Flying Officer Krishan Kumar Sahgal
My father was in the Royal Indian Air Force
Pratibha Sahgal’s story
This information about my father is based on an interview conducted by my friend, Kevan Bundell with Mr Krishan Kumar Sahgal, with additional information from my mother and family, and from the internet.
Krishan Kumar Sahgal was born on 24 December 1921 in Calcutta, at the home of his maternal grandfather, Colonel Sir Ram Nath Chopra. He was brought up in Rawalpindi and then sent to the Doon School, Dehradun. He was not happy there and moved to St. Xavier’s High School in Calcutta, living with his grandparents.
My father wanted to join the Air Force in 1943. However, his mother (my grandmother) insisted he study medicine, which he therefore did, in Calcutta. However, one day, back in Rawalpindi, he went to see the District Collector, a Mr Cuthbert, in order to get a gun license. Mr Cuthbert asked him what he was doing with himself and suggested he might like to join the Air Force. My father replied that he would indeed like to join but his mother was opposed to the idea. The collector said he’d have a word with his father – whom he knew. My father joined the Air Force soon after.
He was sent to Dehradun Academy for interviews and a medical, which he passed. He was sent to Walton, near Lucknow, for ground training and then to 151 Operational Training Unit at the Elementary Flying Training School at Jodhpur as an Officer Cadet for three months flying instruction. He apparently did his first solo after just five hours of training.
My father told Mr Bundell that he trained mostly on Hawker Hart biplanes and North American Harvards, but Mr Bundell believed he must also have flown Hurricanes because, before he joined an active squadron, he suffered engine failure in a Hurricane and had to make a crash landing.
This is the story he recounted to Mr Bundell:
Flying a Hurricane, he ‘buzzed’ a village tank – a reservoir – where some women were taking their baths. Having done so twice, his engine failed. He rolled upside down to bail out, but in his confusion rolled back upright again. This was fortunate because he then realised he was flying at only 500 feet. He made a crash landing, all the while wondering what the local Pathans, renowned for their warrior spirit and sense of honour, might do to him. He need not have worried, the Pathans are also known for their generous hospitality. As per regulations, he had to stay with his aircraft, but the villagers brought food and drink and ate with him.
Some hours later an Air Force lorry turned up. ‘Why didn’t you bring an ambulance?’ asked Sahgal. ‘We only came to collect the body’, was the reply. In fact, he had been injured in the crash. Having undone his harness to bail out he had then smashed his nose on landing. The nose was fixed with goat cartilage and flesh from his leg.
On another occasion, ‘as a young pilot’, Sahgal decided to ‘beat up’ a ‘friendly’ train. Two other pilots took the Hurricane he was flying up after him and when it was finally taken for refuelling, a locomotive whistle was found stuck in the bottom of the fuselage. The British C.O. grilled all three pilots as to who was responsible and all three denied it. A few days later the C.O. offered Sahgal a whiskey in the Mess, and then another, and another – the third of which Sahgal declined. The C.O. asked him if he was in fact the guilty party. ‘This is the mess, not your office?’ ‘Yes’ agreed the C.O. Sahgal confessed and no more was said about it.
The crash took place on 1st January 1944. On the 10th January, he joined No. 9 Squadron at either Bhopal (according to my family) or possibly at Jodhpur, where the squadron had been recently formed on 3rd January 1944. In any case, the squadron was soon after, in April 1944, sent to Hathazari in Chittagong, on the Burma front. There he flew operationally in Hawker Hurricane Mark IIc’s and later in Mark IX Spitfires – by that time based in Arakan, according to my father. He also flew Westland Lysanders occasionally. His duties mostly involved escorting bombers in their sector.3 On one occasion he escorted Mountbatten's Dakota. When flying Hurricanes the instructions were not to tackle Japanese Zeros, which could ‘turn circles in your circles’. My mother said that at Arakan he was given the role of acting C. O. and later of acting Squadron Leader.
My grandmother remained opposed to his being in the Air Force throughout the war. She would ‘beat her breast hysterically’ whenever a telegram arrived. When the war ended, she insisted he quit. He did so, unwillingly, on 1st March 1944. Afterwards, he said, he remained ‘disappointed’ and ‘unforgiving’ of his mother.