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First family of Madras flying?
The information I had sought in this column on January 16 about what might have been the first family of Madras flying came to me in rather sad circumstances. It reached me a few days after the passing away of Air Commodore R. Sitaram at the age of 90 in Bangalore. The Air Commodore was one of the principals of that story of the early days of flying in Madras.
The first principal in the story was his father, B. S. Ramaswamy Aiyar. He was a PWD executive engineer in `Trichinopoly' in 1931 when he got interested in a couple of aircraft flying in the area. In his early forties at the time, he decided to enrol himself as a trainee in the Madras Flying Club that same year. He must have been one of the first five or six Indians to get a private pilot's licence in Madras. He went on to become a superintending engineer and a Rao Bahadur.
Ramaswamy Aiyar had from the first planned out the lives of his sons. He wanted Sitaram to join the ICS and Rajaram, the IPS. Since getting into both services would be easier if the applicants had a good record in extra-curricular activities, he enrolled them too in the Madras Flying Club. So, by the time they were 17 and 16 respectively, they not only were on the way to their flying licences but they also seemed to have made up their minds about an alternative career _ flying.
When World War II broke out, Ramaswamy and sons volunteered for active flying service. The father was told he was too old for active service, but the brothers received King's Commissions and joined the newly created Royal Indian Air Force. They were joined by Atmaram _ whom many thought was a third brother, but was in fact an inseparable friend from Madras Flying Club days. Curiously, when they were all group captains they had at the same time commanded the Indian Air Force stations at Jalahalli (R. Sitaram), Tambaram (R.Rajaram) and Secunderabad (P. S. Atmaram).
Rajaram, who was with No. 1 Squadron, the Tigers, was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross during World War II. The squadron, commanded by Squadron Leader Arjan Singh, who went on to become a Marshal of the Air Force, flew Hurricanes. It was stationed mainly in the Northeast and won seven DFCs. Rajaram in time became an Air Vice- Marshal and was Air Officer Commanding in Chief, Western Air Command, during the 1965 war with Pakistan. He was Vice-Chief of Air Staff when he passed away in 1969.
Reader V. Theetharappan also writes of a couple of other Royal Indian Air Force pilots of the same period, who he thinks graduated from the Madras Flying Club - a Henry from Madras Christian College School and Sathyanarayana who he thinks later commanded the Tambaram station.
S. MUTHIAH
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