My First Flight in a Mirage 2000 fighter aircraft

 

On December 17, 1903, at 10:35AM, the Wright Brothers had achieved their dream. It was a bitterly cold, windy Friday, but the desire to fly, and a stove inside their camp building, kept them warm. Orville flew first that morning and later wrote about that "first flight." This flight lasted only 12 seconds, but it was nevertheless the first in the history of the world in which a machine carrying a man had raised itself by its own power into the air in full flight, had sailed forward without reduction of speed and had finally landed at a point as high as that from which it had started.

And what a day it was! On that blustery December day, the world was made a little smaller. Two young men had forever changed the boundaries of human life. No longer would humankind envy the birds for their wings.

Audacity, indeed. Throughout history, great scientists and inventors have always shown a little boldness. The courage to think outside of the lines and to imagine that the future would make "first flights" possible. Again…..and again.

Time had taken its course since then. Aeronautical Science has given us the Dirigibles, the hot  air Japelenes, the Monoplanes, the Biplanes, till it evolved into Fighter Aircrafts, Stealth bombers and Spacecrafts..

On February 17, 2003, at 11.05AM, I had my first flight in an Indian Air Force Mirage 2000 fighter aircraft. It was a foggy, windy Monday. The world was made smaller again. The vast river Ganges, on whose banks I grew up, had my first holy dip, and now jog along its banks every morning, appeared like a little thread manipulated on a large topographical sheet, twisting and turning in its serpentine motion as it dashes towards the Bay of Bengal.

Life is short and we only get one shot at it. As a child, I was always fascinated with speed and jet planes. As a Computer Graphic student, I had my opportunities to design soft wares for flight simulators. As a non-commissioned Simulation Engineer, I dreamt of the day that I would break the sound barrier, pull 5+ G’s, and fly to the edge of the atmosphere in one of the Aircrafts which has my creation attached to it. Today, I had the opportunity to make that dream come true. Thanks to the people who gave me this day! Thanks to the people who wanted this day! Thanks to the ones who didn’t! For this one day changed my whole life.

On 17^th, morning, I fulfilled that dream. I flew over the city of Calcutta, over the state of West Bengal, and embarked upon an incredible adventure into the sky. I flew in a Mirage 2000 jet in which I experienced maneuvers such as loops, rolls, and dives and attained speeds up to 600 MPH or ½ times the speed of sound! I climbed to an altitude of 25,000 feet, where above me was a black sky filled with stars and below me was the blue sky with the curvature of the Earth’s horizon in view! At that very moment, I was the highest human over the city of joy!

It began with the high-speed, run up of the Mirage 2000 with Flight Lft. J.A.Alamgir, a Hero of  Indian Air Force, Award recipient for his 3,000 hours of fighter piloting in over 30 aircraft, had me soaring at Mach 2.4 (1,600 mph) up to an 81,000-foot ceiling, where the sky was black above and the Earth was curved below. The power of the 5,000 pounds of thrust by the two turbojet Engines combined was breathtaking as we passed through the great speed in what seemed like seconds!

I could feel the acceleration and enormous power of the engines behind me. I actually felt (and looked) like an astronaut. My body was completely protected by a special G-suit. With a full-face helmet, hermetically closed, I breathed only 100% pure oxygen pumped inside. I was strapped into the ejection seat in the rear cockpit . Flight Lft Alamgir was in a separate cockpit , in front and above me. We couldn't see each other, we could only talk via the radio. But we didn't talk much anyway. As we climbed higher and higher, the view became more and more breathtaking, almost surrealistic. I'd never seen anything like it before. Among all the instruments in front of me, I paid attention to only two: the speed indicator which showed Mach 2,8 and the needle on the altimeter rose to number 27,000. In other words, we were flying with the speed of more than 3000 km/h at an altitude of 27 kilometers- almost three times higher than Boeing 747 normally flies or, say, more than three times as high as Mt. Everest!"

The flight experience, from the dress-up, briefing, and ejection training to the take-off, flight, and landing, was an adventure that will stay with me forever. It was more than I ever imagined! At the Netaji Shubhas  Bengal Air Force Base, my commanding officers Wing Commander R.K.Sinha, Col. Abraham Jacob, Flight Lft. Arun Teja apprehensively watched on the ground with the ground crew, as I began my walk to that small camouflaged bus which took us beside the Fighter Planes. The handful who knew about this flight, kept their fingers crossed, a little worried about ‘the one way ticket it sometimes is’, looked up in the sky and said softly, “Just take care!”, “Be back in one piece!”. The ones who didn’t know about it, never did care anyway.

This is ‘me’…..

This is my War-Bird