Flying high

Suman Sharma on her experience of becoming the first woman to fly in a MiG-35

An F-16 fighter jet soars over Yelahanka airbase in Bangalore

The writer in the MiG-35 cockpit after the historic flight

As I entered the all-digital cockpit of the F-16IN Super Viper after saying a small prayer and taking a walk around it, my thoughts went out to the more than 800 women officers of the Indian Air Force (IAF), who hope that they would one day be considered for combat branches, including fighter flying.

I was a bit uneasy till I met the 47-year-old dapper Paul ‘Bear’ Randall, a former Commander with the US Navy, after which I was sure of being in safe hands.

After a pre-flight briefing from Bear and ‘Boom Boom’ (US pilots have a strange procedure of earning call-signs) about egress and eject procedures, I was strapped onto my seat by the flight safety officer, Ricky, to begin the 40-minute sortie. At 12.15 pm the GE-132A engine with its 32,000 pounds of thrust ignited its way along the runway full throttle and took a sharp right turn thereby inflating my G-suit.

My jazz dance training had taught me to contract and squeeze the lower portion of my body and my yoga practice came in handy to regulate my breathing and withstand the G force. Thus I kept my eyes wide open during the sharp turn after which Bear told me that I had just experienced 6G. I was glad to be totally alert and in command of myself.

My personal preparation, which included an hour in a centrifugal chamber in Bangalore in 2006 and a F-16 simulator in the US in 2008, was useful in handling the controls.

I had had my body properly hydrated the night before, and kept up with my deep breathing throughout.

Bear tore the south Karnataka skies and rolled at .9 mach speed. The newly introduced automated recovery system of the Viper, which gives it an edge over the legacy F-16, automatically takes off and saves the machine and lives, is what caught my eye particularly.

Bear roared towards Mysore, covering a total of 90 miles, while I kept looking on the screens in front of me trying to identify targets tracked by the APG-80 AESA radar. After touching 20,000 feet and swimming back through the clouds, all of which gave me a ‘heavenly’ and a ‘divine’ feeling, Bear asked me to fire ammunition from the right side throttle onto my left screen as there was an air target visible. I promptly obeyed as I was waiting for this moment, after which it was my turn to handle controls mid-air. I played with the throttle making the Viper dance in air.

After having experienced what G-force is, little did I know that my second flight in Aero India-2009 would effortlessly land in my lap so soon. Three days after testing the F-16 I embarked on yet another journey by getting into the MiG-35 cockpit.

Mikhail Belyaev, 41, formerly with the Russian airforce, with more than 2,000 hours of flying, explained to me the procedures before switching on the two engines. I could hear Mikhail communicating on ground frequency about Foxtrot-9 (our call sign for this mission) being ready for line-up and thereafter take-off.

Foxtrot-9 was given a go-ahead and at 1.20 pm our plane with its 9,000 kgf thrust with afterburners (and 5,400kgf dry thrust) took off thus making me the first woman in the world to co-pilot a MiG-35 fighter. I had already tested myself for a 6G pull in my previous flight, and had told Mikhail to take it a little further from there. I consider fighter flights a test more of mental endurance than of physical strength.

We began with some side rolls, at about 8,000 feet, and then dived for a 360 degree vertical. I contracted myself on one particular turn, to avoid the blood from being drained from my brain downwards, and realised I had touched a 7 G-force pull, which was my maximum on this flight.

But there was more to Foxtrot-9’s flight.The 42-minute sortie of the MiG-35 ‘E-154’ with its pod installed with laser and infra-red illumination, went upto 20,000 feet, and I could feel the aircraft cutting through the clouds. On getting hold of the throttle to control the plane, I smoothly maneuvered the plane from left to right and vice versa, experiencing minor G in the process. The plane, capable of performing the ‘Cobra’ with precision, then did a low-level with a high angle of attack at 28 degrees.

Before Foxtrot-9 could announce landing, I persuaded Mikhail to attempt a half-Cobra, which he did. The vertical pull-up pumped blood faster than expected into my upper body, for a split second. On the coloured laser-infrared screen I could see ground targets which were detected by the AESA radars, but I was told not to touch anything red, black or yellow inside.

It was time for Foxtrot-9 to return, but not before it had run along the runway at low-level, soaring up again and then making a safe landing. That, too, was a part of the mission.

After the mission was complete, I realised that I had broken a glass ceiling as well as a jinx of sorts by being the first woman to fly in the RAC-MiG-35 plane on Friday the 13th.

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