Wings of Duty

Wings of Duty — Page 10

Syed Muhammad Ahmad 10 choice, I stayed on at Government College to do my BSc which was then a two-year degree. When I turned 18, and with few options ahead of me as my father was no longer supporting me financially, I decided to join the Air Force. This was a painful period of my life, as I was neither able to become a doctor—which I had so badly wanted—nor was I able to become a civil engineer as my father had wished. Young people today might find this strange, but when I was growing up, it was normal for parents to decide the careers of their children without giving thought to what the children actually wanted. In August 1943, I joined the Air Force as a flight lieutenant. Due to an urgent demand for trained pilots during the Second World War, our flight training was accelerated and completed in short order. We were taught the four stages of flying (basic flying, applied flying, operational flying and air gunnery and weapons) in only 18 months. Nowadays, it takes five years to complete this level of instruction. We received our training at the Air Force bases in Pune, Begumpet, Ambala and Peshawar. Being a bright student, I was selected for the Empire Flying Training Scheme in Canada during our training period in Begumpet. However I could not go because the program was