MEMORIES OF 8 SQUADRON IAF

MEMORIES OF 8 SQUADRON IAF

Forward

Dear Jagan,

In the winter of 1980-81 I was commanding a Canberra squadron and took a detachment to Tezpur where my good friend, Wg Cdr Manjit Singh Sekhon was commanding 8 Squadron. They were preparing for their colour presentation and were updating their archival material. I mentioned that my father, Sqn Ldr T J Thomas (Retd) had served in 8 squadron from the time of its formation through service in the Burma front and till they moved to Quetta. Manjit immediately wanted my father to write about his experiences in 8 Squadron. My father was then 66 years old and he put pen to paper. The result was sent to 8 Squadron who made a typescript and incorporated it in their history folder.

The original manuscript is now with me and is reproduced herewith. Old place names are retained. Scanned copy of page 1 of the manuscript is attached. The writing at the top of the page is by CO of 8 Squadron.

Wg Cdr (Retd) Joseph Thomas

Bangalore
24 Feb 06

Sir ,

Thanks for this.. Its indeed fortunate that your dad decided to put down his memories on paper. As I have noted elsewhere, airman memoirs from the second world war are almost non-existant , and this one is a great addition.

I had a couple of years ago spoken with a WW2 veteran G/c philips who was also one of the founding members of 8 Sqn. Many of the stories your dad mentioned sound familiar to me. The hostile atmosphere between the brits and the indians was due to the fact that one of the brit flight commanders was insolent towards the CO niranjan prasad and soon got him 'posted out'. This was really damaging because N Prasad was loved by the pilots and aircrew. I have with me a book "Vultee Vengeance" by Peter C Smith. This is an exceptional book, the only one which did some actual research about an IAF unit and that was 8 Sqn as usual. The book is however confused - on one page it praises the morale of the unit under prasad at the other side it is not clear whether the morale was good or bad.

Maj Gen Prasad is still alive in delhi, albeit he was not keeping well for some time. I tried to meet him and interview him in 2002 but he was sick when i was visiting delhi.

I met G/C philips a second time just before i moved to the US in Dec 2005. At that time, he showed me his wonderful collection of photographs - I didnt have much time to get the photos properly scanned, but I used good use of my digicam to take some photos. Some of the photos show Vengeances and ground crew personnel. Let me dig those up and send to you in my next email.

Regards,

Jagan Pillarisetti

24 Feb 06

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