Ramanathan Iyer, a retired Colonel of the South African Air Force and a Wing Commander in the Indian Air Force till 1996, lived an extraordinary life and passed away at the age of 69 on March 17 doing what he loved best: flying a military aeroplane. I first came across Rama, as he was popularly called in the IAF, in June 1981 as a cadet at the Air Force Academy in Dundigal. Accosting me one morning in the cafeteria, he said, “You seem to be a serious bloke. Do you know your vital actions before take-off — rattle them out and you can go.”
By then, Rama was already an A2 qualified instructor and much liked among cadets — he was calm, soft-spoken, an excellent teacher and treated his pupils with kindness and dignity — not a very common thing in those days when most instructors followed the maxim of “spare the rod and spoil the child”. He was also smart and handsome and had a swagger with a touch of benign arrogance when dealing with authority and protocol that was so typical of fighter pilots in those days. I lost touch with Rama for a few years and then met him again at the Flying Instructors’ School at Tambaram, where he was a “super instructor” training rookie flying instructors like me.
The next I heard about him was when he was commanding the same MiG-21 squadron that I went on to command a few years after him, No 30 Squadron, also called the Rhinos. Rama was the kind of commanding officer all budding fighter pilots would love to have — always leading from the front, flying his pants off, an excellent communicator, receptive and open, sociable, and most important, would stand up for his boys whatever the consequence.
Good teacher
Teaching seemed second nature to him, and I bumped into him again at the Defence Services Staff College in Wellington where he expounded on air power among other things. It was in Wellington that he was surprisingly passed over for promotion to the rank of Group Captain despite his stellar record. With children still in school, not many would have had the guts to quit and search for flying opportunities in military aviation in of all places, South Africa. I reckon it was an advertisement for flying instructors that attracted him there. What followed was an extraordinary career in the SAAF.
Granted a three-year temporary commission in 1998 as a Colonel, Rama continued to gain the respect of the SAAF leadership as a flyer and a thorough aviation professional, staying on for 20 years in the SAAF in various capacities as a flying instructor, flight safety inspector, display pilot, instructor at the SAAF Staff College and more. After retirement, he continued in aviation as an instructor with South Africa’s civil aviation body. It was on a Patchen Explorer, a vintage single-engined reconnaissance aircraft, that Rama went down recently in Pretoria along with Major General Desmond Barker (retd) on March 17. Tributes continue to pour in for the two in South Africa with one report stating, “The deaths of retired military aviation legends General Desmond Barker and Colonel Rama Iyer were described as a huge loss for South Africa’s aviation sector.”
We visited him in 2003 at his large but modest suburban house in Pretoria and learnt that he was much respected in the SAAF. Rama was not a big-shot; nor did he rise to traditional positions of power or influence and nor was he a gallantry award winner. He represents one among us ordinary folks who dared to dream, take risks and plunge into the unknown to follow his passion and provide his family with a better life. Along the way, he touched many people’s lives across two continents and that is what makes him special. Fly on into the blue yonder Rama!
(The writer is a retired Air Vice-Marshal)
arjun31@gmail.com
