Look Ma! We fished out a MiG pilot

Kanaidangar: To brothers Subhas and Ashok Pandit, it had at first looked like a man at the end of a giant balloon, slowly dropping off the morning sky.
The two middle-aged farmers had earlier heard the roar of a jet aircraft as they breakfasted on puffed rice at their home by the Keleghai river in this East Midnapore hamlet, about 150km from Calcutta. It took a moment for them to realise what had happened.
It was pilot D. Mahapatra at the end of his parachute, being carried by the wind towards the Keleghai even as his MiG27 crashed into a swamp off Duria.
Subhas and Ashok, 45, ran straight towards the river. Their promptness proved lucky for Squadron Leader Mahapatra, who had ejected as his plane caught fire around 8.30am, 15 minutes after taking off from the Kalaikunda airbase, 70km away.
As he dropped on the bed of the chest-deep river, Mahapatra got entangled in his parachute and his feet got stuck in the soft, wet sand.
“He stood in the water and waved at us,” Subhas said. “I realised he was beckoning us to help him.”
The brothers climbed into their country boat and rowed furiously. “It took us 15 minutes to reach him. He told us in Hindi that he could not move,” Subhas said.
Both brothers got down into the water and unclasped the parachute on Mahapatra’s instructions.
As they neared the bank, many enthusiastic villagers dived into the water and escorted the boat back to the shore, giving the last part of the journey a carnival atmosphere.
Mahapatra contacted Kalaikunda over Subhas’s mobile phone. Within 25 minutes, a helicopter arrived and took him away.
The pilot had left behind the parachute and some equipment with the Pandits, which the police later collected from them.
24/09/10 Naresh Jana/Telegraph

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Categories: Safety Sep 2010