Goa’s First Pilot (Among India’s Pioneers)
Valmiki Faleiro
Goa’s First Pilot (Among India’s Pioneers)
(Flight) Lieutenant Shrikrishna Chandra Welingkar, MC (Died in Service) of Veling near Mardol was the first Goan aviator and among the five Indian pioneer aviators. Hailing from the distinguished Welingkar family of Veling, the Shri Krishna Niwas, Ridge Road, Bombay-based Lt. Welingkar was son of Laxmibai B. Welingkar.
He was studying at the Cambridge University in the UK when World War I broke out in 1914. The dashing young man enlisted in February 1917, completed flight training by early 1918 and was commissioned into the flying branch of the British armed forces during the last year of the Great War. (The Royal Air Force or RAF would be formed only on 1 April 1918; there were no flying ranks until then, hence Lt. Welingkar was not ranked ‘Flight Lieutenant’ which in fact he was.) He was posted to the British 23 Squadron then based at Bertangles near Amiens in France. Another report says he was with the No. 1 Squadron in France.
In those perilous early days of flight, and elementary combat aircraft, fighter pilots did not carry parachutes – the early flying machines could not fly beyond a limited altitude, at which height parachutes would be useless. The average lifespan of a combat pilot was eleven days – yes, you read that right, eleven DAYS! Lt. Welingkar lived and fought longer. He was either shot down or force landed by the enemy.
Lt. Welingkar was 23 when he took off in a Sopwith Dolphin No. 3691 (a new design notorious for poor crash survivability) at 9.45 am on 27 June 1918 on an offensive patrol. He was last seen engaged in a low level combat with a two-seater German aircraft near Peronne, travelling east at 300 to 400 feet at 11:15 am but never returned to base and was declared missing in action. It later transpired that he was forced to land, was wounded in the process and taken prisoner. He died three days later on 30 June 1918 in a German military hospital.
Lt. Welingkar was buried at the Hargard Cemetery Extension in Somme, France. A German, Lt. Rumey, later claimed that he had shot down a Dolphin near Somme. Described as “a brave man”, he was awarded the Military Cross. (With thanks to the inputs provided by Ms. Jyoti M. Rai, daughter of the first and only Goan-origin Chief of Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal H. Moolgavkar.)
The First Indian Aviators
Ratnagiri-born Dattatraya (“Dattu”) Laxman Patwardhan (1883-1943) ran away from home when young, worked as a rail coolie at Masjid Bunder before rising to Wireman at Matunga railway workshop, both in Bombay. Dattu changed his name to ‘D. Lacman Pat’ (feigning to be an Anglo-Indian) to become a train driver. Restless, he slid from a train engine into a coal bag aboard a German ship, Strance Fells from the Bombay docks and stowed away to the high seas.
Eventually in the UK at the start of World War I, D. Lacman Pat became a skilled pilot with the British forces and was assigned to the German front. He bombed Berlin and its Kaiser Palace – becoming the first pilot in the world to have done so. The achievement was published in the London Gazette on 25 March 1919. Poona’s Kesari covered the story on 13 May 1919.
Awarded the Sword of Military Honour for exceptional bravery, it was while the medal was being pinned on him on 24 April 1919 that D. Lacman Pat confessed his true identity to King George V. Calling him ‘A Manly Young Maratha in our Air Force,’ the king condoned the lapse. Returning to India in 1921, he was a ‘Royal Guest’ at the Bombay Governor’s house for two days and then returned to his native Ratnagiri where he married, and retired in 1930. He passed away on 18 October 1943. A book titled India’s First Aviator by Ratnakar Shivram Washikar and Anant Ramchandra Marathe was published in 2003.
Four other Indians enlisted between November 1916 and April 1917. They were Srikrishna Welingkar, Indra Lal Roy, Errol Chunder Sen and Hardit Malik. Srikrishna Welingkar was at Cambridge and Hardit Malik was in Oxford. Srikrishna Welingkar and Indra Lal Roy died in combat. Errol Chunder Sen was shot down, captured by the Germans and released after the war. Hardit Malik survived, opted for discharge at the end of war, became an ICS officer, and was India’s High Commissioner to Canada. He later was Ambassador to France when he successfully negotiated the transfer of the four French enclaves in India in 1954.
About a decade and half later, pilot training was opened to Indians in India. Among the early ones who took to flying: Subroto Mukerjee (b. 5 March 1911, started flight training in 1928 and joined the IAF in 1933, which he headed 1954-60), Edmundo Sequeira of Moira/Karachi (b. 1 Dec 1913, got his pilot’s flying licence in 1934) and the famed Biju Patnaik (1916 - 1997) – the only Indian whose body, upon death, was draped in the national flags of India, Russia and Indonesia.
Later a chief minister of Orissa for 2 terms, Biju Patnaik was a pilot when the Soviet Union was in trouble during World War II. He bombed Hitler's forces flying a fighter Dakota, which eventually forced the German retreat. He was decorated with the highest award and granted honorary citizenship by the Soviet Union. When Indonesia’s Prime Minister Sutan Shahrir was placed under house arrest by the Dutch in July 1947, Nehru asked Patnaik to rescue and bring Shahrir to India. Daringly taking off in a Dakota on 22 July 1947, Patnaik and his wife did just that (hence the flag of Indonesia upon his demise). When Pakistan invaded J&K, Biju Patnaik strenuously undertook several flights a day from Delhi from 27 October 1947 airlifting jawans to Srinagar. The state funeral and national mourning in three nations was because of his flying skills and daring, not because he was a chief minister.
India’s
first licenced commercial pilot
Industrialist and Bharat Ratna Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata (JRD Tata, ‘Father of Indian Civil Aviation’, 1904-1993) was the first Indian to be issued a commercial pilot’s flying licence of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale on 10 February 1929 by the Royal Aero Club of India & Burma (RACIB), Bombay branch.
RACIB was founded by Indian hotelier Victor Sassoon on 19 September 1927. With its first flying club in Delhi, RACIB established clubs in various locations in then undivided India including Karachi (28 July 1928), each with two DeHavilland Puss Moth aircraft. With the Viceroy of India as its Patron-in-Chief, the Commander-in-Chief of India its President, and the Director General of Posts and Telegraphs its Vice President, RACIB was a regulatory body. It was supplanted by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation from 1947. RACIB was re-constituted as the Aero Club of India.
In November 1929, the Switzerland-based spiritual leader of the Ismailias, His Highness Prince Aga Khan announced a handsome prize to any Indian flying solo between England and India within one month. Two Parsis, JRD Tata and Aspy Engineer (of the famous 'Four Flying Brothers', the three others who joined the IAF were Jehangir, Minoo and Ronnie while the fifth, Homi, joined the Indian Army; Aspy later was IAF’s Air Chief Marshal from 1960), entered the contest with a third contender: Bristol, UK trained pilot, Man Mohan Singh flying from England in an aircraft called “Miss India” (with poor navigation skills, Singh did ‘miss India’ and the prize). Aspy Engineer and Man Mohan Singh flew from England to India while JRD Tata flew in the opposite direction, from Karachi to England.
Aspy Engineer was ahead, but was stranded in Aboukir near Alexandria in Egypt as his aircraft gave trouble. The youngster hasn’t carried a spare set of engine spark plugs. At a stopover in Alexandria, JRD Tata flying in the opposite direction, met his competitor in distress. Tata obliged Aspy Engineer with a spare set of spark plugs. Engineer won the race and the prize.
JRD Tata made India’s first historic commercial flight from Karachi to Bombay on 15 October 1932. The rest is history – he launched Tata Aviation Services, that morphed to Tata Airlines, that morphed to Air India International in 1948, that was nationalised by Nehru in 1953 with JRD Tata as board chairman, which was undone by Morarji Desai in 1978 (JRD had supported Indira Gandhi’s imposition of Internal Emergency in 1975) – which history has now turned full circle with Air India back with the house of Tatas.
If there was a ‘Miss India’ in the 1929 Aga Khan race, now we have a ‘Piss India’ in the 2023 WhatsApp University.
Goa’s
first licenced commercial pilot
The second Goan aviator after Shrikrishna Welingkar most probably was Edmundo Brás Alfredo Sequeira. Hailing from Moira, his father, Pedro Inácio Sequeira (Ignatius Sequeira) owned a high profile photo studio (I. Sequeira Photography) in Karachi. Edmundo learnt to fly at RACIB’s Karachi Flying Club and got his commercial pilot’s flying licence in 1934, when he was 21 years old.
According to a news report titled ‘A flight into history’ carried by Mumbai daily, Mid-Day, edition of 19 May 1984, Edmundo celebrated 50 years of his solo flight in a DeHavilland Gipsy Moth from Karachi to Bombay in April 1934 (a la JRD Tata, a year and half later) but didn’t return back from Bombay … he flew down to Goa!
A kutcha runway had been constructed at Sada headland on the Mormugao plateau in 1930 to receive the first flight from Lisbon to Goa by Portuguese aviators Sacadura Cabral and Gago Coutinho. Cabral died and the flight was aborted. Pilots Sarmento Beires and Brito Pais also had to abandon plans. Third time unlucky, civilian pilot Carlos Bleck gave up midway due to a mishap. Air force Capt. Francisco Higinio Craveiro Lopes, ADC to his father Maj. Gen. João José Carlos Craveiro Lopes, the governor-general of Goa (1930-36), was himself a pilot and keen on a Lisbon-Goa flight (he was later governor-general of Goa, 1936-38).
Finally, Capt. Manuel Moreira Cardoso and Lt. Francisco Sarmento Pimentel took off on 1
November 1930 from Amadora near Lisbon in a DeHavilland Gipsy Moth named Marão. With halts in Spain and Italy, the Marão overflew Algeria and Tunisia and landed in Cairo. It flew to Gaza where the crew took an eight-day halt. The Marão then flew to Baghdad, Karachi, Bombay and finally to a maiden touchdown at Goa on 19 November 1930 (which WhatsApp University calls a crash land at Taleigao or Caranzalem). Led by the governor and his avid son, hundreds assembled at Sada to give a rousing welcome to the pioneer pilots. A thanksgiving Mass was celebrated at Panjim church, followed by a grand civic reception jointly accorded by all the municipalities of Goa. The pilot duo was feted at myriad public functions throughout Goa. A local soap manufacturer, Krishna Quenim of Caranzalem, named his soap bar Sabão Mãrao.
Next to make the Portugal-Goa flight was Dili piloted by Lt. Humberto Cruz and 1st Sergeant Lobato. Civilian pilot Carlos Bleck who was unsuccessful the first time finally made it in a light aircraft (CS-AAI) on 4 March 1934. He planned regular air travel between Portugal and Goa. That would come only after India imposed, at the instance of Goan Catholic leadership in Bombay, the ‘Economic Blockade’ on Portuguese Goa in 1954 and the colonial government hurriedly built civilian airports at Dabolim, Daman and Diu in 1955-57 and Goa’s commercial airline, Transportes Aéreos da Índia Portuguesa (TAIP) began operations soon thereafter.
Edmundo Sequeira flew solo again to Goa in October 1947, for an altogether different reason. He was married to Maria Fernanda Etelvina Álvares Colaço, daughter of High Court Justice Agostinho Custódio Roque António da Piedade Colaço and Ana Luísa Matilde Álvares of Margao. In the family way the first time, Fernanda returned from Karachi to her parental house in Goa for the confinement. At Casa de Saúde, a hospital established and run by her Bombay-trained MBBS uncle (mother’s brother), Dr. Luís dos Santos Álvares, both mother and child died during childbirth on 7 October 1947. Her memorial in marble is second to the left as one enters the Margao cemetery (see pic).
A distraught husband Edmundo flew from Karachi to Goa to attend the funeral and showered rose petals from the air over the Holy Spirit Church area in Margao. He returned to Karachi after a week. The crestfallen father sold the piano that Fernanda was fond of playing. His only son Abel (Fernanda’s brother), who was also a High Court judge and the last Secretario Geral (Chief Secretary) of Portuguese Goa, sold the house near the old Presentation Convent – and moved to the house of his wife, who was the only child of his uncle Dr. Luís dos Santos Álvares and wife Clara Godinho, along the same road by which this author lives.
Edmundo later married Ivonne Mascarenhas, daughter of Dr. Constâncio Mascarenhas, a landlord from Anjuna. Edmundo worked some time with the Royal Indian Air Force before joining civil aviation. He was the first Regional Aerodrome Officer in Bombay and later, the first Airport Manager in Karachi. He retired as Deputy Director, Air Transport & Civil Aviation, Pakistan. Edmundo returned to Goa in 1992 and lived with his daughter in Panjim. He passed away in Panjim on 15 December 1993, at the age of eighty.
PHOTOS:
1. Lt. Srikrishna Welingkar;
2. Second memorial to the left as one enters the Margao cemetery; and,
3. The first aircraft to land in Goa and its two-member flight crew in the foreground.
(This first appeared in the Marathi language in Goa’s daily, Gomantak, on 11 December, 25 December 2022 and 1 January 2023, and is excerpted from revised text of the book, Patriotism In Action: Goans in India’s Defence Services by Valmiki Faleiro, first published in 2010 by ‘Goa,1556’, ISBN: 978-93-80739-06-9. Revised edition awaits publication.)
Series concludes. Column continues in the Marathi language in Gomantak, Goa.
