in war and peace. Next day we tried it out, with PVKC flying and I pretending to be the infantry operating the MMG. It seemed fine, the CRPO too said it was fine. I went back to Philip Sir to get his permission  lest he blew the bugle and asked what that E in ASTE meant. As everyone knows, he is a through professional, not a 'jugad' man like me.

Air OP was asked to deploy to Kolligal jungles south of B'lore, for simulated jungle warfare,  for airborne assault on simulated LTTE . 31 Air OP was a nuisance, the entire lot with their CO turned up at my home in Dumlur on two successive nights to show their Rimcolian camaraderie and closed my bar book and ate up all my grub. We watched Vietnam war on my VCR and that helped formulate tact and tactics.

Early next morning PVKC Sir and I we flew to Kolligal. Air OP was already practising  jungle warfare adjacent to a river,  by grilling a wild boar in an open pit  with a tomato in its mouth and a rod up you know where. We landed with the tail sticking out into the river, ate barbeque, loaded the guns and took off again. We chose two side by side black rocks, in the middle of the jungle, that looked like LTTE supremo Prabhakaran's  gonads. I didn't notice that there was a pair of  elephants mating in the jungle behind the rock. I devised air to ground firing doctrines, 'Teri Pen Di' for opening fire, and 'Todde Ma Di' to stop firing, language easily understood by Sikh Li infantry, Arty and Air OP. I think Armoured Kaurs likes similar operational orders, but in English.

To cut a long story short, when the guns were fired at the rocks for the first time,  at max rounds per minute (about 1000 rpm), there was resonance, the engine governor malfunctioned, and I had to autorotate and force land on a small patch of jungle next to the black rock behind which the elephants were mating. The bull elephant charged at the helicopter with his manhood pointing like the Pitot tube on the Mig 21 and tail held very high indicating his anger at coitus interruptus. I had to take out the red coloured engine exhaust blanking and do a 'Dhawa,  Halla Bol' bayonet charge NDA style, back at the elephant. Luckily it decided that discretion is better part of valour and ran away. There was nothing I could do with the engine governor, without any tools and E of ASTE. So I attacked the guns and reduced the rate of fire to about 650 - 700 rounds per minute, by twirling the fire control knob. After that there wasn't any glitch, except that the Cheetah shook like Bond's martini when the guns were fired. Shaken but not stirred, though the sex life of elephants in Kolligal was ruined. They stopped mating, while all the shaking and rattling improved our zest and night fighting skill !!!

31 Air OP 'shooted and scooted' next day to Vavunia without saying good bye.

Rest of their Cheetas I think they armed them in Vavunia themselves, based on a certificate which they made me sign, after they made me drink a few extra from my own bottle. As per Bharat Sir in his IPKF book  I am told that they did a fantastic job, shooting at the black rocks of Prabhakaran and his mates, even females wielding RPGs. The animal rights NGOs didn't complain either in India or Sri Lanka and Philip Sir didn't blow the bugle.  All is well that begins and ends well. 

The irony of the this story is why the armed Cheetah was named 'Ranjit'. 

Both Col PVKC Sir and I are from Ranjit Section in Rimc. As PVKC says, the zestful arming, operational clearance of the Cheetah, and its deployment in war in less than 72 hrs was a complete Ranjit Section in-house affair, a show of Rimcoliian camaraderie. So it was befitting to name the armed Chetak 'Ranjit' !!  This is my personal belief.

I meet illustrious PVKC often now a days at Hyd,  very retired old friends.

He doesn't talk about war, I think he got  a bellyful in S' Lanka. He pours the drink, but refuses to even write a 'good show' autograph for me on toilet paper. His NGO like grouse is that I ruined the sex life of elephants in Kolligal !!!.

Cheers

cycclic

PS:

On page 175 of Bharat Sir's book on IPKF, there is photograph of a Cheetah with a massive gondola leading a formation of Ranjits.  That is another modification done by me at Palam on the quiet, Rimcolian influence by Lt Gen Chatterjee (who was my bench mate as a Capt when I was a cadet at Bidar).

The gondola housed a gimbal mounted gyro stabilized long rage telescoping TV camera that could be pointed to look deep inside enemy territory,  live digital recordings, that could also be telecast live real time to command and  control  centres. Applying rudder is a major issue with all h/c pilots, except when flying with the gondola. The cheetah flew better with the gondola, no matter what I did with it, I didn't have to apply rudder !!

Since I am at it, let me also narrate another untold story of a/c modification, about my ops / technical SoC with engineering details, to arm the Mi-25/35 with SA-9 Igla for self-protection. The file went to then ACAS Ops  in which he wrote that I had a 'cavalier attitude' to shoot at fighter a/c in TBA, and so I should be interred permanently in the islands of Elba or St Helena. I still can't figure out what objection he had, if I wanted to  shoot at Paki a/c  - I thought that was the raison d'etre of IAF !!!!