Indian armed forces have always fought well and nobody can ever say that they have let down the country while facing an enemy, Marshal of the Air Force Arjan Singh said on Thursday.
He was speaking at the release of a book, In memoriam: The fallen air warriors, authored by Air Marshal Bharat Kumar (retd).
Chronicle of warriors
The book chronicles the names of air warriors who died in aviation accidents.
Recollecting some of his experiences with the British Indian Air Force prior to 1947, Marshal Singh, the only five-star officer of the Indian Air Force (IAF), said the British thought we could never fight as much as we did.
“You can start a war but you cannot finish it yourself. That is the principle of war … You cannot say that I want to withdraw, that depends on the opponent,” he said in reference to the Japanese during the Second World War.
Air Marshal Kumar said that the chronicle covered the period right from the inception of the IAF, 1932, till 2012, the first 80 years of the service.
‘MiG not flying coffins’
Talking of the reliability of various aircraft in the inventory over time, Air Marshal Kumar said the reputation of MiG-21 aircraft as ‘flying coffins’ was not correct.
Stating that the IAF had inducted close to 900 MiG-21 aircraft of various variants, Air Marshal Kumar said, “We had 143 fatalities with the MiG-21 which is about 19 per cent. This is same as that of the Vampires (British jet fighter) considered one of the safest.”
