With the passing away of Marshal of the IAF, Arjan Singh, on Saturday, India lost its only five-star officer in the Indian Air Force, and the last of our five-star officers in the forces. The other two were the legendary Field Marshals Sam Manekshaw, who passed away in June 2008, and K M Cariappa, the first Indian Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army, who passed away in May 1993. Born in British India in a small village called Montgomery (now known as Sahiwal in Pakistan) in April 1919, Arjan Singh joined the Royal Air Force College in Cranwell, UK, and was commissioned as a pilot officer in December 1939.
During World War II, he showed exemplary courage and leadership during his two stints in Burma and during the defence of Imphal which was besieged by the Japanese, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross on the battlefield by Lord Mountbatten, the Supreme Allied Commander of the South East Asian Command. On India’s first Independence Day, August 15, 1947, he led the fly-past of more than a 100 IAF aircraft over the Red Fort. After holding several senior positions, he took over as Air Marshal (not to be confused with Marshal of the Air Force, an honour he received only on Republic Day, 2002) in August 1964.
All this experience came into play during the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war. As he put it, “Pakistan had a qualitatively superior force that included modern fighters such as F-86 Sabres and F-104 Starfighters. The Indian Air Force had Mysteres, Vampires, Ouragans, Hunters, and Gnats ... We were fighting against all odds as they had air-to-air missiles and we just had a few Russian MiGs not used much in the war.” Yet the Indian Air Force quickly established air superiority over the PAF, striking deep into enemy territory. After retiring in 1970, he served as India’s envoy to Switzerland and Kenya. Old soldiers never die, they just fade away. But Singh’s legacy will hopefully live on forever.