Jagan Nath Vijayaraghavan, KC

Biography

Flight Lieutenant Jagan Nath Vijayaraghavan was born on 18 July 1933. Inspired by a desire to serve in uniform, he joined the Indian Air Force and was commissioned into the flying branch on 1 April 1953 at the age of twenty. He completed his pilot training at Air Force Station Hakimpet, earning his fighter pilot's wings, and was promoted to Flying Officer in 1954 and subsequently to Flight Lieutenant. Over nine years of service, he accumulated extensive flying experience across several fighter aircraft of the Indian Air Force and was later posted as a flying instructor, training young pilots in advanced operational manoeuvres. On 14 May 1962, Flight Lieutenant Vijayaraghavan got airborne on a spinning exercise instructional sortie with Pilot Officer Walter Edward Evans as his trainee on board a Harvard T-6 aircraft. During the exercise, the aircraft failed to recover from the spin. He took over control and made repeated attempts to recover the aircraft, but it continued to lose altitude rapidly. Realising that the situation was beyond recovery, he ordered his trainee to bail out. Pilot Officer Evans ejected safely and survived with minor injuries. By the time he himself could attempt to bail out, the aircraft had lost too much altitude for a safe ejection and crashed, claiming his life. For his conspicuous gallantry, presence of mind and spirit of supreme self-sacrifice in saving the life of his trainee, Flight Lieutenant Jagan Nath Vijayaraghavan was posthumously awarded the Kirti Chakra, the nation's second-highest peacetime gallantry award.