archive: With flying colours
With flying colours
Ranjit Bhushan, Srinagar
Outlook
July 19, 1999
Title: With flying colours
Author: Ranjit Bhushan, Srinagar
Publication: Outlook
Date: July 19, 1999
Then Flying Officer Gunjan Saxena conducted her first sortie into the
Kargil zone last week, she created history in defence. She became the
first Indian woman to fly into combat zone, thereby opening up a vista
which till now has traditionally been a male preserve.
"I could not wait to be called," says Saxena, based in Udhampur, but
currently stationed at the operational zone in Srinagar. In the 10
daring sorties she has undertaken during the past one week on the
Cheetah helicopter of the Indian Air Force (IAF), she has dropped
vital supplies to troops at higher points in the Dras and Batalik
sectors, picked up the dead and wounded from jagged mountain edges
where flying a chopper requires an inordinate amount of skill, all
while escaping Pakistani gunfire and missiles from below.
The real challenge, according to her, was to go into operations which
the IAF gave her a chance to do. "There is no problem about gender as
all of us get the same opportunities. Initially the people were a
little stunned," she recalls with a laugh, "but now they are used to
it."
Saxena has been having a good share of the action in the last two
weeks. And the Cheetah she has been flying has had a key role in the
operations because of its manoeuverability. "That is the advantage
with Cheetah. It is such a light chopper that it can virtually land
and take off from anywhere," she points out. But operating choppers
can be tough business in the mountains. For one, going into such
combat entails the danger of the chopper being shot down. Saxena is
prepared for that. On board she carries an AK assault rifle and a
smaller pistol.
"There is an element of thrill and challenge in this that is not
possible in commercial flying," says Saxena, who at 24 has already
spent three years in the air-force. After graduating from Delhi's
Hansrai College, the air force was enlisting women pilots and Saxena,
whose father and brother are in the army, opted for what seemed like a
natural vocation. Thus in 1994, she became one of the 25 young women
comprising the first batch of women IAF trainee pilots.
Saxena has already logged 650 flying hours including 400 hours as
captain and the rest as co-pilot and trainee. While on training, the
recruits had the option to go in either for choppers or for transport
planes. Saxena opted for the former. "This was a new area of work
and it fascinated me."
Her ambition? To keep on flying, logging in more and more hours and
going into combat whenever duty calls. Kargil was just the first test
case she succeeded in. And how.
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