World War II was raging; the Royal Indian Air Force needed more officers and airmen. To lure young men to the force, the British sent some of their smartest young Indian pilots along with local language-speaking airmen to recruitment camps held in various corners of India. To Kannur, in Malabar, they sent a Sikh officer and a Malayali airman—Arjan Singh, who had proven his flying and warring skills over the restive mountains of the northwest, and Mondan Bhaskaran from Kannur, who was a master of aircraft maintenance.
One day, Arjan found Bhaskaran in low spirits—he longed for home, which was only a few miles away. Arjan took Bhaskaran on his next sortie and flew low a few times over the airman’s house. Bhaskaran could spot his family excitedly looking at the low-flying plane, a novelty those days, and that lifted his spirits.
The incident sent the small town into panic—were the Japanese coming on a bombing mission? The collector reported the matter to the Madras government, and the duo were hauled up in Delhi, where Arjan explained to the enquiring officer: “Sir, you cannot be an aggressive fighter pilot unless you have done some unauthorised low flying.” The officer, a good-humoured Englishman, laughed out loud, and let the duo go.
That saved two illustrious air lives for independent India—one who would play a stellar role in stopping the invading Japanese at the Kohima-Imphal line by bombing them from the air, rise to become chief of the air force, lead it in the 1965 war, and become India’s one and only marshal of the air force. The other would soon get commission in the technical branch, rise to the rank of air commodore, and set up India’s first supersonic fighter jet factory in Nasik. From there, he would produce hundreds of MiG-21s that would guard India’s skies for close to six decades. “India’s MiG-21 story wouldn’t have been there for you to tell today, but for Bhaskaran,” said Air Marshal B.D. Jayal, one of the first six Indian pilots who flew the legendary plane. “The man built the Indian MiG.”
Bhaskaran was at the maintenance command, then at Kanpur, when India was partitioned, losing a good part of the flying assets to Pakistan. The 1947-48 war with Pakistan and the fight against the Razakars of Hyderabad convinced the authorities that they needed more aircraft. Group Captain P.C. Lal—later air chief marshal who would lead the Air Force in the 1971 war—and Squadron Leader Bhaskaran were sent to the US to scout for planes. They saw several, but one evening both were asked to pack up and go. “They were made to understand that the US was not a friend of India,” Bhaskaran’s son Satish, a businessman in the UAE, told THE WEEK. The duo flew to France, where they selected the Mystere.
Having proved his engineering prowess in building the British Avro transporters in India, Bhaskaran was soon sent to Russia when the MiG-21 deal was getting finalised in the early 1960s. The Air Force wanted him to master the plane’s engineering so as to make them in India. “The announcement of the deal was a sensation then,” recalls Satish. “States vied with one another to host the prestigious manufacturing unit.” Finally, the Hindustan Aircraft (now Aeronautics) Corporation awarded the electronics unit to Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh, the engines unit to Koraput in Orissa and the main assembling factory to Nasik in Maharashtra.
Maharashtra asked Bhaskaran, who was deputed by the Air Force to HAL for MiG manufacturing, to choose the location. He chose about 4,000 acres of vineyard in Ojhar village, where he first built the runway near the Security Press, and offices and training centres, special accommodation for about 500 or more Russian engineers and their families, hangars and the assembling unit.
Once, defence minister Y.B. Chavan, himself from Maharashtra, came visiting. He asked why the unit had not employed local people in large numbers. Bhaskaran’s reply, in front of the media: “Sir, I am not making bullock-carts here, but India’s first supersonic fighters. I need skilled hands.” The exchange was widely reported, but the gracious Chavan smiled it away. That was perhaps the second time that Bhaskaran risked his job.
Anyway, he proved his worth first by completing the factory 10 months ahead of schedule. The project plan was prepared with Russian guidance and Bhaskaran ensured it worked. Unlike what many believe today, the MiG-21 deal was no gift of love. India had not yet emerged as a strategic friend of the Soviet Union; on the other hand, the Chinese were their ideological allies. So much so, several of the engineers were actually KGB officers. Once on a visit to Kiev, Bhaskaran found that the wife of one of his earlier team leaders had been a KGB personnel sent to spy on her husband. On his frequent visits, Bhaskaran often called on Mikhail Gurevich, who had co-designed the first MiG with Artem Mikoyan. MiG takes its name from their initials.
Bhaskaran’s first MiG-21 was on the factory’s runway in 1965, and test-flown in 1966, less than a year after Arjan’s boys flying Gnats, Mysteres and just half a dozen Russian-made MiGs had shot and shooed away Pakistan’s supersonic Sabres and Starfighters in the 1965 war. By 1967, MiGs began rolling out of Nasik, and that called for extending most of the runways across India—the new supersonics needed longer runways.
Those were also the days of militant trade unionism. Unions sprang up in the MiG factories, too, often threatening to strike work, but Bhaskaran handled them with tact most of the times, and threat once where it was called for—he got a pilot to fly low over an illegal meeting called on the factory campus.
Bhaskaran had much to do with converting the MiG-21, designed as a high-altitude interceptor, into a multi-role fighter. Just before the 1971 war, the Air Force realised it needed more ground attack planes, and Bhaskaran immediately modified the plane. And it was this capability that helped Wing Commander Bhupendra Kumar Bishnoi and his team to shoot those precision rockets into the dome of the governor’s house in Dacca, forcing him to surrender.
The next year Bhaskaran retired from HAL, having built more than 200 MiG-21FL (Type 77), a good number of them with Indian-made components, and quite a few with Indian-made R11F2S-300 engines, and also having initiated the work on MiG-21M. It was designated Type 88 by HAL, since this variant was produced exclusively in India. The first Type 88 MiG-21M was delivered to the Air Force in February 1973 and the last, the 158th, in November 1981, by which time the MiG-Bis had started rolling out. And they would fly in the Indian skies till September-end.