Kojak's Indian memories
I have mailed Kojak regarding his #10385 in the hope he can enlighten me regarding childhood memories which I don't think I have related on this thread – if I did, apologies.
My father was posted to India in 1945 to join the Japanese offensive. My mother and I joined him at Poona in early 1946, the first time I spent any time with my father as it was very difficult for him to travel home. After weeks of pestering he took me to Poona airfield where I saw a monster aeroplane waddling in from the airfield towards the hangar, I remember thinking the pilot wasn't very good at steering … two decades later I encountered my first taildragger and swiftly discovered why one has to taxi in zigzags.
So it came to pass that the first aircraft I ever saw up close was that Vultee Vengeance ... at five years old I was lifted into the cockpit and I remember the stick handgrip was level with my eyes and everybody laughed when I asked how the pilot could see out. There were Indian officers present, I do not know if my father was attached to the IAF at that time. He was then posted to Drigh Road, Karachi, where the RAF operated Tempests. We all left for Blighty on Partition in 1947.
We lived in simple bungalows on what I think was Wagholi Road. About two bungalows from us was a narrow gauge railway level crossing which led from a long ramp up the face of a very big quarry. I was told the railway was run by the Sappers and Miners, and Driver Singh hauling two wagons of stone used to take me up and down the line to the depot about two miles away, to the great concern of my poor mother. I didn't mind the heat on the footplate although the ironwork on the wagons was too hot to touch, especially if they had been parked in the afternoon sun. I still wonder if this was the extensive Wagholi Quarry which I can see on Google Earth.
How maintenance crews worked inside the aircraft in the tropics is hard to comprehend. Later at RAF Khormaksar in 1951 I encountered my first air conditioning plant. A portable unit like a trolley-acc chugged away at the hangar door, whence a foot-wide trunk led through my father's office door. He was seldom short of company in his cool office, except when the machine was required for its rightful task of cooling down visiting transports.