Two Goan-origin Air Vice Marshals (one AOC-in-C)
Valmiki Faleiro
Two Goan-origin Air Vice Marshals (one AOC-in-C)
Air Vice Marshal Erlic Wilmot Pinto, PVSM (Posthumous), M-in-D (Died in Service) from Porvorim, Socorro was in surefire line to be the fourth, if not the third, chief of the Indian Air Force, but fate intervened.
He was born in Belgaum and studied at St. Paul’s High School in the same city, where his father, Dr. Jose Luis Pinto do Rosario, was director of India’s then premier vaccine maker, Government Vaccine Institute, Belgaum. Of his two older brothers, one was Army Captain (Dr) Norman Pinto do Rosario and the middle brother was Surgeon Rear Admiral DRF Pinto.
He went to King George Military School before being selected for the flying branch of the Royal Indian Air Force. Commissioned in 1940, he was among the earliest Indian fighter pilots of the post-World War I era. He was 42 service numbers junior to the first Indian Air Chief Marshal Subroto Mukerjee and 46 numbers senior to Air Chief Marshal Om Prakash Mehra, the fifth Air Chief Marshal.
The exceptionally brilliant officer was an ace flier and a great military leader. His PVSM citation (1964) read in part: “To infuse confidence in his officers and men, he led many difficult airlift missions with complete disregard to his personal safety. The first landing at a forward outpost entailed the use of a riverbed, which is the highest 'airstrip' in the world. In spite of the hazards involved, Air Vice Mshl Pinto decided to proceed on this flight himself to check operating conditions there.”
As Air Vice Marshal, he was AOC-in-C of the then unified Operational Command of the IAF responsible for the conduct of air ops throughout India. He was in-charge of air ops during Op. Vijay in Goa, Daman and Diu in 1961. When the unified command was decentralized, he was the AOC-in-C, Western Air Command headquartered at Subroto Park, New Delhi, from 01 June 1963 and was clearly in line for Chief of Air Staff. The parameters of age and merit favoured him. He would have been the first Goan to head any of the arms of India's defence services, but destiny willed otherwise.
He died in a Chetak chopper of the IAF's 107 HU squadron that crashed over the Poonch River in J&K on 22 Nov 1963. All six in the chopper were killed. The others were Lt Gen Daulat Singh GOC-in-C Western Command, Lt Gen Bikram Singh GOC XV Corps, Maj Gen NKD Nanavati GOC 25 Division, Brig RM Uberoi commander 93 Brigade and the chopper pilot Flt Lt SS Sodhi.
The loss of so many senior officers in an accident raised suspicions, but the Court of Inquiry ruled out sabotage and held that the helicopter accidentally hit a parallel line of cables strung between two poles, one on a cliff at a height of 300 feet and the other on the opposite bank of the river at a height of 100 feet. The helicopter struck the cables at a height of around 200 feet and crashed into the riverbed about 350 metres away. An IAF Park in New Delhi is named after him, as is the road from Dabolim airport to Chicalim junction in Goa.
Air Vice Marshal Giles Gomez, VSM (Veteran) has roots in Ucassaim. His father was a highly ranked official in the Government of India. He completed schooling from St. Columbus, New Delhi and graduated from the Armed Forces Medical College, Pune. He was commissioned in 1977 initially in the Army Medical Corps and served at the LOC in the western sector in a high altitude area in J&K. After a five-year stint, he was seconded to the IAF.
In 1988, he was awarded the IAF's The Best Squadron Medical Officer trophy. He was specially picked in 1989 for further studies at the Royal Air Force at Farnborough in the UK. He became the first Indian to postgraduate in Aerospace Medicine from the Royal College of Physicians, London. He bagged the Barbara Harrison Award of the UK for having stood first amongst medical officers of 18 British Commonwealth countries.
Later in 2003, and again in 2011, he was deputed for training in Space Medicine at the NASA Johnson Space Centre in Houston, USA. He was awarded the VSM in 2011 for exceptional service.
In his almost four decades in the armed forces, Air Vice Mshl Gomez served at large forward fighter air bases, at two Command HQs and at Air HQ. He commanded the No. 1 Aeromedical Training Centre at Hindon air base and was the Principal Medical Officer at HQ Western Air Command at Subroto Park in New Delhi. He was also appointed Medical Advisor to Civil Aviation in India. He was Commandant of the IAF's Institute of Aerospace Medicine, Bangalore.
He pioneered and designed the Physical Conditioning Course for IAF fighter pilots, the only one of its kind in the world, “crew conditioning for helicopter pilots” and authored an operational book for aircrew, Night Vision Goggles: A Ready Reckoner. He was decorated for pioneering work in the realms of Spatial Disorientation.
Academically, he became a Professor in his speciality under the aegis of the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences, Bangalore. He has a large number of research projects and over a hundred scientific publications in Indian and international medical journals. He has been the guide of a number of post graduate medical students in their thesis work. He is a Fellow of the Indian Society of Aerospace Medicine.
Air Vice Mshl Gomez retired in September 2014 and together with his wife, Group Captain Vinita Gomez, who was also a doctor with the IAF, now retired, lives in Goa. The six foot plus Aerospace Medicine specialist, blessed with a sense of biting humour, now spends time, among other things, sketching cartoons for periodicals. Air Vice Mshl Gomes is nephew of Major Alexander Gomez, Brigadier Ashley Gomez and Surgeon Commander Fred Nazareth. He is is brother of Surgeon Lieutenant Commander Annette Fernandes and son-in-law of Lieutenant Commander Valerian (“Wolly”) Francis Mendanha – all Goans from India’s armed forces.
(This first appeared in the Marathi language in Goa’s daily, Gomantak, 13 November 2022, 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.)
