55 yrs after grandad saved pilot, Chennai diver locates jet wreck
For years, Chandru Devadass had been hearing the tale of how in 1964, his grandfather, a fisherman, rescued the pilot of an aircraft that had crashed into the waters near his village on East Coast Road in Chennai. On Sunday, Chandru, a fisherman-turned-scuba diver, discovered 40ft underwater what appears to be the wreck of an Indian Navy Hawker Sea Hawk fighter jet carried aboard INS Vikrant in the1960s, when it was stationed near Madras.
Retired Navy Commodore T Hari remembers reports of a single-seater Sea Hawk being taken for a joyride by a young maintenance crew member, who then crashed into the Bay of Bengal, somewhere off the East Coast Road. “It was a Sunday, and there weren’t supposed to be any fighter jets in the air. The pilot landed in the sea and was rescued by fishermen,” says Hari, who confirmed, on seeing videos of the wreckage, that from certain angles it looked like the “cockpit of a Sea Hawk”.
“We’ve been looking for this wreck since 2010 because we knew approximately where it was. I’ve been fascinated by this story. This weekend, the water was clear enough for us to find it,” says Chandru, who discovered it 1.5km off the shore near his village Periya Neelankarai Kuppam, along with divers S B Aravind, Arun, and Timoth of Temple Adventures. “We have notified authorities,” says Aravind.
Pune-based retired Vice-Admiral Vinod Pasricha writes of the incident in his book ‘Downwind Four Green’, published in 2010. “On the Sunday of August 12, 1964, the Sea Hawk was taken out without permission by Naval Aircraft Ordnance mechanic A S Gill. He had dreams of joining the air force, but was rejected,” says Pasricha, a former Sea Hawk pilot. Pasricha says that Gill, who knew how to fly, had intended to return the jet, IN 163, to Meenambakkam, but didn’t know how to operate the aircraft’s air brakes and flaps, and ended up heading towards the sea, inadvertently becoming the only Indian to have landed a Sea Hawk on the water. “He ejected from the cockpit when he realized he was going to land in the sea,” says Pasricha, who adds Gill was sentenced to two years of rigorous imprisonment and later left for Canada. The aircraft, he says, was never recovered.
“I was eight years old, when my father and his friends, while returning from a morning fishing expedition, brought ashore a young man in a uniform,” says Chandru’s father Devadass, now in his 60s. “They saw a small plane crash in the water and found the unconscious pilot floating near it,” says Devadass, who remembers his father was excited because the man gave them Rs10 each. The excitement didn’t last long, as Devadass said a helicopter and officers whisked the pilot away.
A PIECE OF HISTORY: Fisherman-turned-scuba diver Chandru spotted the wreck of the Sea Hawk fighter jet 1.5km off Chennai coast near Periya Neelankarai Kuppam on the ECR Road. A S Gill, a naval mechanic, had taken the aircraft out without permission and crashed it into the Bay of Bengal on August 12, 1964
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Chennai diver |
For years, Chandru Devadass had been hearing the tale of how in 1964, his grandfather, a fisherman, rescued the pilot of an aircraft that had crashed into the waters near his village on East Coast Road in Chennai. On Sunday, Chandru, a fisherman-turned-scuba diver, discovered 40ft underwater what appears to be the wreck of an Indian Navy Hawker Sea Hawk fighter jet carried aboard INS Vikrant in the1960s, when it was stationed near Madras.
Retired Navy Commodore T Hari remembers reports of a single-seater Sea Hawk being taken for a joyride by a young maintenance crew member, who then crashed into the Bay of Bengal, somewhere off the East Coast Road. “It was a Sunday, and there weren’t supposed to be any fighter jets in the air. The pilot landed in the sea and was rescued by fishermen,” says Hari, who confirmed, on seeing videos of the wreckage, that from certain angles it looked like the “cockpit of a Sea Hawk”.
“We’ve been looking for this wreck since 2010 because we knew approximately where it was. I’ve been fascinated by this story. This weekend, the water was clear enough for us to find it,” says Chandru, who discovered it 1.5km off the shore near his village Periya Neelankarai Kuppam, along with divers S B Aravind, Arun, and Timoth of Temple Adventures. “We have notified authorities,” says Aravind.
Pune-based retired Vice-Admiral Vinod Pasricha writes of the incident in his book ‘Downwind Four Green’, published in 2010. “On the Sunday of August 12, 1964, the Sea Hawk was taken out without permission by Naval Aircraft Ordnance mechanic A S Gill. He had dreams of joining the air force, but was rejected,” says Pasricha, a former Sea Hawk pilot. Pasricha says that Gill, who knew how to fly, had intended to return the jet, IN 163, to Meenambakkam, but didn’t know how to operate the aircraft’s air brakes and flaps, and ended up heading towards the sea, inadvertently becoming the only Indian to have landed a Sea Hawk on the water. “He ejected from the cockpit when he realized he was going to land in the sea,” says Pasricha, who adds Gill was sentenced to two years of rigorous imprisonment and later left for Canada. The aircraft, he says, was never recovered.
“I was eight years old, when my father and his friends, while returning from a morning fishing expedition, brought ashore a young man in a uniform,” says Chandru’s father Devadass, now in his 60s. “They saw a small plane crash in the water and found the unconscious pilot floating near it,” says Devadass, who remembers his father was excited because the man gave them Rs10 each. The excitement didn’t last long, as Devadass said a helicopter and officers whisked the pilot away.
A PIECE OF HISTORY: Fisherman-turned-scuba diver Chandru spotted the wreck of the Sea Hawk fighter jet 1.5km off Chennai coast near Periya Neelankarai Kuppam on the ECR Road. A S Gill, a naval mechanic, had taken the aircraft out without permission and crashed it into the Bay of Bengal on August 12, 1964
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