The year was 1962. The first Commander-in-chief of the maintenance wing
of the Indian Air Force was legendary Air Vice Marshal Harjinder Singh. Here
was an officer who was one of the greatest aviation experts. So much so, he had
designed and built an aircraft. You can still find the plane “Kanpur 1” in
the labs of Punjab Engineering College. He was among the first few employees of
the Air Force when it was established in 1932. He had joined as technician and
rose to the level of commissioned officer in 1942. He was appointed Air Officer
commanding Maintenance Command in 1955, when the command was established. When
the level of Command was raised in 1959, he was also promoted to AVM to head
the command. He retired in 1963. The Air Force maintenance command was based in
Kanpur. He even created a team of Air Force officers who actually manufactured
AVROs in Kanpur. “Harjinder Nagar” in Kanpur is named after him. You may read
more about the great man here:
https://www.thebetterindia.com/70596/first-officers-indian-air-force-harjinder-singh-jumbo-majumdar/
But we digress. In year 1962, it appeared that we could have some action
on our Northern/Eastern front and he felt that Air Force was not prepared for
the action. One of the biggest bottleneck that he as the Commander-in-Chief of
Maintenance Command felt was lack of engineers to maintain aircrafts. There was
no undergraduate program in Aeronautical Engineering in the country. There were
a couple of Diploma courses in Aircraft maintenance and IISc Bangalore offered
a research program. There was an urgent need by Air Force for the Aeronautical
engineers.
He thought of connecting with IIT Kanpur. But they were still under
construction, and a new program would produce engineers five years hence. Air
Force could not have waited that long. So he thought of his alma mater. He had
done his engineering from Maclagan Engineering College in Lahore which had
split into two during partition, and the Indian half had established itself as Punjab
Engineering College in Chandigarh. He convinced the college that it was so
urgent to produce aircraft engineers that he could not wait for a new program
to start. The program had to start by shifting students from other disciplines
who were about to complete their second year into this new program of
Aeronautical Engineering. Since the first two years had a common curriculum, it
was indeed a possibility.
The college was ready to do anything for the nation. But it needed labs
and faculty. AVM Singh talked to the then Chief Minister of Punjab, Shri Pratap
Singh Kairon, who offered all support. He then suggested that Air Force could
provide all the equipment necessary for setting up of labs. Faculty was still
an issue. There was no way, PEC would be able to recruit several faculty
members in a couple of months. The Principal turned to Dr. V S Malhotra, a Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and he agreed to run the new program.
Option was given to all students to change in the beginning of their 3rd
year to Aeronautical Engineering. To make the deal sweeter, AVM Singh announced
that all these students will be eligible for recruitment as Pilot Officer right
in the 3rd year, and those selected will get a full salary during
their 3rd and 4th year. All seventeen went through the
Services Selection Board, and 8 were selected as Pilot Officer in Indian Air Force. The other 9
were a disappointed lot. They will not get any money for these two years. But
at the end of their program, all 9 were recruited by the fledgling DGCA, and as
one of them recently told me, the disappointment of not getting selected as
Pilot Officer disappeared when they found out that as DGCA officers all of them
will have job till 58 years of age, while in Air Force, the retirement age
would depend on your promotions.
Dr. Malhotra had the hard task of training these 17 students with no
faculty. He started writing to all institutions in India about various courses.
While no institution other than IISc had a department of Aeronautical
Engineering, he could find specific faculty members to teach specific courses.
So students were sent to IISc Bangalore, IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur for doing
certain courses. It certainly helped that a young professor, who too was an
alumnus of Maclagan Engineering College, had assumed the role of Director of
IISc Bangalore. He was Head of Aeronautical Engineering Department before that.
That young professor was none other than Satish Dhawan who would later become
Chairman of ISRO.
The students would go to these institutions (and notice that IITM and
IITK were just 2-3 years old and had a lot of teething troubles of their own,
but they too chipped in because of nation first) for a few weeks each, and go
through a compressed course by a faculty member. In the meanwhile, Air Force
helped with setting up of labs so that students could come back and do their
experiments on campus or at Air Force station. (So our students doing courses
at other educational institutions and getting credit at PEC is nothing new for
us. It is part of our DNA.)
At the end, the first set of 17 graduate engineers in Aeronautical
Engineering in the whole country came out of PEC in 1964, with 100 percent
placement – 8 in Indian Air Force, and 9 in DGCA. One of them, Shri H S Khola
would later become Director General of Civil Aviation in India.
We at PEC are proud of our heritage and how our alums have built India, one small step at a time.
#1921pec2021
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