Prof. Prodyut Das 2

  The Calcutta crash of the BOAC Comet 1 G ALYV Saturday 2 rd May 1953.                                 Prof. Prodyut Das To prevent any Cainy Ball at the fair of Far from the Madding Crowd type anticlimax I state that it is quite possible that I and my playmates saw the ill- fated aircraft perhaps a minute before it crashed, I later saw the wrecked parts at the Kadamtala Railway Station when it was brought there by the Martin’s Light Railway. There is an excellent and detailed report that was published by the Indian authorities and is available along with other reports on the web as The Comet crash at Calcutta etc. That is the basis I have used in this piece and added my own comments and what I remember seeing from that event almost seventy years ago. My home town Howrah was a district town and perhaps like all district towns of that time it was very provincial and peaceful. Outside of the main roads where six bullock carts laden with hay and two war surplus Chevrolet trucks in f

  MAFT -The Tejas Airframe tests                                                                              Prof. Prodyut Das It has recently been announced that the main airframe of the Tejas is to be fatigue tested. The programme is named MAFT – Main Airframe Fatigue Test. This is welcome news not only because it is a very necessary test but it is probably an indication that the Tejas airframe is finally in a reasonable state of fitness to be tested. A figure being bandied around is that the airframe will be tested for a life of 10,000 hours. This may be an international norm but unless justified by the statistical data on the actual life experienced by single engine fighter in various roles in teh IAF it is both unnecessary and wasteful, particularly of time. We must learn to gently break rules. The comment about the airframe being finally ready stems from the information given by officials and that showed that the aircraft was probably grossly over designed. As revealed by th