75 Years of the Indian Airforce.

Its only so long that I will be able to use to excuse of setting things in order before starting to post more regularly. :)

And it is time I put up some more stamps of India. I have written earlier about the Philatelic account I have with India Post and so on coming back, I was surrounded with the stamps released by India over the past five months.

One of the neat sheets I got was this one released on the Platinum Jubilee (1932 - 2007) of the Indian Air Force.

The Indian Air Force was officially established on 8 October 1932. But by the time they actually got around to flying their planes it was 1st April 1933. So it's probably apt that I got the 75 years of the Air force in 2008! The IAF inetially compromised of six RAF-trained officers and 19 Havai Sepoys (air soldiers) and four Wapiti Airplanes. The Wapiti is thus aptly pictured on the main sheet on the lower left.

The others featured on the main sheet from top Left are the Dhruv, the AWACS and an IL 78 refuelling two Su-30 airplanes.

The neat thing about this sheet, is that on either sides of the sheet, are the pictures of the planes that have accompanied the IAF in this 75 years journey. The planes on the left side from top to bottom are: The Toofani , Mi 26 Helicopter (The biggest Helicopter in the world) , Gnat, Packet (C 119), Hunter and the Jaguar.

On the Right from top to bottom are: Dakota DC-3, Mig 21, AN 32, Mirage 2000, Vampire 52 and finally the Mig 25 (Foxbat).

A very comprehensive history of the IAF can be found here on the IAF website.

As you can see the FDC released on the occasion is a stunner as well. When taken with the previous released stamps and FDCs of the humble Gnat, 16 Sqn of the Air force and the sheet released on the 100 years of Man's first flight, the sheet finds itself in good company.

Indian Air force - The Gnat (Mk I)

Another neat stamp that I recently got my hands on was this one from way back in 1967. The stamp depicts the Gnat. The Gnat was made by the Folland company in 1955, but it never came to much till the Indian Air force decided to pick it up and use it as its mainline fighter plane. The Indians bought 40 airframes in the various stages of construction and then built a modified version of the same at HAL called the Ajeet Gnat (Mk I). The IAF operated the Gnat from 1958 to 1978 & 175 of these beautiful aircraft were built at the HAL.Dad with Gnat 1969

The reason that I'm rather fond on these air planes is that dad flew these planes extensively in 22 Sqn and 21 sqn of the IAF, and also flew a lot of these babies as a test pilot in the HAL.

The Gnats achieved great success as a combat air plane against the more technically superior Sabres of the Pakistani air force. As per dad, during the 1971 war, the biggest advantage that they had during the 1971 war was that the Pakistani pilots simply couldn't spot these small airplanes.

I've put up more pictures of dad during that time over at "My daddy Strongest". Drop by there if you have some time. Dad still has the helmet worn in the picture down below. I'm sure there are a lot of great memories of the plane inside the head that wears that helmet as well. :)

Presidents Fleet Review 2006

After those disturbing images of me and that unfortunate trend of postbox fascination, let us come back to our stamps of planes. This set of four stamps was released by the India post in 2006 on occasion of the Presidents fleet review.

The first Presidents fleet review of the Indian Navy took place on 1953. During that review, the First Indian President Dr Rajendra Prasad inspected four lines and 25 ships. It wasn't a very impressive showing by most standards, In that fleet review, the pride of the fleet was INS Delhi, which when it came into the Indian Navy, was already an 20 year old vessel. But then we had got independence hardly six years back and the fact that 25 ships managed to steer in four lines must have been a neat sight in itself.

The next time we dared to have a fleet review was in 1964. Instead of the President that review was inspected by the defence minister Y B Chavan. The fleet was led by the newly inducted aircraft carrier INS Vikrant.

After that the fleet review were held on many occasions. The review kept getting bigger and better. The best and the biggest one was on 1989 with 2 aircraft carriers and a flypast by 39 naval aircraft.

A great article from which I collected a lot of info was this article by the ex navy chief Admiral J G Nadkarni (Retd).

Let us concern ourselves with the planes in the stamps. The First stamp features the Sea Harrier. A plane if you ask me, deserves a postage stamp of its own. A beautiful piece of work and the stamp doesn't do it much justice.

The next stamp contains the Sea king chopper. Something that I am fond of only for the reason that if sometime my ship gets in any trouble, this is the one that will in all likelihood be sent to fish me out of trouble.

I am not sure what the third plane is, but it seems to be some sort of a surveillance plane of the Navy / coast guard.


Finally I wanted to put in a picture of this fleet review. The Prsident was Dr A P J Abdul Kalam. A person I liked immensely and he is flanked by the Naval Chief at that time.

Centinary of Man's first flight

Hi all today the stamp sheet I want to talk about is the set of four stamps released by Indian postal dept to commemorate the centenary of man's first flight. (Feminists kindly note that usage of words as per postal dept!)

The four flying machines pictured in the sheet are :

• HT-2
• Marut
• LCA
• Dhruv

Lets get into a bit of details. The thing to note about all of these is the fact that all of them were made by the Indian institution Hindustan Aeronautical Limited (HAL)

I don't think I want to incorporate choppers in my collection, but seeing as they managed to sneak in on the back of the three planes, lets start with the Dhruv. The Wiki does speak a lot about the dhruv. The Dhruv is an advanced light Helicopter and the programmes for developing it began way back in 1984 and the deliveries finally began in 2002. One of the only three Helicopter display teams in the world, the Sarang of the Indian Air force performs with four of these machines.

The HT-2 as it is popularly called is actually the "Hindustan Trainer 2". I have already written a lot about the HT-2 in my other blog "My Daddy Strongest" , so I won't go into all that again.

In my opinion the HF24 Marut and the LCA have not really been great success's of the HAL. You can read up more about them at Wiki and at the bharat rakshak website. Some would actually debate the fact that the Indian govt actually felt it appropriate to showcase their failures.

But the way I look at it, if you pump in millions of dollars of money to get something that flies, the least you can get out of them is a couple of postage stamps!


(PS: I do realise that the stamp in my picture is a little damaged. A much better one is framed on one of the walls.)