History of Global Arms Transfer, 9 (2020), pp. 41-59

International Networks and Aircraft
Manufacture in Colonial and Postcolonial
India: States, Entrepreneurs andEducational Institutions, 1940-64.†
APARAJITH RAMNATH*
This paper examines the beginnings of aircraft manufacture and maintenance inIndia by exploring the early history of Hindustan Aircraft Limited (HAL)—
India’s premier producer of military aircraft—from its establishment (1940) to
the inauguration of its best known locally designed aircraft (1964). Scholars haveseen HAL’s beginnings primarily as an instance of colonial imperatives
subugating indigenous enterprise (the company was promoted by industrialist
Walchand Hirachand and later taken over by the colonial government). This
paper, on the other hand, emphasises the multiplicity of actors and the broader,often extra-imperial networks that played a role in HAL’s development. The plantin Bangalore was commissioned by a team of American engineers under W.D.
Pawley, who would arrange for manufacturing licences, machinery and materials
through his American company, Intercontinent Corporation. These American
experts supervised a team of Indian engineers and technicians; the factory was
run by the US Army during the latter years of World War II. Other crucial actors
were the princely government of Mysore, which provided land and concessions
for the factory; German and Germany-trained experts who worked in HAL’sdesign teams in the post-Independence period; and the Indian Institute of Science,
which provided HAL with trained personnel and research facilities.

I Introduction
This paper examines the beginnings of aircraft manufacture and aeronautical engineering inIndia through the early history of Hindustan Aircraft Limited (HAL, established 1940). It† An earlier version of this paper appeared in the IIM Kozhikode Working Paper Series (https://iimk.ac.in/websiteadmin/FacultyPublications/Working%20Papers/205fullp.pdf). Versions have also been presented at theAnnual Meeting, Society for the History of Technology (Albuquerque, USA, 2015); the Indian Institute ofManagement (IIM) Bangalore (2016); and Meiji University, Tokyo (2019). I am grateful to Professor Katsuhiko
Yokoi and his colleagues at the Research Institute for the History of Global Arms Transfer, Meiji University for
inviting me to present my work in Tokyo and to contribute to this journal. This paper has benefited from archival
research I conducted as part of the project ‘ENGIND: Engineers and Society in Colonial and Postcolonial India’,sponsored by the French National Research Agency (ANR). IIM Kozhikode and Ahmedabad University provided
institutional support. I thank Urvi Ganatra for research assistance, and Mr Ajay Ghatge for sharing clippings
about his uncle, Dr V.M. Ghatage.
* Author’s affiliation: Assistant Professor, Humanities and Languages, School of Arts and Sciences,
Ahmedabad University, India.

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APARAJITH RAMNATH
traces the development of the company until 1964, when it launched two of its better
known locally designed aircraft, the Maruta and the Kiran. Promoted by industrialist
Walchand Hirachand and his associates, HAL was set up with the assistance of the Mysore
Government, which provided half of the initial capital, land, and other facilities for thecompany’s factory in Bangalore. The company, which was acquired by the Government ofIndia soon afterwards, played a crucial role in the assembly and repair of warplanes during
World War II, when it was temporarily managed by the US Army. In the post-Independence
period, it became a key supplier of aircraft to the Indian Air Force among other customers.
Its successor company continues to be India’s premier producer of military aircraft.
There is as yet no detailed historical study that examines the founding and developmentof Hindustan Aircraft, although the broad timeline of events in the company’s early years
has been described in passing by historians of science and business in India.1 They havetended, following the point of view of actors like Walchand,2 to see HAL primarily as an
instance of colonial imperatives subjugating indigenous industrial entrepreneurship. J.N.
Sinha talks of ‘the cold response’ of the colonial government to Indian proposals to build
an aircraft industry, 3 while R.K. Ray remarks that ‘the Government of India not only
refused to extend any assistance at all, but positively sought to obstruct Walchand’s
strenuous efforts’, and that in general, India during World War II ‘really missed splendid
opportunities of initiating heavy industries on a large scale.’4
Recent work in the history of technology underscores the need to understand Indianscience and technology not merely through the lenses of ‘colonial’ and ‘national’ sciencebut also as part of broader, extra-imperial networks and against the backdrop ofinternational politics.5 This paper extends this historiographical emphasis by examining
various sources, including wartime files in the India Office Records, archival material at
the Indian Institute of Science and the National Archives of India, the aeronautical industry
press, and biographical accounts of key actors.
I argue that the colonial government’s position on the setting up of an aircraft factory was
not entirely uncooperative; its response was more nuanced, influenced both by politicalconsiderations and wartime requirements. Nevertheless, the aircraft industry in India owed
its establishment to multiple actors: the governments of India (colonial and postcolonial),
Mysore, and Britain; the United States Army Air Force during World War II; German andGerman-trained experts, particularly in the postwar period; American and British businessinterests; and educational institutions. This multiplicity of actors and interests continued tocharacterise the post-Independence period, when the government’s short-term militaryneeds competed with Indian scientists’ (and its own) desire to focus on research leading to
the indigenous development of aircraft.

1 Sinha, Science, war and imperialism, pp. 108-111; Ray, Industrialization in India, pp. 255-6. Piramal,
Business Legends deals with the HAL story briefly (ch. 9), but only until 1942, when Walchand’s interests werebought out by the colonial government.
2 See Khanolkar, Walchand Hirachand (Walchand’s official biography).
3 Sinha, Science, war and imperialism, p. 111. Of HAL and other ventures, Dietmar Rothermund writes that ‘[t]he British … were not inclined to support the growth of new industries that would compete with them after thewar [World War II].’ Rothermund, An economic history of India, section 9.2.
4 Ray, Industrialization in India, pp. 255-6.
5 Bassett, ‘MIT-trained swadeshis’; Bassett, ‘Aligning India’; Ramnath, ‘Engineers in India’ ch. 1 and ch. 6;
Phalkey, ‘Introduction’.

42International Networks and Aircraft Manufacture in Colonial and Postcolonial India

II The British government, the GOI, and proposals for an aircraft factory
The main promoter of the company that became Hindustan Aircraft, Walchand Hirachand(1882-1953), hailed from a Jain family settled in Sholapur. Walchand began his career as aconstruction contractor and soon developed a marked enthusiasm for starting industrial
enterprises. In the 1930s, having acquired a reputation for risk-taking and diversified into
shipping and sugar manufacture, he began making serious efforts to inaugurate automobile
and aircraft manufacture in India.6
According to the standard narrative of the birth of the aircraft project, Walchand’s interest
was first kindled in October 1939, when he happened to meet a prominent American
executive, William D. Pawley, on a flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong. Pawley(1896–1977), who would later become an influential diplomat, was at this time thepresident of Intercontinent Corporation, New York, and Director of the Central Aircraft
Manufacturing Company (CAMCO) in Kuomintang China, which was building planes for
the Chinese national government.7 Walchand promptly asked Pawley if he was willing tohelp open a factory in India, and cabled the colonial government with a proposal to sellthem aircraft required in the war that had just broken out in Europe, if the government
would provide the necessary help. His repeated messages made little impression on the‘lethargic’ government until mid-1940, when Walchand, then in Simla on other business,managed to bring his proposal for aircraft manufacture to the attention of the relevant
officials. By this time the war in Europe had progressed, France falling to Nazi Germany,and the British government conceded it was no longer in a position to supply fighters to
India in the event of an aerial battle there. China, too, was in need of aircraft in the face ofJapanese aggression. Pawley was invited to India, and came in July 1940 along with asenior engineer, McCarthy, Jr., his legal adviser and manager, George Sellett, and his
brother, E.P. Pawley to participate in talks with Walchand and the government. A few days
later, the government had agreed provisionally to the proposed factory, and placed atentative order worth $10 million for trainers, fighters and bombers along with spare parts(pending approval from London).8
But a close study of the correspondence between Simla and London suggests that thispicture of a slumbering government is not entirely accurate. It does seem plausible that theWalchand-Pawley scheme got lost in the thickets of government bureaucracy for a few
months. But the government was quite cognizant of the need to consider aircraft
production. As early as September 1939, a month before Walchand’s initial cables, theViceroy (Linlithgow) had initiated a discussion on whether aircraft could be produced inIndia. Shortly thereafter, a group of Calcutta-based businessmen had come forward with aproposal for aircraft manufacture, and both colonial and ‘home’ governments (henceforth
GOI and HMG respectively) set about evaluating it carefully.9 In fact this group had sent
their representative to put the proposal directly to the Air Ministry in the UK, asking for
financial assistance from HMG. The proposal was considered by the Supply Committee,10
6 Khanolkar, Walchand Hirachand; Ray, Industrialization in India, pp. 176 and 280-1.
7 Khanolkar, Walchand Hirachand, p. 345; Carrozza, William D. Pawley.
8 Khanolkar, Walchand Hirachand, pp. 347-52, quoted text from p. 348.
9 Economic and Overseas Department, India Office, No. 1879/40, ‘Possibility of the establishment of an

aeroplane manufacturing industry in India. Views of the Government of India, following an investigation
conducted by the Director of Civil Aviation’, in IOR/L/E/8/1711 (India Office Records, British Library, London).
All subsequent official letters, telegrams and memoranda cited below are from this file (IOR/L/E/8/1711) unlessotherwise specified.
10 A.M.D.P., ‘188th Progress Meeting. Proposals to Manufacture Aircraft and Train Pilots in India’, Copy,
Secret, 11 November 1939, in E&O No. 1879/40.

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APARAJITH RAMNATH
and A.H. Self of the Air Ministry requested F. Tymms, Director of Civil Aviation in India,
to investigate the proposal informally and talk with the backers of the scheme. The Ministry
was not in favour of HMG investing capital, as it was unlikely that the scheme ‘would
enable India to contribute towards the present war effort in the manufacture of all-metal
aircraft’. In the long term, though, the proposal had possible advantages, particularly in its
potential to provide ‘[military] aircraft for the Far and Middle East’ by utilising Indian
resources and labour. In addition, civil aviation in India was likely to grow, so ‘there would
seem to be a considerable commercial incentive for the creation of an indigenous aircraft
industry on a long term basis, and the Government of India would, no doubt, wish toconsider the possibility of encouraging an enterprise of this nature.’11 Tymms, along with
the Chief Inspector of Aircraft, proceeded to Calcutta. There they met the putative
promoters of the factory, who included the heads or officials of the Indian Jute Mills
Association, the Tata Iron and Steel Company, the Indian Iron and Steel Company,
Braithwaite, Jessop, and the Aluminium Manufacturing Company. They also ‘made apreliminary technical survey of the resources available’ for composite and all-metal planes
respectively, concluding ‘that the resources of India both for the production of special
metals and in machining ... are greater than was supposed.’
Tymms felt that as the utility of the proposed factory to the war effort was not guaranteed,
the scheme should be evaluated at least partly ‘on the strategic and national advantages tobe derived from the permanent establishment of the industry and its associated industries
through the medium of the war impetus.’ It was with this in mind that its backers wanted to
manufacture not just airframes but aero engines; the machinery for the latter could be put
to other uses in peace-time. 12 In April 1940, as a more detailed follow-up, the GOI’s
Department of Supply requested the ‘Air Ministry to send a small expert commission to
India to make a rapid investigation of the facilities available’.13
If the GOI seemed cautiously optimistic, the Secretary of State for India, Leo Amery, waspositively enthusiastic about the prospect of building aircraft in India. According to a draft
note prepared by his office to be forwarded to the Air Ministry,
Mr. Amery is of the opinion that the proposal should be considered on the assumptionthat the war may last for several years ... In view of this possibility, and of thelikelihood of a universal expansion of air services, both military and civil, ... thequestion should, in his opinion, be studied from the point of view of considering a boldprogramme of all metal construction, including engine construction. The possibility of
the use of plastic construction might also be investigated.14
Amery’s enthusiasm was not shared by William Maxwell Aitken, the Baron Beaverbrook,whom Churchill, the incoming Prime Minister, appointed head of the newly established
Ministry of Aircraft Production (MAP) in May 1940.15 Beaverbrook was charged withincreasing the number of planes available to Britain, and was not inclined to do anythingthat he thought might endanger that goal. In June, as France was being overrun, Amery
wired Linlithgow that ‘Lord Beaverbrook ... cannot spare anyone for technical mission
11 [A.H. Self/ Air Ministry] to F. Tymms, 5 December 1939, in E&O No. 1879/40.
12 F. Tymms, ‘Aircraft Construction in India. Note by the Director of Civil Aviation (India),’ 25 January 1940.
13 [Wood?], Secretary to the Government of India, to Under Secretary of State for India, London, No. 12122, 8April 1940, in E&O No. 1879/40.
14 Enclosure ‘A’, in E&O No. 1879/40.
15 Boyce, ‘Aitken, William Maxwell’.

44International Networks and Aircraft Manufacture in Colonial and Postcolonial India[which the GOI had requested] at this moment’.16 Amery and Beaverbrook, ‘Leo’ and ‘Max’
to each other, were to be involved in an epistolary tug-of-war over the next couple ofmonths.
Meanwhile, as the war progressed, observers on the subcontinent began to worry about
India’s preparedness to repulse attacks, especially from the air. The GOI, feeling thepressure of ‘the tide of public opinion’, was in dire need of aircraft, ‘if only because of
their reassuring effect’.17 The situation thus had two related aspects: India needed aircraftfrom a strategic point of view; and the GOI needed, in order to maintain its politicallegitimacy, to appear responsive to Indians’ demands, one of which was to produce aircraftin India.18
It was in this climate that the Walchand-Pawley proposal caught the GOI’s attention. On
6 July, shortly after the Simla meeting with Walchand, Pawley, and their associates, theGOI’s Department of Supply sent a telegram to the Secretary of State in the India Officegiving him details of the scheme. A new, preferably private, company was to be establishedby Walchand, with Pawley in charge of running the factory and arranging for materials andtechnicians, mainly from the USA.
What predisposed the GOI to support this scheme when it had other options, like theCalcutta proposal with high-profile supporters? It is very likely that they were swayed by
two factors. First, progress on the latter had hit a roadblock as the requested experts fromBritain were not forthcoming; second, Pawley’s presence lent the new scheme an air ofconcreteness. He, unlike the Calcutta promoters, had built aircraft before. The GOI reported
that they were ‘favourably impressed by Pawley, whose actual performances [in China]
under conditions of greater difficulty than exist in India are most impressive’. Further, there
was the prospect of relatively quick results: Pawley’s contacts with the Curtiss Corporation(for which he was the sales agent in China) meant he could get components for assembly inthe near future. There was also the question of his CAMCO plant in China, which had been
relocated a number of times for strategic reasons and was currently at Loiwing near the
Burmese border. The prospect of Japanese air raids and of the closure of the Burma Road
(through which materials shipped from America were transported to Loiwing) added
another angle: in the event of the factory having to be abandoned, its machinery andtechnicians could be shifted wholesale to the new site in India.19
The official telegram of 6 July was accompanied by a ‘Private and Personal’ one from
Viceroy Linlithgow to Secretary of State Amery. In it, Linlithgow indicated that internal
political considerations were playing as heavily on his mind as the threat of external
aggression.
The whole of India is teed up for proposal of this kind: the feeling that we can, anddemand that we should, embark on aircraft manufacture are very strong, and nothing
will so strike the imagination of India and inspire confidence … to pursue war to a
victorious conclusion. Conversely, any reluctance or delay in pursuing this proposal, ofsoundness and practicability of which we are ourselves convinced, would have serious
political repercussions … Walchand is an astute publicist and would see to it that worst
possible construction would be put on refusal to proceed with this venture by wholly
16 Draft telegram, Secretary of State to Viceroy, 6 June 1940.
17 Extract from private letter, Linlithgow to Amery, 6 June 1940.
18 Extract from private letter, Linlithgow to Amery, 13 June 1940.
19 Decypher, Telegram 2394, GOI, Dept. of Supply to Secretary of State for India, 6 July 1940. Also see

Carrozza, William D. Pawley.

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APARAJITH RAMNATH
Indian Company.20
On 11 July a meeting took place at the India Office to discuss the Walchand-Pawley
proposal. It was attended by officials of the India Office, the Burma Office, the Air
Ministry, and the Indian Civil Aviation Directorate. 21 The MAP declined to send a
representative, saying it was not interested in a manufacturing scheme that would only bear
fruit in the long term,22 and it was known from Amery’s discussions with Beaverbrook thatthe latter would not countenance a factory that might divert to India any Britain-boundAmerican materials or machinery for the construction of bombers or fighters. He did not,however, mind if India bought materials for trainers from the USA.23 Meanwhile, at themeeting, the representative of the Burma Office suggested that an independent opinion besought in America to judge whether Pawley would indeed be able to get the requiredmaterial from the USA as he had claimed he could.24 In the days that followed, Ameryexchanged messages with one William Robinson, who had been connected with theinauguration of aircraft production in Australia. Robinson assured him that he thought theWalchand-Pawley scheme practicable and on the whole ‘very attractive’.25 (Not that thiswould, in the opinion of one India Office functionary, persuade the MAP. ‘I suppose Ld.
Beaverbrook is impervious to any one else’s opinion.’)26
Meanwhile, Amery prepared to inform the GOI that they could go ahead with theproposed factory, as long as they stuck to trainers (unless it became an absolute necessity
to produce bombers or fighters).27 But now Beaverbrook objected to this too. ‘My dear
Leo,’ he wrote, ‘… It is true that we are not purchasing trainer aircraft. But any interference
would not only put up prices, but would also disturb the organisation we have built up.’28
Amery stood his ground, arguing that India buying ‘a few trainer engines which you do not
want, through an organisation which is already buying for China’ could hardly affect the
MAP’s operations. ‘My lamb really cannot muddy the water which your big, bad wolf isdrinking upstream!’29
Meanwhile Linlithgow and his government began to send Amery strongly worded
telegrams arguing for the scheme to go ahead as originally envisaged – i.e., it should beallowed to make not only trainers but also bombers and fighters. Further arguments wereadded in support of starting a factory. For instance, it was suggested that it could perform a
useful additional function as a centre for the repair of military planes. Further, the Viceroy
would soon be confronted more directly with Indian opinion when his Council was
enlarged (in the autumn of 1940), adding a number of ‘non-official’ members (which would
mean Indian politicians).30 In view of the GOI’s clear stance, Amery approached Arthur
20 Telegram, Viceroy to Secretary of State, 7 July 1940. Emphasis mine.
21 ‘Note of a meeting held at the India Office on the 11 July 1940, to consider the Government of India’s

telegram No. 2394 of July 6th concerning a proposal for the manufacture of aircraft in India’.
22 Ibid.; G. Simmons, MAP, to E.W.R. Lumby, India Office, 10 July 1940.
23 A note by ‘M.J.C.’ [most likely M.J. Clauson of the India Office] dated 19 July further qualified this.
Beaverbrook, he suggested, was not in favour of India making trainers either, but did not have the locus standi toprevent it, because his Ministry was not engaged in buying trainers in the USA.
24 ‘Note of a meeting held at the India Office on the 11 July 1940’.
25 Various letters and telegrams, June-August 1940. Quoted phrase from telegram, Robinson to Amery, [1?]August 1940.
26 W.D. [Croft], handwritten intra-departmental memo, 1 August [1940].
27 (Draft) telegram, Secretary of State to Supply Department, GOI, c. 16 July 1940.
28 Max [Beaverbrook] to Amery, 15 July 1940.
29 L.S.A. [Amery] to Beaverbrook, 16 July 1940.
30 Various cables and letters, including Viceroy’s telegram of 29 August 1940.

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International Networks and Aircraft Manufacture in Colonial and Postcolonial India
Greenwood, Chairman of the Production Council, to break the deadlock.31 Greenwood, inturn, advised Amery to take the matter up with the War Cabinet.32
The War Cabinet took up the question on 4 September 1940.33 The Secretary of State
reiterated the benefits of a factory in India that could be used for the repair as well as forthe construction of warplanes, and that the Viceroy was very keen on it. Beaverbrookrepeated his objections, focusing on the question of aero-engines, which, he said, were
urgently required in ‘all the Dominions’, and which consequently had to be bought in total
by Britain. The Vice Chief of Air Staff felt that the scheme might not be useful ‘on a shortterm view’. The Prime Minister, Churchill, pointed out that Germany, whose warplanes
were at that moment engaged in combat with the RAF, would likely ramp up aircraft
manufacture in the occupied countries, and Britain ‘must be prepared to meet aircraft
production on a European scale.’ This was only possible if they ‘used the most efficient
centres of production’; they ‘must not dissipate [their] resources.’ The War Cabinet
resolved to reject the Indian factory proposal for the moment, but said they might look at
the scheme again in a couple of months.34 They appear to have kept their word, and in
December 1940, the Battle of Britain over, the Walchand-Pawley scheme finally received
the go-ahead, on the condition that all production inputs must be obtained from countries
other than Britain or the USA.35

III Setting up the factory
Walchand now needed capital, land, and resources to import raw materials and machinery.
He tried to raise funds from another of his concerns, the Scindia Company, but theshareholders were not interested. He then approached a number of princely states, some ofwhose Dewans he knew well, and eventually elicited interest from the state of Mysore.36
Walchand proposed to the Mysore government that the factory be built in their state with
their cooperation. A private limited liability company would be set up, with an authorised
capital of Rs. 4 Crore (40 million). Shares worth Rs. 40 Lakh (4 million) would be issued
to start with, half of these to be bought by the Mysore government and the other half byWalchand and associates. The latter would form a private limited company called Messrs.
Walchand Tulsidas Khatau Ltd., which would be the managing agents of the aircraftcompany, and appoint three of the five members to the board of directors (the other two torepresent the Mysore government). The Mysore government approved this proposal. In
addition to Rs. 20 Lakh worth of stock, they provided a number of concessions to
Hindustan Aircraft, Limited. HAL would pay no tax on income earned from supplying
aircraft to the GOI; the Mysore government would grant free land where possible, or
acquire private lands for the company at the latter’s expense, and make available ‘[w]ater
and power ... at rates obtaining for large industrial concerns.’ 37 In April 1941, theGovernment of India put in Rs. 25 Lakh, and the board was reorganised; the GOI, the
31 See L.S.A. [Amery] to Arthur Greenwood, M.P., 29 July 1940.
32 Greenwood to Amery, 17 August 1940.
33 Copy of cypher telegram (No. 5268), Secretary of State to GOI, 6 September 1940.
34 ‘EXTRACT from War Cabinet Conclusions’ of 4 September 1940 (typescript).
35 Khanolkar, Walchand Hirachand, p. 354; Piramal, Business legends, Kindle location 3650; Singh, History ofaviation, p. 252.
36 Khanolkar, Walchand Hirachand, pp. 355-7; Piramal, Business legends, ch. 9.
37 G.O. No. D. 3663-3723—I. & C. 216-40-16, February 11 1941, in Mysore Government Proceedings,
February 1941.

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APARAJITH RAMNATH
Mysore government, and Walchand’s managing agency contributed three directors each.38
William Pawley’s role in the new company was crucial. As per an agreement between
him and HAL dated 23 December 1940, the company ‘desire[d] to obtain the assistance ofPawley who has experience essential and necessary for erecting, equipping and successfully
operating such factory’. The Mysore government would shortly grant the company a 200acre plot near Bangalore for building a factory and runway. Pawley was asked to produce a‘proper lay-out and all necessary and proper plans, designs, specifications, measurements
and other details’ for an aircraft manufacture facility spread over 125,000 square feet.
Pawley was also to identify the ‘machinery and other equipment’ required, which thecompany would purchase in the USA. Significantly, he would have full charge of the
management of the factory, deciding whom to recruit and how much to pay them.39
Meanwhile, Pawley’s Intercontinent Corporation had acquired on behalf of Hindustan
Aircraft a licence allowing them to manufacture Intercontinent-Harlow PC 5 Trainers andspare parts from materials also to be procured by Intercontinent.40 The Corporation alsopurchased from the Chinese government one Vultee V12D Bomber (probably as aprototype), material to build 27 more such aircraft, and three ‘Wright Cyclone model 2,600
AB engines with 2 speed supercharger’, and rented from China ‘[j]igs, tools and fixtures’for a period of eleven months.41
It is not clear how Pawley was able initially to procure material from the USA, given thecondition under which the factory had been set up. Gita Piramal writes that after the initialmachinery had been obtained from the Chinese government, ‘the condition seems to havebeen met more in the breach.’42 Perhaps the MAP relaxed its stance (Beaverbrook resigned
in April 1941).43 More likely, the inauguration of lend-lease44 in March 1941 removed someof Britain and India’s constraints in sourcing aircraft and machinery from the USA. At any
rate, it is clear that from around 1942 HAL was getting component materials from the USA
on lend-lease (more below).45
In Bangalore, Walchand’s brother Lalchand Hirachand and two technical experts fromother Walchand-promoted companies, Varadarajan and Maganlal Shah, joined Pawley,
McCarthy, Sellett, and some of Pawley’s experts from his Chinese factory. They worked
together to put up the new factory in a matter of weeks.46 The factory was inaugurated in
January 1941, and began assembling a Harlow PC-5A, a two-seater. It delivered its firstaircraft to the government in August that year. A year later, HAL had built and carried out atest flight for its ‘first indigenous design, a nine-seat troop-carrying glider of wood-andfabric construction’.47
The agreement with Pawley stipulated that the employees ‘shall include about sixteen
American citizens possessing technical skill and experience in the art of manufacturing
aircraft.’ This included managers, department heads, and a chief accountant. They would be
paid salaries similar to those in the USA, plus a premium. Other than the American experts,
38 Piramal, Business legends, ch. 9.
39 ‘Agreement between Hindustan Aircraft and William Douglas Pawley’, Document No. 4, in ‘Documents ofHindustan Aircraft Ltd’.
40 Document No. 10, in ibid.
41 Document No. 12, in ibid.
42 Piramal, Business legends, Kindle locations 3704-8.
43 Boyce, ‘Aitken, William Maxwell’.
44 ‘lend-lease’, Encyclopaedia Britannica online, 2014 (http://www.britannica.com/topic/lend-lease, accessed
25 September 2015).
45 Khanolkar, Walchand Hirachand, p. 364.
46 Khanolkar, Walchand Hirachand, pp. 357-9; Carrozza, William D. Pawley, p. 111.
47 Singh, History of aviation, pp. 252-3.

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International Networks and Aircraft Manufacture in Colonial and Postcolonial India
the factory staff was to be made up of ‘Indian engineers, technicians, mechanics and other
employees’. If necessary, some individuals of other nationalities could be appointed. The
American experts, who would be employed for a fixed period, were expected to instruct the
Indians, so that the latter could take over the working of the factory after the Americans’departure.48
Walchand’s biographer writes that ‘300 Indian engineers highly trained in mechanics andnearly two thousand skilled workmen’ were working ‘[u]nder the direction of 22 American
technicians as of 1941.’49 A 1943 feature in the American illustrated magazine Life, on theother hand, shows two photographs, one of the ‘American staff’ and the other of the ‘Indianstaff’, each numbering around 40. The Indians, according to the caption, were ‘recruitedfrom among the alert young men of progressive Mysore, where education is free.’50
The state of Mysore, and in particular Bangalore, was indeed a key source of Indian
engineers and technicians for Hindustan. The Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore
had been inaugurated in 1911 upon the initiative of industrialist J.N. Tata and his
successors, as an institution for ‘research and … advanced training in selected branches of
Science and Engineering.’ When HAL was established, the Court of the Institute saw anopportunity, and founded an Aeronautical Engineering department in December 1942.51 Dr
V.M. Ghatage of HAL functioned as ‘officiating head’ of the department until the arrival of
Dr R.G. Harris of the Royal Aircraft Establishment, who became Professor and department
head in 1945. As of 1946, there was also an Assistant Professor, two lecturers, and ‘two or
three research scholars in receipt of stipends who have undergone the certificate course in
Aeronautical Engineering at the Institute.’52 Around 20 students were trained each year
from 1943 to 1945. They were engineering graduates, but the course was conducted ‘at astandard lower than Post-graduate level, in view of the fact that the students … had nobackground of aeronautical experience’. The course was comparable to the bachelor’s levelcourses at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the Imperial College in
London.53 Most of the early graduates of the course found jobs ‘in the maintenance andoverhaul establishments engaged in war work.’54 In addition to IISc, Bangalore was home
to other institutions that could provide engineers and technicians for the aircraft factory:
the Central College, the Government Engineering College, and the Sri Jayachamarajendra
Occupational Institute.55

IV Exit Walchand and Pawley: the war years
The formal entry of Japan into the war had underlined the strategic importance of the HAL
factory. The GOI decided that ‘the Air Forces, both our own and the American Air Force,
would require services [at the factory] which would render commercial operation virtually
impossible.’ The government also wanted to have the option of destroying the factory if itever seemed in danger of falling into Japanese hands. They ‘therefore bought out Walchandand his friends, and sterilized the Mysore interest.’ The former were paid Rs. 45 Lakh (their
48 Document No. 4, in ‘Documents of Hindustan Aircraft’.
49 Khanolkar, Walchand Hirachand, p. 359.
50 ‘American makes planes in India’, Life, 22 March 1943, pp. 30 and 32.
51 ‘Aerospace engineering: history’, http://www.aero.iisc.ernet.in/page/history, accessed 22 September 2015.
52 Report of the United Kingdom aircraft mission (Delhi: Manager of Publications, 1946), p. 19. Hereinafter

cited as UK Mission Report.
53 UK Mission Report, p. 19.
54 Ibid., p. 19.
55 Ibid., p. 27.

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APARAJITH RAMNATH
initial investment of 25 Lakh, plus 20 Lakh as compensation). The Mysore Government
agreed to step back for the duration of the war and two years beyond, so that the GOI had
complete managerial control. The GOI had to retain Pawley, whose services werehandsomely remunerated under the original contract, ‘as he virtually controlled theAmerican personnel’ at the factory. The GOI found the entire exercise ‘damnably
expensive’, but took over Hindustan Aircraft in April 1942.56
That same month, William Pawley’s CAMCO factory in Loiwing was bombed by
Japanese raiders and the site rendered unusable.57 Equipment salvaged was transferred to
Bangalore. Since this was technically Chinese property, HAL agreed to produce in return
50 single-engine Vultee Bombers for China’s government.58
Around this time, the American Technical Mission (1942) visited India to makerecommendations on the country’s industrial production during the war.59 The Grady
Mission (as it was also known) emphasised the need to focus on the repair, maintenanceand assembly of American aircraft in India during the war, and the building of more
airports safe from aerial attack. India was going to become an important base and stopover
for Allied planes in the Asian side of the war. In terms reminiscent of the MAP’s position acouple of years earlier, the Mission suggested that aircraft production was best left to theUSA, which was scheduled to turn out 60,000 and 75,000 aircraft respectively in 1942 and1943. India needed as many repair facilities as possible. ‘It would be unfortunate if thisprogram were to be diverted by an abortive attempt to establish an airplane manufacturingindustry in India.’60
Soon after this, the GOI arranged to let the US Army Air Force (USAAF) use theHindustan Aircraft factory for repairs. The United States Commander was to have‘technical control [and would] appoint resident advisers, whose advice [would] beaccepted’ unless the Chairman (Sir John Higgins, representing the GOI) thought the GOI
should intervene. Among other things, this was expected to ‘remove the friction which has
been perceptible between the Company’s American personnel and the R.A.F.’61 In 1943 the
GOI turned over the running of the factory to the Tenth United States Army Air Force. The
factory’s manufacturing contracts (with the Indian and Chinese governments) werecancelled, at great cost, and it was converted almost entirely into a repair centre.62
Pawley’s role now began to diminish. Signs were already visible in 1942, when he was in
the US trying to procure materials. A.C.B. Symon of the Indian Purchasing Mission in
Washington, D.C. reported to W.M. Yeatts of the American Purchasing Section in the GOI’s
Supply Department that while his office felt India should undertake procurement throughlend-lease, Pawley was against it, thinking it would take more time. Pawley was a suave
negotiator used to making rapid deals,63 and, Symon felt, he was ‘finding it difficult torealise that his influence in high quarters here in present circumstances is far less than may
56 Extract, E.M. Jenkins to W.D. Croft, 13 April 1943, in IOR/L/E/8/1711; Khanolkar, Walchand Hirachand,
pp. 363-5; Piramal, Business legends, ch. 9. The quoted text is from the first source (the extract from Jenkins’s
letter).
57 See R.C. Wertz to W.D. Pawley, 18 June 1942, ‘CAMCO and the fall of Loiwing’, on writer Daniel Ford’s
website (http://www.warbirdforum.com/loiwing.htm, accessed 26 September 2015).
58 Extract, Jenkins to Croft, 13 April 1943.
59 Lockwood, The Indian bourgeoise, pp. 154-5.
60 Typescript extract from American Technical Mission Report, 20 May 1942, in IOR/L/E/8/1711.
61 Extract, Jenkins (GOI) to Croft (India Office), 13 July 1942.
62 Extract, Jenkins to Croft, 13 April 1943; ‘Hindustan Aircraft, Ltd.’, Flight, 27 August 1954, p. 296. All
issues from Flight cited here were accessed via the online scanned archive at https://www.flightglobal.com/
pdfarchive/index.html.
63 Carrozza, William D. Pawley.

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International Networks and Aircraft Manufacture in Colonial and Postcolonial India
have been the case in pre-war days.’ He was also struggling to get material from the US Air
Corps. The RAF Delegation in the US, on the other hand, was doing an effective job
sending out tools to India, and it might soon prove necessary to ‘take the whole thing out
of Pawley’s hands and deal with it through the R.A.F. Delegation who are giving us thefullest possible co-operation.’64 Nor did Pawley find the going easy in Bangalore. A GOI
official reported in 1943 that he was ‘heartily (and I think unjustly) disliked by theAmericans, and in the changed conditions is not really needed.’ Consequently, thegovernment was ‘trying to get him “organised out” of the business, and … he [had]agreed.’65
Under the USAAF, the Hindustan Aircraft factory swiftly scaled up its capacity and its
workforce.66 It operated in three shifts and had some 15,000 workers. The engine (overhaul)
department was hived off, and conditioned engines at the rate of 300 a month.67 The
factory, functioning as the 84th Air Depot of the USAAF, repaired and serviced Catalinas,
P-38 Lightnings, B-25 Mitchells, B-24 Liberators, C-46 Commandos and C-47 Dakotas, as‘Bangalore became the centre for all major overhaul and repair work on US aircraft’. The
war years left ‘thousands of Indian workers [with] thorough training in all aspects ofaircraft and engine maintenance’.68
While HAL was under the direction of the USAAF, it continued to receive substantial
assistance from the Indian Institute of Science. As noted earlier, IISc had begun an
Aeronautical Engineering department in 1942, and some of its graduates were employed in
HAL during the war. But the Bangalore-based department also served as a research andtesting facility for the HAL factory, building a wind tunnel largely financed by the GOI.69
Other IISc departments, Electrical Technology in particular, also cooperated closely with
HAL. At one point during the war, ‘[o]ver a dozen of the students of this department [were]
occupying positions of responsibility in the design, production, inspection and radio
departments of the Hindustan Aircraft Ltd.’70 HAL was also interested in the department’s
work on ‘[t]he use of optical methods for the precision testing of gauges’ and had plans towork with the department (which had rigged up a special generator) to try and produce
magnesium through electrolysis.71

V The post-war years: Towards manufacture
At the end of World War II, the GOI was free once more to consider the original purpose of
HAL: the manufacture, and not just maintenance, of aircraft. Moreover, when the US Armyleft, demand for the factory’s services fell, and a new programme had to be found for it inpeacetime.72 In this context, the Government of India requested the British MAP (whichsoon after this became the Ministry of Supply and Aircraft Production, or MSAP) toconstitute a mission to advise on the potential for beginning aircraft manufacture in India
for the civil sector and the Royal Indian Air Force.
64 Extract, Symon to Yeatts, 24 June 1942, in IOR/L/E/8/1711.
65 Extract, Jenkins to Croft, 13 April 1943.
66 Singh, History of aviation, p. 253.
67 ‘Hindustan Aircraft, Ltd.’, Flight, 27 August 1954, p. 296.
68 Singh, History of aviation, p. 253.
69 Undated typed note, ‘A brief statement of the part which the Indian Institute of Science has been taking in

war-effort’, [1940s], p. 5. Courtesy IISc Archives, Bengaluru.
70 Ibid., p. 2.
71 Ibid., pp. 4-5.
72 Singh, History of aviation, p. 253; ‘Hindustan Aircraft, Ltd.’, Flight, 27 August 1954, p. 296.

51

APARAJITH RAMNATHThe United Kingdom Aircraft Mission consisted of J.V. Connolly and L.R. Barnett of theMSAP, and J.D. North and S.P. Wordley of the Society of British Aircraft Constructors.
They spent around a month touring India in March-April 1946, visiting various private
industrial enterprises, the Hindustan Aircraft works, and the Indian Institute of Science, andmeeting with officials of the Government of India.73
Unsurprisingly, the Mission recommended that the HAL factory be made the centre ofaircraft production. It was the only factory in the country where full assembly of aircraft
had been undertaken; it had even constructed and tested a glider of its own design in theearly years. IISc, the Central College, the Government Engineering College, and the Sri
Jayachamarajendra Occupational Institute in Bangalore could act as sources of trained
personnel, and the salubrious climate of Bangalore would be suitable for foreign employees
should they be required.74
The factory, however, would need to be ‘reorganised’ (i.e. downsized), as the wartime
scale of operations could not be expected to continue.75 The number of aircraft required to
be built or maintained would still be small, at least for civilian purposes. The DirectorGeneral of Civil Aviation informed the UK Technical Mission that government plans forflights carrying passengers, mail and freight would translate to a demand of about 30
planes, 20-30 seaters ‘of the DC.3 or Viking class’. He estimated that the total annual
demand for planes required for commercial use, private ownership and flying clubs
combined in the period 1946-50 was 65. This was projected to increase gradually to 120 in
the period 1961-65.76
The Mission insisted that ‘a firm order should be placed with the reconstituted company
for the manufacture and development of a locally designed aircraft’.77 As HAL’s designteam worked on the indigenous aircraft, a Technical Director appointed from outside India
was to provide guidance, but keep at a distance and allow the team to learn from its
mistakes.78 The Mission also stressed that HAL should take more direct responsibility forthe training of personnel for the expanded factory. For skilled labour, they recommended afive-year programme of apprenticeship beginning at the age of sixteen, with instruction
either at a vocational institute or in a school in the factory.79
Meanwhile, although many of the American engineers employed at HAL had begun toleave the company when their contracts ended,80 concerns emerged in some quarters about
the continued reliance on foreign experts. In 1946 a petitioner claiming to be the Chief
Engineer at HAL wrote to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the GOI’s Home Member (the Indian
National Congress was at the helm of a recently formed Interim Government) that Indiansat HAL were marginalised and underpaid, while the company was becoming a ‘dumping
ground for some of the Britishers who were brought from England during the war for [the]Supply Department as so-called “Experts”.’81 Addressing the claims, the Member for
73 UK Mission Report, pp. 1-3.
74 Ibid., p. 5 and pp. 26-7.
75 Ibid., p. 5.
76 Ibid., p. 16.
77 Ibid., p. 6.
78 Ibid., p. 30.
79 Ibid., p. 39.
80 In 1945 several American employees of HAL requested permission to stay on in India and start otherbusinesses. See ‘Policy in relation to American Nationals desirous of settling [sic] up business in Mysore.’ FileNo. 10/26/46. GOI, Home Department, Poll (E) Section. Digitised Public Records Home Political, National
Archives of India (NAI). Digital Identifier: PR_000003016781. All digitised records of the NAI cited here wereaccessed via https://www.abhilekh-patal.in.
81 A. Mitra to Vallabhbhai Patel, 13 November 1946, in ‘Discrimination against Indians in The Hindustan

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International Networks and Aircraft Manufacture in Colonial and Postcolonial India
Industries and Supplies (the department concerned with HAL) questioned the authenticityof the letter, but acknowledged that—while he was keen on promoting Indian talent—the
country, ‘in the matter of aircraft, … must be prepared for some time to come to appoint
the most efficient personnel she can find irrespective of nationality.’ 82 As we shall see
below, Indian design expertise was developed to a considerable extent in the subsequent
decades, although engineers and designers from various other countries were often
involved, either as employees or as consultants.

VI HAL and aircraft manufacture in Independent India
After Independence, HAL continued to be overseen by the Ministry of Industries andSupplies until it was shifted to the Ministry of Defence in 1951.83 In 1952 a new branch of
the company was established in Barrackpore near Calcutta for the reconditioning of Dakota
aircraft. In the early 1960s the government set up new factories at Kanpur’s Air Force
Station and—under the name of Aeronautics India Ltd.—in Nasik, Koraput, and Hyderabad
for specific projects. These facilities were merged with HAL’s existing ones in October
1964 to form a new company called Hindustan Aeronautics Limited. 84 This section
addresses the period from Independence (1947) to HAL’s reorganisation (1964), withoccasional comments on later developments.
Although maintenance and overhaul still accounted for a large part of the company’s
activities,85 the story of HAL after Independence was one of two competing modes ofaircraft manufacture. The first consisted of the Indian government’s efforts to become selfsufficient in aircraft manufacture by promoting indigenous design and development. The
second was the production of military trainers and fighters under licence from wellestablished international companies, a route that the Indian government frequently took.
It was the latter option that was chosen when, around a year after the UK Mission’s visit,a start was made on manufacturing. In 1947, it was reported that the GOI had placed anorder for Percival Prentice trainer aircraft. Initially the components for 20 trainers were to
be sent to Bangalore to be assembled there, and the subsequent planes would be built‘under licence from the Percival Aircraft Company’ of the United Kingdom.86 The first ofthese was test-flown on 30 April 1949.87 As the needs of the Air Force scaled up, HAL
chose licensed production on several occasions. By the time of the 1964 reorganisation, it
had signed agreements with the DeHavilland Company (UK) to build the Vampire, a jet
fighter; with Folland Ltd. (UK) to produce the minimalist Gnat fighters; with Sud Aviation(France) to build Alouette III helicopters, rechristened ‘Chetak’; with Bristol Aero-Engines
Ltd. (UK) to manufacture Orpheus turbojet engines; and—beginning a long partnership—with the USSR government to build the supersonic MiG-21 fighter planes.88
Aircrafts, Bangalore’, File No. 2/4 (Nov. 1946), Digitised Private Papers of Sardar Patel, NAI. Digital Identifier:PP_000000006264.
82 John Matthai to Vallabhbhai Patel, 18 December 1946, in ibid. On the Interim Government, see Riddick,
History of British India, p. 118.
83 Ibid.; ‘Glimpses of traversed path (1940 till date)’, PDF file downloaded from the website of Hindustan
Aeronautics Limited (hal-india.co.in).
84 ‘Glimpses of traversed path’. On Barrackpore/Calcutta, see also ‘Hindustan Aircraft, Ltd.’, Flight, 26 August
1955, p. 330.
85 Alastair Pugh, ‘Around Hindustan Aircraft’, Flight, 19 December 1958, pp. 939-41.
86 ‘Percival Prentice under licence’, Flight, 15 May 1947, p. 445.
87 ‘Indian Prentice airborne’, Flight, 19 May 1949, p. 587.
88 ‘Glimpses of traversed Path’; ‘Hindustan Aircraft, Ltd.’, Flight, 26 August 1955, p. 330; ‘Hindustan Aircraft(Private) Ltd.’, Flight, 23 August 1957, p. 283. On MiG-21s, Chetaks, Gnats, and Vampires, see respectively:

53

APARAJITH RAMNATH
Although HAL could theoretically produce aircraft for civilian/commercial as well as
military purposes, it was increasingly bound up with the Indian defence establishment (asthe list of aircraft discussed above indicates).89 The shift to the jurisdiction of the Ministryof Defence in 1951 was symbolic of this development. The decision, in fact, wasprecipitated by a report from the General Manager of the DeHavilland Company, who inlate 1950 had made an inspection of HAL’s progress in producing Vampires, concludingthat the staff was behind schedule, and highlighting several areas of concern.90
In parallel with licensed production, HAL began putting in place a programme ofindigenous design. This was headed not by a foreign expert, as the UK Mission had
suggested in 1946, but by Vishnu Madhav Ghatage, who had returned to the company in1947 after a spell of five years on the faculty of IISc’s Aeronautical Engineering
department. He brought with him a team of graduates from that institution, and helped set
up a Design and Development Department at HAL. Ghatage, who had done his doctoral
work under the famous German aerodynamics expert Ludwig Prandtl at Göttingen in the
1930s, was to remain central to design efforts at HAL until his retirement in 1971.91
In 1948, HAL began working on the designs of two trainer aircraft, the HT-2 and the HT10. The HT-2, designed by Ghatage, was ‘the first aircraft of wholly Indian origin to be put
into production.’ The engine was not designed in-house, though; the HT-2 used a Cirrus
Major III engine (155 h.p.), with tandem seating for the flying instructor and the trainee.
Weighing 2,240 lb, the plane was 25 feet long and had a wing span of 35 feet. The HT-2,
which was successfully flown in a 1951 test, could achieve a maximum speed of 130 miles
per hour.92 Soon there was serious thought of exporting, particularly to Asian countries, ‘[t]his unpretentious but efficient basic trainer’. A demonstration tour abroad was on the cards,
and the HT-2 had been praised by the well-known German aircraft designer Dr Kurt Tank.93
By 1958, the HT-2 was being described as ‘the standard ab-initio trainer for the I.A.F. andthe Indian Navy’; it was being ‘used also by the civil aviation training establishments forbasic flying training.’94
By the mid-1950s, the HAL factory had expanded considerably from its post-war
position. It now spanned 1,100 acres and had around 10,000 employees in all. 95 In the
1960s two more prominent aircraft came out of the Hindustan Aircraft stable: the HF-24
Maruta fighter and bomber, and the HJT-16 Kiran, a jet trainer. Kurt Tank, who had praised
the HT-2, was an ace designer formerly associated with Focke-Wulf in Germany, where hehad designed key fighter planes for the Luftwaffe. At the end of the war he had moved to‘MiG’, Encyclopaedia Britannica online, 2015 (http://www.britannica.com/technology/MiG-Soviet-aircraft);‘Chetak’, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited website, https://hal-india.co.in/Product_Details.
aspx?Mkey=54&lKey=&CKey=26; ‘Folland Gnat’, BAE Systems website, https://www.baesystems.com/en/
heritage/gnat; ‘De Havilland DH 100 Vampire’, BAE Systems website, https://www.baesystems.com/en/heritage/de-havilland-vampire (all URLs accessed 7 October 2019).
89 See also Pugh, ‘Around Hindustan Aircraft’.
90 ‘Vampire Production by The Hindustan Aircraft Ltd.—Desirability of transferring this Company to the
Defence Ministry’, File No. 2/432, 1950, Digitised Private Papers of Sardar Patel, NAI, passim. Digital Identifier:PP_000000006161.
91 ‘Then and now. Dr V.M. Ghatage: designer of planes’, The Week, 29 June – 5 July 1986, p. 54; Singh,
History of aviation, p. 253; ‘Vishnu Madhav Ghatage’, Mathematics Genealogy Project (North Dakota State
University, Fargo), http://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=115380, accessed 27 September 2015;‘Ludwig Prandtl “Father of modern aerodynamics”’, DLR website (German Aerospace Center), http://www.dlr.
de/100Jahre/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-2565/4432_read-7449/, accessed 22 September 2015.
92 ‘Hindustan HT-2’, Flight, 27 August 1954, p. 284; ‘Glimpses of traversed path’.
93 ‘Aircraft of the Commonwealth’, Flight, [26?] August 1955, p. 295.
94 Alastair Pugh, ‘Around Hindustan Aircraft’, Flight, 19 December 1958, pp. 939-41, here p. 939.
95 ‘Hindustan Aircraft, Ltd.’, Flight, 26 August 1955, p. 330.

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International Networks and Aircraft Manufacture in Colonial and Postcolonial India
Argentina, where he worked for a number of years before the Indian government invitedhim, around 1956, to help HAL build its first locally designed fighter plane. Tank and his
team of German and Indian engineers (18 Germans and 25 Indians to begin with) workedon the project designated HF-24 or Maruta over the next eight years, until the first two
finished planes were handed over to the Indian Air Force (IAF) in May 1964. The Maruta
was a plane with ‘highly swept wings, a needle nose and a graceful … fuselage’. Poweredby two Bristol Siddeley Orpheus 703 turbojet engines (put together at HAL), the firstversion (Mk 1) could fly at supersonic speeds, and carry arms weighing approximately
4,000 lb.96
Working independently of Kurt Tank, Ghatage and his design team were charged withbringing out the first indigenously designed jet trainer, the HJT-16 or Kiran. Beginning in
April 1961, the work of this team (15 engineers to begin with, rising at one point to 35)
was placed on the backburner for a while as HAL focused on the Maruta. But it gathered
momentum again after the Maruta came close to completion, and the first Kiran flew in
September 1964. A trade magazine described the Kiran as ‘a wholly conventional,
workmanlike aeroplane’ that catered to the requirements of the IAF while providing
essential features for Indian conditions, like air conditioning. Powered by a Bristol Siddeley
engine, the Viper 11, the Kiran had adjacent seating for instructor and pupil in a ‘spacious’
cockpit.97 The jet trainer was a success: by 1977, well over a hundred Kirans had been
supplied to the air force and the navy.98
Throughout these developments, the Indian Institute of Science worked closely with
HAL. As we have seen, V.M. Ghatage had been loaned by HAL to IISc in 1942 to serve as
the first head of the Aeronautical Engineering department. He served in that position until
1945, then remained as a faculty member until 1947, when he returned to HAL. Subsequent
heads of the department included R.G. Harris (1945-48) of the Royal Aircraft
Establishment in Britain; Oskar G. Tietjens (1949-54), who, like Ghatage, had been a
student of Prandtl at Göttingen; and Satish Dhawan (1955-62), who had a PhD from
Caltech. It is not known whether Ghatage had recommended Tietjens, but he was part ofthe committee (in his capacity as Chief Designer at HAL) that appointed Dhawan as headof department.99 Like HAL, IISc was under the ultimate control of the Government ofIndia. It was overseen by the Ministry of Education, which, in some situations, took
decisions in close coordination with the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Finance, theMinistry of Industries and Supplies, and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation.100
IISc’s postgraduate course in aeronautical engineering underwent many transformations.
The initial certificate course (which ran until 1946) consisted of a year’s instruction andfour months’ practical experience at HAL. It was replaced by a two-year diploma (DIISc)
96 ‘India’s Hindustan HF-24 Joins the IAF: Maruta’, FLIGHT International, 2 July 1964, pp. 16-17; Zukowsky,‘Kurt Tank’.
97 ‘Hindustan HJT-16 Kiran: India’s primary trainer’, FLIGHT International, 11 March 1965, p. 371.
98 ‘Military aircraft of the world’, FLIGHT International, 5 March 1977, p. 592.
99 ‘50 years of Aerospace Engineering Department’ [1992], photocopied pamphlet (courtesy IISc Archives), pp.
2-4; Bhat and Sreenivasan, ‘Roddam Narasimha’, p. 298; ‘Indian Institute of Science Bangalore. Appointment to
the post of Professor & Head [of] Dept of Aeronautical Engineering’. File No. F 8 – 41/54, 1954. Digitised Public
Records, Ministry of Education, NAI. Digital Identifier: PR_000003042750.
100 This was clearly illustrated in the decision-making process followed when a new head was to be appointed
to the aeronautical engineering department, or when funds were sought for the department’s expansion. See‘Indian Institute of Science Bangalore. Appointment to the post of Professor’; and ‘Indian Institute of Science,
Bangalore. The meeting of the Expert Committee to consider the proposed Development Programme of the
Department of Aeronautical Engineering.’ Ministry of Education, Section T-I. File No. 8-23/50. Digitised Public
Records, Ministry of Education, NAI. Digital Identifier: PR_000003042533.

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APARAJITH RAMNATH
course, which was reclassified as a Masters course (ME) from 1958, when IISc became a‘deemed University’. In its first 15 years, the department granted a total of 42 certificatesand 58 diplomas. In addition, a customised six-month programme was offered to existing
staff at HAL. Soon the Aeronautical Engineering department began to admit research
students at the Masters and doctoral levels, although their numbers were small until the
1970s.101
The department was well equipped for research as well as teaching demonstrations. Its
infrastructure included a 7’ x 5’ closed circuit wind tunnel that had been inaugurated in
1944, supplemented by a 14’ x 9’ open circuit wind tunnel, opened in 1959 (O.G. Tietjens
had begun designing the latter in 1949). HAL made use of both tunnels to carry out studies.
The larger tunnel, in particular, was used in developing the HF-24 (Maruta) and HJT-16(Kiran) aircraft.102 Thus IISc supported HAL and the aeronautical industry in many ways:
by providing it with trained personnel, by affording it research and testing facilities, andthrough the research undertaken by its faculty members.103
Although the facilities at IISc were helping create a new generation of Indian aeronauticalengineers, HAL continued to make use of international experts in some roles in the 1950sand ‘60s. At various times, engineers from British firms like Percival and Bristol spent timein Bangalore to guide HAL’s production aircraft under licence from those companies. To
the private chagrin of officials representing British trade, they were not the only ones. In
the late 1940s, Rumanian and Czech experts visited HAL. One of them advised on thepossibility of producing aircraft engines, and reportedly tried to interest HAL in the Steyr
Daimler Puch diesel engine. Some of these visitors were allegedly ‘at pains to decry British
products. In this they found a ready helper in the Hindustan designer, Dr. Ghatage, who
was trained in Germany and affects to admire German aircraft products …’104 While theconcerns about Ghatage’s preferences appear exaggerated, HAL’s German connections
were indeed notable in the matter of experts. The central role played by Ghatage and Tank
(and the German engineers who worked under Tank) at the company, and by Tietjens at
IISc, has been described earlier. Much before Tank, in 1949, there were reports that HAL
had engaged Willy Messerschmitt, who had also designed aircraft for the Luftwaffe,
although it is unlikely that he actually visited or made a substantial contribution to HAL.105*
Two decades after Independence, HAL had some significant achievements to its name. In
addition to supplying the IAF with fighters produced under licence, it had brought out a
few locally designed planes, such as the HT-2 trainer, the HJT-16 jet trainer (Kiran), andthe HF-24 bomber (Maruta). Yet V.M. Ghatage, who served the company through all these101 ‘50 years’, pp. 3, 4 and 14.
102 Ibid., pp. 6-7 and 22; Tietjens, ‘Der Windkanal’.
103 On the department’s research work, see ‘50 years’, pp. 15-22.
104 ‘India’, Flight, 22 August 1958, p. 288; Confidential Memorandum, Office of the Senior U.K. Trade

Commissioner in India, New Delhi, 31 March 1949, in IOR/L/E/8/3622; ‘Extract from report of Mr. C. Gault,
Deputy High Commissioner, Madras on a visit to Mysore, July, 1948. POL. 25/1/7. Typescript in IOR/L/E/8/3622(file titled ‘Aircraft Industry in India: Including Manufacture of Railway Coaches by Hindustan Aircraft Limited,
Bangalore.’) The quoted text is from the last of these sources (Gault’s report).
105 ‘News from India’, Flight, 15 December 1949, p. 757; ‘Willy Messerschmitt’, Encyclopaedia Britannica
online, 2015 (http://www.britannica.com/biography/Willy-Messerschmitt, accessed 22 September 2015). With theAllies forbidding an aircraft industry in Germany after the war, German aircraft engineers plied their trade invarious countries including the United Arab Republic, Argentina and Spain. See Edgerton, Shock of the old, pp.
123-4.

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International Networks and Aircraft Manufacture in Colonial and Postcolonial India
developments and became known as the Bhishmapitamaha (grand patriarch) of the Indian
aircraft industry,106 expressed regret at two things as he looked back on the period. First,
the government had, in his view, not given the aircraft industry enough opportunities todevelop its indigenous design and construction capability. HAL’s operations had becometied almost exclusively to the needs of the IAF, and time-bound strategic needs meant thatthe government increasingly opted for production under licence.107 Secondly, even whenlocal design was undertaken, he felt the government had not placed enough faith in Indian
designers. He was not pleased with the decision to bring in Kurt Tank and set up a parallel
design team, led by German engineers, for the Maruta project. A distinguished former
student, S.R. Valluri, met Ghatage at Caltech in 1956, soon after Tank had been engaged.
‘There was a look of disappointment on his face,’ Valluri recalled later, ‘and I felt I was
seeing a beaten man.’108
More research is needed on the later development of HAL, but a glance at the company’s
subsequent trajectory suggests that some of Ghatage’s apprehensions were borne out. Asideof Tejas, a light combat aircraft (LCA) commissioned in 1993 and delivered to the IAF in
2016, there have been few high-profile local designs. The Maruta was decommissioned in
the 1980s as the Orpheus 703 engines it relied on were insufficiently powerful for its
purposes. Crucially, despite sporadic attempts to design aero-engines in India, that has yet
to come to fruition: even the Indian-designed aircraft have always used foreign-designed
aero-engines.109

VII Conclusion
American collaboration, Indian capital, Walchand Hirachand’s energies, and the policies ofprincely Mysore played important roles in the birth of aeronautical engineering in India.
Existing accounts have focused on Walchand’s efforts to get permission to manufacture
aircraft in India, and emphasised the colonial government’s uncooperative stance. Thisaccount has argued that the government’s position was a far more layered one that
depended on domestic and international political considerations, and above all, on theexigencies of war time. Churchill and Beaverbrook (occupied with developments in Britain
and Europe) appeared to show little interest in India’s aerial defence; the colonial
government in India, on the other hand, expended considerable energy on assessing
proposals from business groups (European and Indian) to undertake aircraft manufacture in
India. Indeed, the GOI had been considering the issue even before Walchand’s proposal.
They were motivated by two concerns: the increasing need for India to have a modicum of
aerial defence capability, and the fact that the demand for aircraft had become a rallying
cry for those who felt that the colonial government was not representative of Indian
interests. Viceroy Linlithgow’s communications in particular reveal a clear belief that it
106 Anantha Krishnan M., ‘Bhishma of HAL: legend lives on’, Times of India (Bangalore), 6 December 2003.
107 Mahindra, ‘Aircraft industry pioneer’; MR, ‘Around town’.
108 S.R. Valluri, ‘Top designer, great teacher’, Deccan Herald, 16 December 1991. See also Mahindra, ‘Aircraft

industry pioneer’.
109 Ajai Shukla, ‘Engine of indigenisation’, Business Standard online, 21 December 2015 (https://www.
business-standard.com/article/opinion/ajai-shukla-engine-of-indigenisation-115122101122_1.html, accessed 10
October 2019); Ajai Shukla, ‘Taking Tejas forward’, Business Standard online, 5 July 2016 (https://www.
business-standard.com/article/opinion/ajai-shukla-taking-tejas-forward-116070401158_1.html, accessed 11
October 2019); ‘Then and now. Dr V.M. Ghatage’; Mahindra, ‘Aircraft industry pioneer’; Pugh, ‘Around
Hindustan Aircraft’, p. 941; Sebastien Roblin, ‘India’s disappointing Marut jet fighter proved itself in combat’,
The National Interest online, 13 August 2017 (https://nationalinterest.org/blog/indias-disappointing-marut-jetfighter-proved-itself-combat-21875, accessed 11 October 2019).

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APARAJITH RAMNATH
was in the interests of political stability to heed these demands. Consequently, he became akeen champion of the Walchand-Pawley proposal for an Indian factory. L.S. Amery,
Secretary of State for India in London, was also an energetic proponent of the scheme.
The United States played no small role in HAL’s fortunes (if indirectly at first). Indeed
the prospects for establishing an aircraft factory depended not only upon the policies andpatronage of the colonial government, but also on the ability of Indian entrepreneurs to
identify technological partners who would sell them machinery and manufacturing knowhow while undertaking to train a future generation of Indian engineers. William Pawley’s
contacts and reputation in China played an important part in HAL finally getting the green
signal. Again, world politics (as opposed to localised colonial concerns) were important:
had Britain and America not been engaged in trying to support (despite declared neutrality)
Chiang-Kai Shek’s Chinese government as a bulwark against Japanese expansion, Pawley
would not have set up his CAMCO factories in China. It is conceivable that the meetingwith Walchand came as a godsend to Pawley, who knew that his Loiwing factory was in aperilous situation, and could now think of shifting his Asian base to India. 110 After
Walchand and Pawley’s exit, the USAAF’s management helped consolidate HAL’s
reputation as a centre for repair and overhaul.
Some continuities are apparent in HAL’s trajectory after Independence. Experts like V.M.
Ghatage continued to play an important role, as did the educational institutions of Mysore
state, particularly the Indian Institute of Science. The UK’s advice was sought during thetransition to manufacturing, and HAL continued to have a strong relationship with the
British aircraft industry. And while the local design and manufacture of aeroplanes received
more attention than they had previously, military requirements continued to dictate thedirection of HAL’s development, keeping both aircraft maintenance and licensed
production centre stage.
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