Air Marshal (R) Harish Masand says I learnt more than flying from them: VP Kala and “Babla Senapati”
Harvard at Yelahanka 2009 (Photo: Simon Watson)
During my flying training days in the 98th GD(P) Course, after finishing our flying on the HT-2 at PTE, Allahabad in September 1966, we were given a bit of leave to refresh our relations with near and dear ones and reached Air Force Flying College (AFFC) at Jodhpur in late October 1966. The intermediate stage was those days conducted at AFFC on Harvard Mk IV and Texan T-6G with minor differences between the two aircraft. I was assigned to then Flight Lieutenant VP (Ved Prakash) Kala and my flying commenced on 14 November 1966. As per my memory, refreshed with the log book, I flew with a lot of instructors for some strange reason that I could not figure out then or even now. This included Flt Lt Ambady and Sharma, Sqn Ldrs Banerjee and M Paul apart from the Flight Commander, Air Marshal (R) Harish Masand says… Sqn Ldr SS Ahuja and the ACFI, Sqn Ldr CK Bali. While this had its own advantages since I got to learn different things from different instructors, I suppose it also had its downside in the lack of continuity and the feeling of belonging to none. Without doubt, VP Kala was an excellent instructor and very smooth on controls, a habit that I picked up and formulated my own technique on this quality as I gained more experience. He also gave me a great technique and some very useful tips on instrument flying which again stood me in good stead when I later started doing many things on instruments, including day/night aerobatics and sometime the entire air test profile till on finals, the latter with a safety pilot in the trainers that I flew so that they could take over if the situation was getting dangerous at any time, something that fortunately never occurred in my flying career. Due to such an instructor and what he taught me, I also found that recovery from unusual attitudes also became a cinch and saved me in many occasions when I inadvertently got into thick thunder clouds. Perhaps because VP Kala was an ex-transport pilot, he subtly passed me onto some ex-fighter pilots so that I could learn more about aerobatics and extreme handling of the aircraft from them. Where VP Kala became very angry with me and almost stopped teaching me was after my night flying solo. VP did many and let me do many similar low overshoots wherein the aircraft just about touched or kissed the runway during the overshoot process. Without switching off, he asked me to go solo and do two or three low overshoots before landing. Unfortunately, the copycat that I was, I did exactly what we had done in the dual sortie just before, kissing the runway during the go-around every time. Kala was in the runway controller’s hut watching all this and while he did not say anything on the radio during my approaches and overshoots, he gave me a solid rocket after landing in the flight office during the debrief in front of all my co-pupils, well past mid-night. While he called me a cocky overconfident so-n-so, I actually lost a bit of my self confidence after that firing and it took me a little while before I recovered from this firing and its effect. Quite frankly, I did not sleep a wink that night. Perhaps, that was also one of the reasons why Kala did not put me up for a trophy check though I felt I was doing well and he felt that I had the confidence, if not over-confidence. While I was in AFFC, my elder brother, “Sonny” Masand had come over on a transit flight as a Flying Officer on Packets. He had asked me about my instructor and how my training was going. After hearing everything, he had cautioned me to be careful because most ex-transport instructors tended to recommend their smooth flying pupils for the transport stream while most of the rough ones got fighters. Right or wrong, at least that was Sonny’s experience and he tried to talk me into being a little rough on controls while flying. I don’t think I needed to do that because, after the night flying incident, VP Kala had become somewhat disinterested in my progress and towards the end, he only asked me where I wanted to go. When I vehemently opted for fighters, he, without any discussion or contrary opinion/ advice, recommended me for fighters and I landed up in Hakimpet for the advanced stage of training. However, apart from this and all he taught me, I would be ever grateful for what VP Kala specifically did before this incident in my initial solo sorties with a dual in between to check the progress when I was learning to do aerobatics and spins on the Texan. On 28 December 1966, he sent me for an aerobatics sortie with Wg Cdr “Babla” Senapati, who was just visiting AFFC from somewhere and perhaps needed to log some flying hours. After climbing to the required height, Babla Senapati, instead of aerobatics, first asked me to describe a figure of eight around the horizon. He then demonstrated what he meant by such manoeuvres by showing me how to do a high yo-yo above the horizon, a low yo-yo below the horizon and a figure of eight and then asked me to practice these for the next 10- 15 minutes. All this was to be done without looking inside at the instruments purely by feel and seat of the pants to try and get the same attitude above and below the horizon in the same number of degrees of turn through coordinated movement of all three controls. It was only after he felt that I had understood the concept that he asked me to do some aerobatics and made comments so as to improve my performance.
On the ground, in the debrief, Babla Senapati spent some extra time with me and explained how these practice manoeuvres improved one’s handling and control of the aircraft to the edge of its envelope through coordinated movement of controls and gave you a feel of what the aircraft could do in combat and how to take it through its paces without really having to look inside at the instruments. I never forgot this technique and advice through my flying career, and even after retirement when I flew new and different types of small private aircraft. In my first few sorties on a new aircraft, I practised such manoeuvres combining it with smooth movement of the controls till I could handle the aircraft and put it through any desired manoeuvre, just by feel without really looking inside except a quick glance at a particular instrument only to check if I had achieved the desired value of that parameter. Even when I first flew the MiG-29 in the Soviet Union, I started such manoeuvres in my very first dual sortie with Captain Yuri Xoxlow, the instructor pilot, wondering what I was doing. Since I could not explain anything in the air in my broken Russian and he did not understand any English, I later explained to him after the sortie that I was just trying to get a good feel of the aircraft. This soon brought Major Kalsov, the senior pilot in that MiG-29 training squadron in Lugovaya, to me with a caution that I could do what I wanted over Rajpath in Delhi but in Lugovaya, I must follow only what was laid down by the syllabus. Later, even he relaxed the limits for me quite a bit with a nod from the Squadron Commander, Lt Col Nudeganov.
I personally feel that this one nugget left with me by Babla Senapati formed the basis of what I slowly built on later with experience, amalgamation of what I picked up from other seniors and my own theories to perfect my combat flying and aerobatic displays. I also taught this refined technique to all my pupils and others whenever I got the opportunity by impressing on them that if they could also perfect such handling of the aircraft, they would be able spend most of their time looking outside the cockpit for bogeys, controlling their own formations in combat, navigating or doing the radio, everything a fighter pilot is required to do, being alone in the cockpit. While quantifying the time spent outside of the cockpit was difficult, I used to use an arbitrary figure of 98% of the time and attention with only 2% for looking inside particularly by day in VMC, as an example. Unfortunately, I never got another opportunity to fly with Babla Senapati but was fortunate enough to bump into him in a restaurant in Bandra, Bombay those days, in May-June 1976 while doing the Photo Interpreters Course in Poona. Babla was obviously a bit down and out and waiting for the restaurant owner with some designs of a hotel/restaurant that the owner was supposedly planning in New York. I decided to pay my debt to him and invited him over to our table and stand him lunch while he waited for the owner, I introduced him to Malini, my wife who was with me at that time, and thanked him for what he had taught me many years ago, a sortie which he didn’t even recall, Babla Senapati showed us the design of the planned hotel/ restaurant based on the peacock. Those were truly amazing blueprints and designs and I then realised that Wing Commander “Babla” Senapati was not just a great flyer and instructor bur also a great artist and painter. Unfortunately, like most of such geniuses, he was a simpleton and did not care about his finances, did not know how to negotiate the right price for his talents/work and had fallen on hard times. We also took a photograph with him. Unfortunately, we packed our stuff when proceeding to Iraq in 1979 and by the time we opened the old stuff many years and many postings later, perhaps after retirement in 2006, white ants and some seepage through the years had taken their toll and we lost most of our papers and photographs of the early pre-Iraq years. I never met Babla Senapati again, never got to know whether he got a decent contract for the Peacock design for New York and later learned that he had passed away in penury.
Wherever he is today in the valhalla, I want him to know that I still fondly remember him and salute him as also VP Kala.