June 2012 - Indian Airforce

well and he decided to clear the pilot for direct
live, without the mandatory Safety Height Run
first. Also, he did not establish visual contact with
the aircraft anywhere on the circuit. This should
have woken him up but events that had been set
in motion probably were too fast for him to evoke
a rational action. Even when the pilot called out
that he was now rolling in live, the RSO did not
react. A confident call, “You are clear live”, was
ground. I, as the Flight Commander of the unit
got an unwelcome call from the COO and he
wanted to know whether any of our aircraft
was still operating over the range. His very tone
suggested that something was drastically wrong
and soon the AOC and the COO descended
on the dett. To everyone’s horror, it was quite
obvious that a fighter had just dropped two
live bombs bang in the middle of the army
all that he transmitted. The next call from the
pilot announced, “Bombs Gone, Switches Safe,
returning to base”. But even after a minute, the
RSO had not spotted any bomb impact on the Live
Bombing Target (LBT) or anywhere in the range
area. The natural thing then was to put down the
binoculars and call up the pilot to cross check
if bombs had indeed been released. On being
confirmed in the positive, the RSO responded
by transmitting, “Bombs not sighted, probably
gross undershoot. You are clear to change
over to the SU”. The range was closed thereafter
and the pilot navigated safely back to his base,
basking in the belief that the mission had finally
been accomplished. The mission in fact had gone
wrong completely.
Things seemed to have settled down to
routine for the pilot but all was not well on the
ranges and naturally, the guys in the OG were
furious. Fortunately, no one was hurt and there
was no damage to any vehicle or structure. The
next dignitary to arrive in the unit was the Air I
from the Command Headquarters and I was
told to get busy writing an Executive Report on
the pilot. His fighter flying days were over,
all because of one avoidable mistake that he
failed to correct on time.
It would be worth pondering over the
following :
The location of this particular range
is such that many times picking up targets is
difficult. The navigation to the range therefore
has to be taken very seriously. In fact, the
navigation to any destination has to be taken
very seriously. Odd instances of inaccuracies
4 Aerospace Safety J u n e 2 0 1 2
INDIAN AIR FORCE