Sayan Chatterjee
New Delhi: Air warriors, once again came to serve to the humanity proving that the nation can depend on its defense forces in hour of civil concerns. On 14th Dec, the IAF air lifted four NHAI workers suffered by severe burn injuries in their line of duty in Andaman and Nicobar Islands at Port Blair. Having received initial medical care at local hospital, the casualties needed to be airlifted at the earliest to Kolkata for further specialist medical treatment and aid.
Air HQ, acted swiftly and the raiding raptors, C130J (Super Hercules) unit of Indian Air Force was tasked for this mission. Since, the unit comprised of state of the art Hercules aircrafts, which is capable of quick launch and role modification in air. The unit responded with utmost professionalism and launched one Hercules aircraft within 45 minutes of call to undertake the mission.
The aircraft flew nonstop to Port Blair negotiating deteriorating weather over Andaman and Nicobar Islands which is likely to widen into a cyclone, as reported. The aircraft carried out night landing at Port Blair airfield, not undertaken by civil airlines.
So, to ensure them as a quick reaction team for the mission, air warriors didn’t turned off the engine of the aircrafts and ensured to airlift all patients along with their attendants and expeditiously conveyed them to Kolkata, West-Bengal, India.
When asked for his thoughts on this quick mission, Wng Cdr. Anupam Banerjee, Spokesperson – IAF, said “HADR (Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Relief) is a given role of IAF. The training in IAF ensures the crews are capable to handle and take-up challenging circumstances of HADR missions, in hour of concerns”
This Casualty Evacuation mission was completed within 5 hours and 45 minutes of the launch and IAF aircraft recovered back to AFS Arjan Singh, Panagarh, West Bengal undertaking the entire mission nonstop without refueling and igniting off the aircraft engines.
