От Chestnut
К Chestnut
Дата 27.09.2010 20:59:57
Рубрики WWII; Спецслужбы; Армия; ВВС;

[2Chestnut] Военные некрологи в британских газетах

Major Sir Rupert Buchanan-Jardine, Bt
Soldier and countryman who staged a high-speed dash behind enemy lines and shone on the hunting field

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/army-obituaries/8019044/Major-Sir-Rupert-Buchanan-Jardine-Bt.html

Gennady Yanayev

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/obituaries/article2741675.ece

Former Vice-President of the Soviet Union who was the public face of a bungled attempt to remove Mikhail Gorbachev from power

Gennady Yanayev was the man selected by KGB and army plotters to replace Mikhail Gorbachev as Soviet president in a failed coup in August 1991. Announcing on Soviet television that he was taking over as president, Yanayev’s hands shook uncontrollably and he later admitted that he was drunk when he signed the decree elevating himself to the presidency. For his part in the coup, he was jailed for treason.

Gorbachev never forgave Yanayev. Commenting on his death, Gorbachev’s spokesman, Vladimir Polyakov, would say little except that: “He is a person who betrayed.” However, the Russian Communist party described Yanayev as “a dear and trustworthy leader” and Gennady Zyuganov, the head of the Communist Party, said firmer action by the coup plotters in 1991 would have saved the Soviet Union.

Yanayev was a heavy drinker and largely unknown when Gorbachev picked him as Vice-President in the belief that he would be no challenge to his presidential power. The plotters, whose leaders were the KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov and Defence Minister Dmitri Yazov, named Yanayev as Gorbachev’s successor to give the conspiracy the air of legality — but he turned out to be a poor choice.

The coup leaders said later that they were trying to prevent the break-up of the Soviet Union whose constituent republics under Gorbachev’s presidency and perestroika policies were increasingly defying central control. However the coup’s collapse fatally weakened the already unravelling Soviet Union and it was dissolved four months later.

Gorbachev refused to resign when coup plotters visited him at his holiday home in the Crimea. He told them: “You are nothing but adventurists and traitors and you will pay for this.” Gorbachev and his family were confined to their villa, their telephone lines were cut and they feared for their lives. Gorbachev’s wife Raisa had a nervous breakdown.

Yanayev was one of the 12 members of the so-called State Emergency Committee that announced on August 19 that Gorbachev was being replaced. The leading conspirators began their plot to overthrow Gorbachev on August 6, but Yanayev was not informed of the plans until the day before the coup. Yanayev appeared before stunned television viewers to declare a state of emergency, announcing that he was taking over the country because Gorbachev, who was effectively under house arrest, was “resting” and “needs some time to get his health back”.

His trembling hands and shaky voice made viewers suspicious. “I was sitting before millions of people, before the whole world, and could not answer the question of what the president’s illness is, could not say anything,” he later admitted. He told a Russian newspaper in 1993 that he was drunk when he signed the decree but denied this affected his judgment. “My body is such that I remain sane even after drinking all my buddies under the table,” he said.

On the day of his television appearance, tanks rolled onto the streets of Moscow. The plotters believed this show of force would cow the population into submission. But they failed to arrest Boris Yeltsin, the leader of the Soviet-era Russian republic, who gathered thousands of supporters at the White House, the Russian Parliament building, and denounced the coup from the roof of a tank.

One reason for the coup’s failure was that the authorities no longer had blanket control of communications. While the Soviet state television played Tchaikovsky’s music, CNN, recently arrived in Moscow, showed pictures of resistance to the coup around the White House. “The plotters made a big mistake when they did not shoot me in the morning,” Yeltsin said. Military support rapidly evaporated and Yanayev and his collaborators, who had held the Soviet leadership for three days, were arrested and jailed. Yanayev spent a year in prison and was later granted an amnesty.

Gennady Yanayev was born in August 1937 in the Perevoz region of the Gorky province of the USSR. He joined the Communist Party in 1962 and the following year started working with Komsomol, the party’s youth organisation, as a second secretary. From 1966 to 1968 he was first secretary of the Komsomol organisation in Gorky province and was then made Chairman of the Committee of Youth Organisations of the USSR.

In 1980 he became deputy chairman of the Soviet Associations of Friendship and Cultural Relations with foreign countries. In 1989 he was appointed Chairman of the Central Council of Trade Unions.

In 1990 he was nominated by Gorbachev for the post of Vice-President, but he failed to win the first vote at the Congress of People’s Deputies. Since Gorbachev refused to nominate another candidate, he became Vice-President of the USSR.

Yanayev was viewed as an apparatchik and cipher in the Soviet bureaucracy. When named as Vice-President he replied publicly to a question about his health by saying that his wife was satisfied that he was “performing my marital duties quite well”. The reply shocked Russians, who expected more dignity from their leaders.

However, when the coup plotters of August 1991 needed a fig leaf of legality, they had no alternative but to select Yanayev, who under the constitution was the President’s legal successor.

He is survived by his wife and two children.

Gennady Yanayev, former Vice-President of the Soviet Union, was born on August 26, 1937. He died from lung cancer on September 24, 2010, aged 73

Mono Jojoy

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/obituaries/article2741678.ece

Ruthless and effective commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) who was killed by government troops

The Colombian guerrilla commander known as “Mono Jojoy” was a charismatic and effective military leader who turned the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) into a formidable fighting force that controlled vast swaths of territory and tied down thousands of government troops over long periods. His death in an aerial assault on a FARC camp could signal the beginning of the end for Latin America’s last significant armed insurgency.

Mono Jojoy’s original name was either Víctor Julio Suárez Rojas or Jorge Briceño Suárez, but his soldiers called him Mono Jojoy after a jungle snake noted for its uncanny ability to slither out of tight corners. According to intelligence reports, he joined the guerrillas in 1975, aged 22. His own account was rather different: he said he had acted as a messenger boy, guide and lookout for the founders of the FARC when they were secretly setting up the communist-linked guerrilla organisation near his home in the mountainous Sumapaz region of central Colombia in the mid-1960s, when he was about 12. Within three years he was a fully-fledged guerrilla fighter.

From the outset, Mono Jojoy forged a close relationship with FARC’s legendary founder/commander, Manuel Marulanda Vélez, better known as Tirofijo (Crackshot), who moulded the FARC out of the remnants of rural self-defence groups that had formed during the period of endemic communal conflict in the 1940s and 50s known simply as La Violencia. When “peace” was eventually imposed by the military government of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (1953-57), many of the armed peasant bands refused to dissolve, and were hunted down. One casualty of the pacification campaigns was Mono Jojoy’s father, a small peasant farmer who had taken up arms.

Mono Jojoy rose rapidly through the ranks of the rapidly expanding FARC, winning the confidence of Marulanda and acting for some time as his chief bodyguard. By the early 1990s he was commander of the guerrillas’ main military unit, the Eastern Bloc, and was subsequently appointed to the “General Secretariat”, the FARC’s central committee, as overall military commander. At one time he had some 7,000 well-equipped and disciplined fighters under his direct command, and he earned a reputation as a ruthless and effective commander.

When President Andrés Pastrana agreed to enter into peace negotiations with the guerrillas in 2000, Mono Jojoy, with his black beret and bushy moustache, became a familiar sight on television screens, always at Marulanda’s side as talks with government negotiators dragged on in a demilitarised zone deep in the Colombian jungle.

When Alvaro Uribe was elected President in 2002, government policy towards the FARC changed abruptly, from conciliation to all-out confrontation. Uribe believed that the guerrillas had never intended to reach a peace agreement, and had merely been using the truce to regroup. From that moment the apparently inexorable advance of the guerrillas was gradually reversed and the initiative shifted to the Government, backed by Washington.

Over the next eight years Mono Jojoy became one of the principal targets of successive military campaigns against the guerrillas. The armed forces struck a succession of stunning blows against the FARC, culminating in the killing of the organisation’s second-in-command, Raúl Reyes, in an air raid on a FARC camp just across the border in Ecuador in March 2008. The death of Marulanda a few days later further weakened the FARC, but Mono Jojoy remained elusive and defiant. He never abandoned his conviction that the guerrillas would one day enter Bogotá in triumph, even as the net closed in on him and his forces dwindled in size and effectiveness.

By the early years of the 21st century the Colombian guerrillas had become an anachronism, in a country with stable, elected civilian government and a growing economy. Forced recruitment of children, attacks on civilian targets, indiscriminate laying of minefields and overt involvement in the lucrative drugs trade all undermined what little popular support the guerrillas still enjoyed. Mono Jojoy was blamed by the military for many of the FARC’s worst atrocities, including the bombing of a social club in Bogotá in 2003 in which 34 people were killed. Even the well-disposed left-wing President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, eventually concluded that armed struggle was futile in Colombia, and appealed to the insurgents to seek a negotiated settlement.

That may now happen. It was a surprise to many observers when Mono Jojoy did not succeed Marulanda as leader of the FARC. That job went to “Alfonso Cano”, Guillermo León Sáenz, who, unlike Jojoy or Marulanda, was an urban intellectual, an anthropology graduate with comparatively little military experience. His unexpected appointment did not lead to any immediate shift in policy towards political rather than purely military operations, but things have been changing recently: the guerrillas have put out feelers about possible talks with the new government of President Juan Manuel Santos, while still insisting that there must be no pre-conditions or cessation of military operations. Santos made clear he was not interested.

Mono Jojoy died in an elaborate combined operation involving more than 50 aircraft, the Colombian army, marines and police special forces against a guerrilla stronghold in the mountains of La Macarena, in southern Colombia.

Víctor Julio Suárez Rojas (Mono Jojoy), Colombian guerrilla commander, was born on February 5, 1953. He died on September 22, 2010, aged 57




'Бій відлунав. Жовто-сині знамена затріпотіли на станції знов'
От Chestnut
К Chestnut (27.09.2010 20:59:57)
Дата 01.10.2010 13:32:09

Re: [2Chestnut] Военные...

Tony Curtis
Actor who rose from the New York ghetto to achieve cinematic immortality in Some Like It Hot

During the Second World War Curtis joined the US Navy straight from school and served in a submarine tender, USS Proteus, in the Far East. He was wounded in the Pacific campaign and at the end of the war witnessed the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay in September 1945.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/film-obituaries/8034695/Tony-Curtis.html

Commander Malcolm Burley
Expedition leader and school bursar who gave his name to a mountain

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/8035438/Commander-Malcolm-Burley.html

After the Royal Naval College, then at Eaton Hall, his first ship was the cruiser Leander; in 1947 he witnessed the incident at Corfu in which two British destroyers were mined by the Albanian communist government. It was in Leander that he also selected his future honeymoon destination, a taverna in then unspoilt Paleokastritsa, where he dined on lobster and local wine for 6d (2½ new pennies).

As a lieutenant in the cruiser Kenya, Burley was liaison officer when she carried holy relics of the Lord Buddha from Colombo to Rangoon, with a guard of 100 monks and 50 dancers. The relics, escorted by 100 ceremonial elephants, arrived on board after a four-day procession from the Temple of the Tooth at Kandy and were greeted by the Royal Marines band. The monks held a service every three hours in the admiral's quarters during the crossing of the Indian Ocean.

Kenya was bound for the Korean War, during which Burley's captain insisted on weekly mess dinners; after dusk action stations, the officers changed into formal mess dress.

Burley took part in Operation Chromite, the Allied landings at Inchon, where the most disconcerting feature was the 16in guns of the US battleships Missouri and New Jersey firing directly over his head in his action station on the upperdeck of Kenya. Missouri was known as the Mighty Mo, and he christened New Jersey the Mighty Moo

Paddy Sproule
Signaller whose coded exchanges with an SOE agent helped secure the surrender of Italy in 1943

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/special-forces-obituaries/8033300/Paddy-Sproule.html

Secret talks to that effect had taken place in Lisbon that summer between representatives of Marshal Badoglio and General Eisenhower. When the Italians returned to Rome, these were continued through an intermediary, Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent Dick Mallaby.

At Massingham, the closely-guarded SOE base in North Africa, Lt-Col Douglas Dodds-Parker selected four FANYs: Leo Railton, Sue Rowley, Paddy Sproule and her friend Barbara Tims. They were locked in a washroom, the best isolation which could be improvised, where they worked in pairs in eight-hour shifts.

On her shift, Paddy Sproule encoded and deciphered all traffic dealing with the surrender, using one code for the Italians (based on Bino Sanminiatelli's 1941 novel L'Omnibus del Corso), another for Mallaby based on a poem specially written for him, and a third code for messages to and from London.

Wireless contact with Mallaby was established on August 30 and continued over 67 messages until after the Italian armistice on September 8. Every one of Mallaby's messages was received and read perfectly.

Sir James Cleminson
War hero and CBI president who crested the wave of Thatcherite business reforms in the 1980s

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/army-obituaries/8028655/Sir-James-Cleminson.html

Professor Kenneth Ingham

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/obituaries/article2747947.ece

Soldier who distinguished himself first in action, then at Sandhurst and finally as an authoritative historian of postwar Africa

Kenneth Ingham’s principal memorial will be his research and publications on the history of Africa. But, as a former soldier with some gruelling battle experience, he was a fine catch for RMA Sandhurst when appointed Director of Studies in 1962.

He had passed through the establishment during the war, in its temporary guise as 161 Officer Cadet Training Unit, and so was able to regard the formidable military atmosphere generated by the Brigade of Guards drill staff with wry amusement. His five years with the Academy were innovative, although not so radical as one plan he envisaged.

Kenneth Ingham was the only son of his father’s second wife and grew up almost as an only child. Early academic promise was matched by performance on the rugby field. He captained Bingley Grammar School’s 1st XV and had a trial for Yorkshire Schools. Bingley Grammar aspired to send its scholars to Cambridge, but Ingham had his sights set on Oxford. His award of an open exhibition was greeted by his headmaster with the riposte, “You can always try for Cambridge in March.”

In early wartime Oxford he joined the OTC and so had a grasp of military training when he arrived at Sandhurst as a member of an experimental alluniversity company. He was commissioned into the West Yorkshire Regiment and spent some months on the Kent coast with a Territorial Army battalion ready to meet the expected German invasion before embarking for the Middle East and the battleexperienced 2nd West Yorkshires in the Western Desert.

He took part in the Battle of Alam Halfa that finally broke Rommel’s dominance in the desert in September 1942, before leaving with the 5th Indian Division for Iraq, where the oilfields were threatened by the German advance on the Caucasus, then for India and the north-eastern front, where the Japanese threatened from Burma.

Ingham was severely wounded during the advance into Arakan at the end of 1943. The first doctor to examine him remarked, “You must have been praying hard when this hit you. You’re lucky to be alive.”

After recovering in hospital, and forgetting a posting order to a reinforcement camp in India, he made his own way back to 2nd West Yorkshires. In consequence, he was reported a deserter while actually fighting with his battalion in Burma When the Japanese 15th Army launched its attack on Imphal and Kohima in March 1944, the 5th Indian Division, including 2nd West Yorkshires, was flown to the northern front to help stem the enemy’s offensive into India. He was mentioned in dispatches for his leadership in the fighting to relieve Imphal. In the subsequent advance into Burma he was struck in the cheek by a sniper’s bullet that glanced off the bone without breaking it. During the bitter fighting for possession of the Japanese forward supply base at Meiktila, in central Burma in February/March 1945, Ingham was again severely wounded while in command of a company. He was given what was believed to be the last bottle of beer in the battalion by the doctor, a gesture interpreted as a final gift to a dying friend, but he survived and was awarded the Military Cross.

Offered early release on recovery to return to Oxford, he completed his degree and began a doctoral thesis. It had been his mother’s devout hope that he would become an Anglican priest but he decided he was unable to proclaim his faith with the required unswerving conviction. Instead, on completion of his doctorate, he accepted an appointment as lecturer in history at Makerere College, Uganda, thus initiating his career in Africa. He had only a handful of scholars and, in the virtual absence of written sources for his research, he began a programme of recording oral recollections. This system produced little reliable material but after a meeting with the chief responsible for the maintenance of burial sites of former rulers in Uganda, Ingham was able to set down a series of notes that was published many years later as The Kingdom of Toro in Uganda (1975).

To Ingham’s surprise, the then Governor of Uganda, Sir Andrew Cohen, appointed him a member of the country’s embryo parliament, to which aspiring African politicians were being introduced. This frequent contact with Ugandan and other African politicians became the source of his next publication The Making of Modern Uganda (1958), later to be followed by A History of East Africa in 1962.

In 1961 he was appointed OBE for his services in Uganda and invited by President Milton Obote to stand for election to the National Assembly, but the offer of the post of Director of Studies at Sandhurst proved too tempting.

In 1962 the two-year course was divided almost equally between academic and military studies. Ingham applauded this but with the rapidly growing complexity of international relations and modern warfare methods, he considered matters should be taken much further. In cooperation with the Assistant Commandant, Brigadier (later Major-General) Tony Deane-Drummond he drew up a proposal for an Army university incorporating RMA Sandhurst and the Royal Military College of Science at Shrivenham. The Ministry of Defence showed interest, but the cost-cutters suggested a single university responsible for preparing officers for all three Armed Services; that killed the idea.

When Ingham’s five-year contract at Sandhurst expired in 1967 he accepted the post of Professor of History at the University of Bristol, with particular focus on Africa. He came to the view that many historians in South Africa regarded the history of their country as a template for other countries in sub-Saharan Africa. His differing opinion on this issue was reflected in his biographies of Jan Christian Smuts (1986) and Milton Obote (1994).

He also ghost-wrote the autobiography of Buganda’s Chief Minister and later Regent, Paulo Kavuma, based on a bundle of notes Kavuma had sent to a British publisher and on Ingham’s own knowledge and admiration of the man. He deliberately avoided any contact with him while writing the book, as he feared for Kavuma’s safety under the tyrannical rule of the Ugandan President Idi Amin. After publication, Kavuma wrote to Ingham to thank him for what he described as “our book”.

Ingham became head of the history department at Bristol in 1971, retiring in 1986.

He married Elizabeth Mary Southall in 1949. She died in October 2009, and a son and daughter survive him.

Professor Kenneth Ingham, OBE, MC, was born on August 9, 1921. He died on September 13, 2010, aged 89

Lieutenant-Colonel ‘Joe’ Symonds

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/obituaries/article2747950.ece

Dorset man who was decorated several times for his gallantry and leadership in fierce fighting after the Normandy landings

Once the Normandy beachhead had been established in June 1944, General Montgomery’s strategy was to draw the German armour on to the British 2nd Army under Sir Miles Dempsey on the left to clear the way for the 1st (US) Army to break out on the right. Dempsey’s plan to maintain pressure southwards included an attack by the 43rd Division — with a tank brigade in support — up the valley of the Orne towards Eterville and Maltot.

Major Giles Symonds, always known as “Joe”, commanded the left forward company of 4th Battalion The Dorsetshire Regiment in the July 10 assault on Eterville. It was the unit’s first serious engagement and it went well, despite inadvertent bombing of its troops by the Allied Air Force. Maltot was taken by the battalion on their right.

As predicted, the 10th Panzer Division launched an immediate counter-attack supported by intense artillery and mortar fire, regaining Maltot and threatening the Dorsets’ hold on Eterville. A shell blast threw Symonds face down into the slit trench he was digging, seriously wounding him. Even so, his company held its ground and 4th Dorsets held Eterville.

Casualties had proved lighter than expected in the first month of the campaign but the officer toll was high. Symonds was evacuated to England and recommended for the DSO, the citation reading, “By his personal example under shell fire he continued to inspire his men, even after he was badly wounded.” However the brigade commander felt obliged to downgrade his award to the Military Cross.

After recovering from his wounds Symonds was posted to a Scottish battalion embarking for France. Discovering on his arrival that the 4th Dorsets were nearby, he returned to them and took over command of A Company. His first big action was against enemy-held high ground east of the forest of Kleve, close to the Dutch-German border, on February 15, 1945.

The Dorsets had a stiff fight. The battalion’s vehicles with ammunition replenishments were subjected to intense shell fire; the enemy was expecting them. Again Symonds led the left forward company, blowing his whistle and bowling his steel helmet in the direction of the enemy in a gesture his men had come to recognise.

The enemy, comprising the Battlegroup Hutze, retaliated with machinegun, mortar and artillery fire, so that the Dorsets reached their final objectives only after their third co-ordinated attempt. The citation for the award of a Bar to his MC described Symonds’ conduct as “displaying superb gallantry throughout. He was everywhere about the battle field inspiring his men by his total disregard for personal safety.” As his company consolidated on its new positions, the tank on which he was riding to direct operations was hit by a Panzerfaust, and he was badly burned.

Evacuated to a field hospital for treatment, he resisted all efforts to move him to England. He returned to 4th Dorsets after a month, resuming command of his company in time for the Rhine crossing in March. After the German surrender in May, he accompanied the battalion to northern Italy for a few months before demobilisation.

Symonds actually came from a farming rather than a military family. He was the son of Giles Symonds of Horchester, Frome St Quintin, Dorset, and educated at Blundell’s. He was commissioned into the 4th (Territorial Army) Battalion of the Dorsetshire Regiment in 1938 and commanded the platoon based on Evershot. He rose to command a company before the the 4th Dorsets disembarked at Le Hamel on June 23, 1944 — the same point as the 1st Dorsets had landed on D-Day, 17 days earlier.

After demobilisation Symonds joined the family firm of auctioneers, Symonds & Sampson, in Dorchester. When the 4th Territorial Battalion of the Dorsetshire Regiment reformed in 1947, he rejoined and commanded it from 1951 to 1953, being appointed OBE in the latter year. He also farmed in the Horchester area and served on the Lord Chancellor’s panel of arbitrators under the Agricultural Holdings Act of 1948 for many years and hunted with the Cattistock into his eighties.

His wife Thelma and elder son predeceased him. His younger son survives him.

Lieutenant-Colonel Giles Symonds, OBE, MC and Bar, TD, soldier, auctioneer and farmer, was born on June 28, 1915. He died on August 15, 2010, aged 95



'Бій відлунав. Жовто-сині знамена затріпотіли на станції знов'
От Chestnut
К Chestnut (27.09.2010 20:59:57)
Дата 28.09.2010 12:21:45

Re: [2Chestnut] Военные...

Sir James Cleminson
War hero and CBI president who crested the wave of Thatcherite business reforms in the 1980s

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/army-obituaries/8028655/Sir-James-Cleminson.html

His experience — partially re-created in Richard Attenborough’s 1977 epic film, A Bridge Too Far — was in fact as fierce as that of any young officer in the ill-fated Operation Market Garden. Captain “Jimmy” Cleminson’s platoon led the advance of the 3rd Parachute Battalion from the drop zone towards Arnhem on September 17 1944, until progress was briefly impeded by a German staff car which the platoon enthusiastically shot up, discovering later that they had killed Major-General Kussin, the Arnhem garrison commander.

After further skirmishes they moved through the quiet suburb of Oosterbeek to the Hartenstein Hotel, which had been a German staff headquarters but whose occupants had just fled, leaving a substantial lunch on the table.

Cleminson’s men tucked in until ordered by their company commander to continue the advance.

The following day, the company was pinned down by unexpectedly strong German fire a mile short of their objective, the bridge at Arnhem. Cleminson and another captain found themselves trying to assist the divisional commander, General Roy Urquhart, who had become separated from his staff, to regain his HQ on foot. When progress became impossible, the trio accepted a Dutch couple’s offer of shelter, only to find a German self-propelled gun positioning itself outside the house; there followed 24 frustrating hours in an attic, during which Urquhart became fixated on Cleminson’s luxuriant moustache, which he described as “damned silly”. In A Bridge Too Far, Michael Graham Cox played Cleminson to Sean Connery’s Urquhart.

Squadron Leader Mahinder Singh Pujji

Indian pilot who flew Hurricanes over occupied France and was awarded the DFC for his daring reconnaissance missions in Burma

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/obituaries/article2743013.ece

A graduate in law from Bombay University, Mahinder Singh Pujji was already a qualified pilot by the time war came in 1939, and he volunteered for RAF service the following year. Coming to the UK for further training, he saw service as a fighter pilot in sweeps over France and in North Africa, in both of which theatres he was involved in intense action.

He was subsequently posted back to India where he flew ground attack and reconnaissance operations over the jungles of Burma, participating in air operations over the strategically important battle for Kohima. Pujji ended the war as a squadron leader, having been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. After nearly 20 years living in India he settled in Britain in the mid-1970s.

Mahinder Singh Pujji was born the son of a senior government official in Simla, India in 1918, the former hill station in the Himalayan foothills which then served as the summer capital of the Indian Empire. He read law at Bombay (Mumbai) University, learning to fly at Delhi Flying Club, where he qualified as a pilot in 1937. Before the war he was working for Shell Oil as a fuelling superintendent.

Volunteering for RAF service in 1940, he was one of the first batch of 24 Indian pilots who were posted to Britain for operational training that summer. Like his contemporary Ranjan Dutt (obituary, November 6, 2009), who subsequently became an air vice-marshal in the postindependence Indian Air Force, Pujji distinguished himself on this first course and, like Dutt, was selected as a fighter pilot.

As a Sikh, he was determined not to be deflected from wearing the turban, which is mandatory to the religion although at first this was deemed by authority to be unsuitable headgear for an RAF officer and impractical for a fighter pilot. However, it soon became accepted that the RAF cap badge could be affixed to it without prejudice either to his performance as a pilot or to the dignity of the service, and Pujji wore his turban both on the ground and on operations until the end of the war.

He later claimed that the turban had helped to prevent him suffering serious impact injuries when he crash-landed after his plane was badly damaged in a dogfight over the Channel. “There was blood pouring from my head, but that six feet of wound cloth which makes up my turban saved me from worse impact injuries,” he said.

His first posting was with 253 (Hyderabad) Squadron, operating Hurricanes, with which in the spring and summer of 1941 he flew fighter sweeps by day and night from bases in southern England over occupied France. He was next posted to 43 Squadron in which he served as a flight commander on fighter sweeps and intruder sorties.

In 1942 he was posted to North Africa where he flew American-built Tomahawk fighters in the intensive air battles which raged over the ground forces in the Western Desert. Pujji was shot down and wounded, and spent time in hospital in Cairo, before returning to the front line. In his dogfights with the fighters of the Luftwaffe, his final tally was two Messerschmitt Me109s shot down and three damaged.

He was next posted to India where he was assigned to the North West Frontier and flew Lysander and Hurricanes on army co-operation and reconaissance sorties over Afghanistan and Waziristan. As he recalled, it was hazardous work over inhospitable terrain with a certain and horrible death awaiting any pilot who fell into the hands of the ferocious Hoor tribesmen.

Pujji’s next two tours of the war were served in Burma, where he flew “Hurribombers” — as Hurricanes used in ground attack and armed reconnaissance operations were styled. These were with No 6 and then No 4 Squadron, which soon became known as “the eyes of the 14th Army”, which, under its commander General William Slim, was involved in dislodging its Japanese opponents from Burma.

One of Pujji’s most notable reconnaissance feats was to locate a force of 300 West African troops under American command, who had become detached and lost in the jungle. All American attempts to locate them had failed and RAF help was sought.

Flying low over the jungle, Pujji had to circle the clearing in whose fringes the troops were hiding from the enemy, scribble a message on a notepad on his knee and drop it accurately. When the Americans, following his co-ordinates, failed to find the lost troops, Pujji’s report was called into question. It was not until he personally led an American Lightning fighter to the spot that he was vindicated. He was awarded the DFC for his Burma services.

After the war Pujji remained in India and after independence in 1947 had a busy career in Indian civil aviation as an administrator and air traffic controller. He continued flying himself and set many gliding records.

In 1974 he came to England, settling in London where he managed a hotel. In East Ham, where he made his home, he was in retirement an active member of many voluntary groups. In October 2000 he was made an honorary Freeman of the London Borough of Newham. He later moved to Gravesend, Kent, and a biography, For King and Another Country, was published earlier this year.

A popular and frequent figure at veterans’ events, he was always a prominent guest at such events as Black History Month at the RAF Museum, Hendon, in 2003 and the opening of the RAF Museum’s Diversity of the Royal Air Force exhibition in 2009.

Squadron Leader Mahinder Singh Pujji, DFC, wartime fighter pilot, was born on August 14, 1918. He died on September 18, 2010, aged 92

'Бій відлунав. Жовто-сині знамена затріпотіли на станції знов'
От papa
К Chestnut (27.09.2010 20:59:57)
Дата 27.09.2010 21:12:22

Ху изыт =Gennady Yanayev

Американским языком не владею без словаря,
что там за Гена.
От фельдкурат Отто Кац
К papa (27.09.2010 21:12:22)
Дата 27.09.2010 21:27:34

Правда, был еще более тупиковый товарищ, но о нем товарищи по партии

Ite, missa est!

прямо на Пленуме деликатно заметили, что нефотогеничность его внешнего образа бросает тень на его великих предшественников ... :))))

Kehrt euch! Abtreten!
От ttt2
К фельдкурат Отто Кац (27.09.2010 21:27:34)
Дата 29.09.2010 08:12:12

Re: Правда, был еще более тупиковый товарищ

В нормальной политической системе фотогеничность роли не должна играть никакой

Важно как чел работает, а не фотками красоваться

Тот же Черчилль под стандарты красоты не очень подходит

При амерской системе - да, на парикмахеров кандидаты тратят денег немеряно

С уважением
От фельдкурат Отто Кац
К ttt2 (29.09.2010 08:12:12)
Дата 29.09.2010 08:34:55

Вы своими идеями всех "полит-мордоделов" по миру пустите ... :)))) (-)
От Екатерина Белоусова
К фельдкурат Отто Кац (27.09.2010 21:27:34)
Дата 29.09.2010 01:31:52

Это кто такой? Вроде партийныые начальники - они с лица похожие были все... (-)
От фельдкурат Отто Кац
К Екатерина Белоусова (29.09.2010 01:31:52)
Дата 29.09.2010 08:39:17

Команду "Полозком к победе коммунизма, марш !" помните ? :)))) (-)
От фельдкурат Отто Кац
К papa (27.09.2010 21:12:22)
Дата 27.09.2010 21:22:58

Самая тупиковая точка развития советских управленцев ... (-)
От Ktulu
К papa (27.09.2010 21:12:22)
Дата 27.09.2010 21:14:33

Аббревиатура ГКЧП вам что-нибудь говорит? (-)
От papa
К Ktulu (27.09.2010 21:14:33)
Дата 27.09.2010 21:27:27

А как ГКЧиПист Гена

попал в военные некрологи британских газет?
От Ktulu
К papa (27.09.2010 21:27:27)
Дата 27.09.2010 21:41:01

Помер и попал. (-)