Major Mahinder Singh Pujji
Major Mahinder Singh Pujji was born in Simla in the Punjab in 1918 and was the son of a senior civil servant in the British Raj.
In 1936 he joined the Delhi Flying Club and later started working for Himalayan Airways. In 1940 he was one of the 24 Indian pilots to arrive in Britain after volunteering for the Royal Air Force (RAF) and joined No 43 Squadron flying Hurricane fighter aircraft.
He was one of many from the British empire to volunteer with one in four pilots in bomber
command hailing from overseas territories.
It’s reported that Manhinder received a warm welcome on arrival and on one occasion was sent to the front of the queue to get a free screening of one of the most popular films of the year, Gone with the Wind after others spotted the RAF wings on his coat.
He trained in combat and received his pilot’s wings with 17 Indian colleagues. Within a year 12 of them had been killed in action.
He managed to survive being shot down twice and at one time he crash-landed on top of the white cliffs of Dover. He insisted that he be allowed to fly with his turban, unlike many other Sikh flyers – and he is probably the only fighter pilot to have done so. He later said his turban saved him by cushioning the blow. In fact, he survived several crashes and flew combat missions throughout the war in Britain, Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Burma.
By 1944 Mahinder was a squadron leader based in Burma where the Japanese posed a threat to India and when 300 African soldiers under US command got lost in dense jungle full of Japanese soldiers he sent pilots out to find them.
After they returned with no news he climbed into a plane, flew over the jungle and found them, but when he reported the their position to HQ no one believed him, so he flew a second time to prove it!
His bravery resulted in receiving the distinguished flying cross medal for valour and getting nicknamed “the eyes of army”. He returned to India after the war but was out of service with the Indian Air Force after surviving tuberculosis. and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. After the war he became a champion air race pilot in India.
By the 1950s he was flying gliders taking historic figures including Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and US president Dwight D. Eisenhower up into the clouds. He emigrated to Britain in 1974 where he worked as an Air Traffic Controller at Heathrow Airport. In 1978, aged 60 years old, he took up hand-gliding.
Less than a decade later he moved to America where he worked as a pizza chain manager, but he came back to Britain in 1984 later settling in East Ham where he was given freedom of the borough of Newham.
In 1991, he spent a day with Princess Diana in 1991 and in 1998 he moved to Gravesend.
In 2005 he visited the Queen at Buckingham Palace to mark 50 years after the end of World War Two.
Even in his nineties he was taking to the air with one memorable trip by helicopter from Headcorn Aerodrome to mark the launch of his book For King and Another Country: An amazing life story of an Indian Second World War RAF fighter pilot.
His statue was unveiled in St Andrew’s Gardens, Gravesend in 2014 in honour of not only his service but of thousands more from across the world who served in military campaigns since 1914.
