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Modernizing the Indian Air Force: Imported Fighters and the HF-24 Marut, 1947–1968

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Abstract

This chapter explains the international context of the Cold War in relation to Nehruvian development. Like other recently decolonized countries, India pursued a foreign policy of nonalignment, which meant attempting to cultivate good relations with all countries but without joining one of the Cold War power blocs. Yet as the five-year plans were underway, nonaligned India found itself drawn into the struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, as the rival superpowers raced to develop India through foreign aid. India tried to play the competing sides off each other to get better aid, but without much success. The chapter examines in turn India’s relations with other nonaligned countries, the United States, and the Soviet Union. For much of the period of nonalignment, India’s relations with the United States were particularly strained. Why did these countries fail to get along with each other? Economic ideology was clearly a factor (the United States practiced free-market capitalism, while India had a socialistic command economy), but this chapter emphasizes the importance of cultural relations as an explanation for India’s rocky relations with the United States. In cultural exchanges, the Soviet Union took India seriously in a way that the United States did not.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Jawaharlal Nehru, speech before the Constituent Assembly, August 14, 1947, quoted in Frank Moraes, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1956), 2.

  2. 2.

    Yasmin Khan, The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan (2007; repr. New Delhi: Penguin, 2013), 126.

  3. 3.

    “India Gets Its Freedom,” Life, August 18, 1947, 28–29; Frank Moraes, ed., The Indian and Pakistan Year Book and Who’s Who 1951 (Bombay: Times of India, 1951), 97, 707.

  4. 4.

    Syed Shabbir Hussain and M. Tariq Qureshi, History of the Pakistan Air Force, 1947–1982 (Karachi: PAF Press, 1982), 18–24.

  5. 5.

    Khan, The Great Partition, 162; “Aircraft to Aid Refugees,” Times of India (TOI), September 11, 1947; “Punjab Refugees on Move Again,” TOI, September 19, 1947.

  6. 6.

    “Aircraft Support for Troops Fighting Invaders,” TOI, October 30, 1947; “Indian Troops on Offensive,” TOI, October 31, 1947; “Pattan Cleared of Raiders,” TOI, November 4, 1947.

  7. 7.

    “The Plan Is the Country’s Defence,” in Jawaharlal Nehru’s Speeches (Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 1958), 3, 41; Abraham, Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb, 11; Nick Cullather, “Damming Afghanistan: Modernization in a Buffer State,” Journal of American History 89, no. 2 (September 2002): 513.

  8. 8.

    History of the 354th Tactical Fighter Wing (TAC), July–December 1963, Call # K-Wg-354-HI, IRIS # N0728, in the USAF Collection, AFHRA; David R. Devereux, “The Sino-Indian War of 1962 in Anglo-American Relations,” Journal of Contemporary History 44, no. 1 (2009): 86; “Himalayas Barrier to Radar,” The Times, November 20, 1963; “Shiksha Improves IAF Interception Techniques,” Hindustan Times (HT), November 17, 1963.

  9. 9.

    Bill Gunston, Mikoyan MiG-21 (London: Osprey, 1986), 9, 68; Timothy Moy, “Transforming Technology in the Army Air Corps, 1920–1940: Technology, Politics, and Culture for Strategic Bombing,” in The Airplane in American Culture, ed. Dominick A. Pisano (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 322–23.

  10. 10.

    Ved P. Bhasin, “The Indian Air Force,” India News, April 9, 1965; Jasjit Singh, The Icon: Marshal of the Indian Air Force Arjan Singh, DFC—An Authorised Biography (New Delhi: KW Publishers, 2009), 124–26. For visibility and significance, see David Edgerton, The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 1–4.

  11. 11.

    For precolonial military traditions, see Atul Chandra Roy, A History of Mughal Navy and Naval Warfares (Calcutta: World Press, 1972); Raj Kumar Phul, Armies of the Great Mughals, 1526–1707 ([n.p.]: Oriental Publishers & Distributors, 1978).

  12. 12.

    David E. Omissi, Air Power and Colonial Control: The Royal Air Force, 1919–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 8–9; Michael Paris, “Air Power and Imperial Defence 1880–1919,” Journal of Contemporary History 24, no. 2 (April 1989): 209; Phillip Meilinger, “Trenchard and ‘Morale Bombing’: The Evolution of Royal Air Force Doctrine before World War II,” Journal of Military History 60 (April 1996): 253–54.

  13. 13.

    Peter W. Gray, “The Myths of Air Control and the Realities of Imperial Policing,” Aerospace Power Journal 15, no. 3 (fall 2001): 27; Pushpindar Singh, History of Aviation in India: Spanning the Century of Flight (New Delhi: Society for Aerospace Studies, 2003), 112; S.N. Goyal, “The Indian Air Force: It’s History, Achievements, and Aims,” Indian Aviation, June 1952, 179; Bhasin, “The Indian Air Force”; A. Berriedale Keith, “Notes on Imperial Constitutional Law,” Journal of Comparative Legislation and International Law 10, no. 1 (1928): 119–20; Elisabeth Mariko Leake, “British India Versus the British Empire: The Indian Army and an Impasse in Imperial Defence, Circa 1919–39,” Modern Asian Studies 48, no. 1 (January 2014), 3–7.

  14. 14.

    Bhasin, “The Indian Air Force.”

  15. 15.

    Bhasin, “The Indian Air Force”; Goyal, “The Indian Air Force,” 179.

  16. 16.

    Ross Bassett, The Technological Indian (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 167–69; Pushpindar Singh, Aircraft of the Indian Air Force, 1933–73 (New Delhi: English Book Store, 1974), 40–42, 47–48, 51–56, 69–73.

  17. 17.

    Jasjit Singh, Indian Aircraft Industry (New Delhi: KW Publishers, 2011), 30, 44–48.

  18. 18.

    Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Annual Report 1964–65 (Bombay: [n.p.], 1965); “American Makes Planes in India,” Life, March 22, 1943, 30–32.

  19. 19.

    “Indian Troops Quit Japan,” TOI, October 11, 1947; “Indian Occupation Forces in Japan: Arrival in Madras,” TOI, October 27, 1947.

  20. 20.

    “R.A.F. Personnel to Be Replaced,” TOI, May 14, 1947; Bhasin, “The Indian Air Force.”

  21. 21.

    Singh, Aircraft of the IAF, 78–80; Kapil Bhargava, “India’s Reclaimed Bombers,” Bharat Rakshak, updated June 13, 2017, http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/IAF/aircraft/past/927-b24.html; “Everest Portfolio by the Indian Air Force,” Mountain World (1954): 17–18; Attachment to letter, R.J. Rebello to Charles E. Johnson, February 19, 1965, S. No. 18, Ambassador to USA subject files, papers of B.K. Nehru, NMML.

  22. 22.

    Vijay Seth, The Flying Machines: Indian Air Force, 1933 to 1999 (New Delhi: Seth Communications, 2000), 39; Singh, Indian Aircraft Industry, 127, 161.

  23. 23.

    The literature on the India–Pakistan rivalry is immense. See, for example: T.V. Paul, ed., The India–Pakistan Conflict: An Enduring Rivalry (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Subrata K. Mitra, “War and Peace in South Asia: A Revisionist View of India–Pakistan Relations,” Contemporary South Asia 10, no. 3 (November 2001): 361–79.

  24. 24.

    Robert J. McMahon, The Cold War on the Periphery: The United States, India, and Pakistan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 142, 183; John Keay, Midnight’s Descendants: South Asia from Partition to the Present Day (London: William Collins, 2014), 125, 144; Hussain and Qureshi, History of the Pakistan Air Force, 98–101.

  25. 25.

    “F-104,” editorial, TOI, August 3, 1961.

  26. 26.

    Singh, Aircraft of the IAF, 93–4.

  27. 27.

    In addition to airframe manufacture, HAL built, under license, Orpheus 701 turbojets for the Gnat. HAL would go on to design and produce a highly modified version of the Gnat known as the Ajeet (Unconquered). Between 1962 and 1974, HAL built a total of 192 Gnats for the IAF. Seth, The Flying Machines, 39; Singh, Indian Aircraft Industry, 146–50; Singh, Aircraft of the IAF, 121–22.

  28. 28.

    Pushpindar S. Chopra, “Harnessing the Storm Spirit,” Air Enthusiast, May 1973, 218; Heinz Conradis, Design for Flight, trans. Kenneth Kettle (London: Macdonald, 1960), 194–95.

  29. 29.

    “German Engineers Designing India’s Jet,” Aviation Week, December 16, 1957, 79.

  30. 30.

    Michael J. Neufeld, “The Nazi Aerospace Exodus: Toward a Global, Transnational History,” History and Technology 28 (March 2012): 49–50.

  31. 31.

    The chief source on Tank’s life is Heinz Conradis, Nerven, Herz und Rechenschieber: Kurt Tank—Flieger, Forscher, Konstrukteur (Göttingen: Musterschmidt-Verlag, 1955). The book was translated into English by Kenneth Kettle and published as Design for Flight: The Kurt Tank Story (London: Macdonald, 1960). Only the later English translation includes an account of Tank’s work in India.

  32. 32.

    Conradis, Design for Flight, 194–95; “India’s Supersonic Fighter,” Aeroplane and Astronautics, October 26, 1961, 548–48a.

  33. 33.

    Conradis, Design for Flight, 201; Singh, Aircraft of the IAF, 157–58.

  34. 34.

    Chopra, “Harnessing the Storm Spirit,” 218; Edward L. Homze, Arming the Luftwaffe: The Reich Air Ministry and the German Aircraft Industry, 1919–39 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1976), 13–15.

  35. 35.

    “India’s Supersonic Fighter,” Aeroplane and Astronautics, October 26, 1961, 548–48a; Kapil Bhargava, “The HF-24 Glider,” Bharat Rakshak, updated March 28, 2015, http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/IAF/history/1950s/1224-the-hf-24-glider.html.

  36. 36.

    Bhargava, “The HF-24 Glider.”

  37. 37.

    “India Enters Supersonic Age: Menon Sees Demonstration by Hindustan Fighter,” TOI, June 25, 1961; K. Chatterjee, “Hindustan Fighter HF-24 Marut Part 1,” Bharat Rakshak, http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/IAF/History/Aircraft/Marut1.html (accessed August 20, 2014); “IAF Receives 2 HAL-Made Supersonic Jets,” TOI, May 11, 1964.

  38. 38.

    For the background of South Asia and the Cold War, see McMahon, Cold War on the Periphery; Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle against Poverty in Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013); Andrew J. Rotter, Comrades at Odds: The United States and India, 1947–1964 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000); Bhabani Sen Gupta, The Fulcrum of Asia: Relations among China, India, Pakistan, and the USSR (New York: Pegasus, 1970).

  39. 39.

    Singh, Indian Aircraft Industry, 125; “India Rules Out P.1B Lightning, Widens Search for Strike Fighter,” Aviation Week and Space Technology, July 23, 1962, 24; Chopra, “Harnessing the Storm Spirit,” 218.

  40. 40.

    “India Rules Out P.1B Lightning”; Chopra, “Harnessing the Storm Spirit,” 218; “Current Topics: Jet Engines,” TOI, October 6, 1961.

  41. 41.

    “Maruta: India’s Hindustan HF-24 Joins the IAF,” Flight International, July 2, 1964, 17.

  42. 42.

    “India Rules Out P.1B Lightning”; “Current Topics: Jet Engines,” TOI, October 6, 1961. Times of India reported that Bristol Siddeley and the British government refused to share classified specifications of the Orpheus 12 with the Indian government because India had already begun evaluating Soviet turbojets. G.K. Reddy, “Political Factors Creep into Business Deal: U.K. Firm Refuses to Give India Jet Engine Details,” TOI, October 3, 1961; “No Comment on Jet Engine Issue: U.K. Firm’s Refusal,” TOI, October 4, 1961.

  43. 43.

    “India Rules Out P.1B Lightning”; Singh, Aircraft of the IAF, 142–43; P.C. Lal, Ela Lal (ed.), My Years with the IAF (New Delhi: Lancer International, 1986), 123; “Soviet MiG Jets for India Soon: Bid to Counter-Balance Pak Super-Sabrejets,” TOI, May 6, 1962.

  44. 44.

    Singh, Aircraft of the IAF, 147; Sarwar A. Kashmeri, “MIG-21,” letter to the editor, TOI, October 19, 1962; HAL, Annual Report 1964-65; “Test of Indian Jet Fighter Soon,” Times of London, March 16, 1961; H.R. Vohra, “HF-24 Project Poses Difficult Problem,” TOI, August 11, 1964.

  45. 45.

    SNIE 31/32-62, “Possible Reaction of Pakistan to the Provision of Supersonic Fighter Aircraft to India by the US or Other Western Countries,” June 6, 1962, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–63, 19:263 (hereafter cited as FRUS with year and volume); Memorandum of Conversation, June 14, 1962, ibid., 19:269; telegram from the embassy in India to the Department of State, June 25, 1962, ibid., 19:292–94; David C. Engerman, The Price of Aid: The Economic Cold War in India (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 216.

  46. 46.

    Robert W. Komer to Chester Bowles, February 27, 1964, FRUS, 1964–68, 25:46–47; Singh, Indian Aircraft Industry, 135.

  47. 47.

    “Improving HF-24: Six US Experts in India,” TOI, July 16, 1964; “Airframe Needs Changes: U.S. Team’s Views on HF-24,” TOI, August 7, 1964; “Both MIG & HF-24 Planes to Be Built,” TOI, September 22, 1964; “American Aid ‘Uncertain’,” TOI, April 27, 1965; Jacques Nevard, “U.S. May Aid India on Improving Jets,” NYT, July 16, 1964; Evert Clark, “U.S. Offers India Aid on Air Force,” NYT, August 22, 1964.

  48. 48.

    Y.B. Chavan, telegram to Jawaharlal Nehru, May 22, 1964, S. No. 18, Ambassador to USA subject files, papers of B.K. Nehru, NMML.

  49. 49.

    Y.B. Chavan, telegram to Jawaharlal Nehru, May 22, 1964, S. No. 18, Ambassador to USA subject files, papers of B.K. Nehru, NMML.

  50. 50.

    Memo, Robert Komer to McGeorge Bundy, May 27, 1964, FRUS, 1964–68, 25:109–10.

  51. 51.

    “Aide Memoire—Acquisition of F5A from USA,” n.d. [January 28, 1965], S. No. 18, Ambassador to USA subject files, papers of B.K. Nehru, NMML; R.J. Rebello to Charles E. Johnson, February 15, 1965, ibid.; P.V.R. Rao to B.K. Nehru, March 6, 1965, ibid.

  52. 52.

    B.K. Nehru, telegram to P.V.R. Rao, March 19, 1965, S. No. 18, Ambassador to USA subject files, papers of B.K. Nehru, NMML; telegram, Chester Bowles to State Department, January 29, 1965, FRUS, 1964–68, 25:184–86; telegram, McGeorge Bundy to Chester Bowles, April 28, 1965, ibid., 25:240–42.

  53. 53.

    For Egypt’s Techno-Statism, see Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).

  54. 54.

    Neufeld, “Nazi Aerospace Exodus,” 55; A.C.N. Nambiar to S.A. Venkataraman, March 18, 1949, file no. 20(20)-EurII/49, Ministry of External Affairs, NAI.

  55. 55.

    Kapil Bhargava, “HA-300: Egypt’s Cosmopolitan Status Symbol,” Air Enthusiast, November 1979–February 1980, 2.

  56. 56.

    Bhargava, “HA-300: Egypt’s Cosmopolitan Status Symbol,” 2; Neufeld, “Nazi Aerospace Exodus,” 56; “High Speeds Now Made Possible: HF-24 Aircraft,” TOI, October 2, 1964.

  57. 57.

    Bhargava, “HA-300: Egypt’s Cosmopolitan Status Symbol,” 3–5; Bhargava, “Messerschmitt’s HA-300 and Its Indian Connection”; “IAF Engineers in Cairo,” TOI, May 24, 1966.

  58. 58.

    Bhargava, “HA-300: Egypt’s Cosmopolitan Status Symbol,” 5.

  59. 59.

    Bhargava, “HA-300: Egypt’s Cosmopolitan Status Symbol,” 7; “IAF Engineers in Cairo,” TOI, May 24, 1966; “Tests on HF-24 in UAR Continue,” TOI, April 2, 1968.

  60. 60.

    Bhargava, “HA-300: Egypt’s Cosmopolitan Status Symbol,” 8; “No Commitment with UAR: HF-24 Engine,” TOI, October 4, 1968.

  61. 61.

    Singh, Aircraft of the IAF, 164.

  62. 62.

    Singh, Indian Aircraft Industry, xii.

  63. 63.

    Neufeld, “The Nazi Aerospace Exodus,” 58.

  64. 64.

    “India Enters Supersonic Age: Menon Sees Demonstration by Hindustan Fighter,” TOI, June 25, 1961; “India’s Supersonic Fighter,” Aeroplane and Astronautics, October 26, 1961, 548–48a.

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Logan, W.A. (2022). Modernizing the Indian Air Force: Imported Fighters and the HF-24 Marut, 1947–1968. In: A Technological History of Cold-War India, 1947–⁠1969. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78767-7_4

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