Top Gun of Pune, Hrushikesh Moolgavkar

When a fighter pilot flies 67 different aircraft in a career spanning 38 years, he must be having lots of interesting stories to tell.

Therefore, the news of the biography of the 90-year-old former Indian Air Force chief, Air Chief Marshal (retd) Hrushikesh Moolgavkar, Leading from the Cockpit: A Fighter Pilot’s Story released in New Delhi on October 8 ( Air Force Day) needs to be  welcomed.

The 220-page-book penned by Moolgavkar’s daughter Jyoti Rai has been published by the Delhi-based Society for Aerospace Studies. It contains 200 rare pictures from Moolgavkar’s albums and gives one a glimpse into India’s Air Force history. It also carries excerpts from Moolgavkar’s flying log books. A total of 1,100, hardbound copies of the biography have been published.

To say that Moolgavkar has had an exciting career would be an understatement.  Just sample these facts. Even before he joined the Royal Indian Air Force in 1940, Moolgavkar had a close brush with death. He stepped out just in time from a Beechcraft aircraft  just minutes before it took off, only to hit a group of vultures and crash, killing all on board.

Later, while fighting the World War II in Burma (now Myanmar), Moolgavkar crash landed a Spitfire fighter aircraft on the beach injuring his vertebrae badly. It is another matter, that he himself flew a plane from Cox’s Bazaar (now in Bangladesh) to Kolkata in that injured state. Following surgery and rehabilitation, Moolgavkar was flying once again very soon. Such was his passion for flying.

Post the war, a glorious career enfolded for Moolgavkar with the Indian Air Force. He had the opportunity to lead the very first fly-past in New Delhi on the occasion of the country’s first Independence Day, as also the first fly-past of Republic Day.

In the 1948 Kashmir operations, Moolgavkar earned a Mahavir Chakra for successfully leading a squadron of Tempests which succeeded in neutralising the Pakistani army.

All this and more has been documented in Moolgavkar’s book. However, the book almost never got off the ground. To begin with Moolgavkar was not enthusiastic about the project.

Speaking to this correspondent at his Koregaon Park residence on Wednesday evening, Moolgavkar says, “I studied at the Malvern College in England, where they taught us to be humble and modest. Hence I was not comfortable with the idea of talking about myself.”

Moolgavkar finally relented after his daughter Jyoti pointed out that it was important to document his career for the benefit of future Indian air force pilots. Jyoti says, “This is why the entire book is focused only on papa’s flying career and nothing else.”

The book has been a labour of love. To begin with the Pune-based Group Captain (retd) Hemant Khatu, a retired fighter pilot had 50 sittings with Moolgavkar to reconstruct the past. Khatu says, “As Sir had lost his first log book documenting the 1940-43 period, we had to work that much harder.” 

Later, Jyoti worked painstakingly on the script for several months. “I had to write and re-write the script several times. Papa made several changes. However, I am very happy that the book is done, as young air force pilots will now know how the Indian Air Force (IAF) was built.”