An airborne published blunder

An expensive, but a little known colourful publication put out by the Emirates managed national carrier SriLankan in early 2005 to celebrate the silver jubilee of the airline which fell on September 1, 2004 has distorted history with some glaring omissions and is also dotted with obvious spelling, grammatical and other mistakes. The book was initially priced at Rs.6000 but subsequently the price was reduced to Rs.3000, possibly due to these reasons. It is printed on offset paper of exceptional quality with an equally impressive hard cover sporting a picture of a climbing SriLankan aircraft with the title Monara Rising and a sub title ‘The History of Civil Aviation in Sri Lanka.’

One of the most glaring omissions is the role played by Canadian pilot Leonard J. Birchall, dubbed the ‘Saviour of Ceylon’ by none other than Sir Winston Churchill. On April 4, 1942 Sqn. Ldr. Birchall and his eight-man flight crew flying from Koggala were in a Catalina on a day long reconnaissance mission, patrolling an area 250 miles south-east of Ceylon. Just as they were about to end their patrol, about two hours before dusk, they spotted a speck on the southern horizon. This was the vanguard of Admiral Nagumo’s feared fleet heading towards Ceylon in search of what remained of British sea power in the East.

Birchall and his crew’s desperate signals alerted allied units as carrier-based zero fighters, flying twice as fast as the Catalina, attacked it. After ditching in the ocean, Birchall and the crew were picked up by a Japanese destroyer.

Referring to this major incident which possibly changed the fate of the war in South Asia, the book merely notes: “In late March, word was received that the Japanese fleet had departed from the East Indies and was heading for Ceylon. In Ratmalana, 30 Squadron had 24 Hurricanes serviceable. In the early evening on April 4, the enemy fleet was spotted four hundred miles south of Ceylon and at first light the following morning, it launched a force 125 aircraft…”

The book is a product of Media Prima, a London and Dubai based publishing company, ‘specializing in books covering aviation, equestrian topics and political biographies’. Another glaring gaffe, which any school leaver in Sri Lanka would be able to spot, is the identifying of Prime Minister Mrs. Sirima Bandaranaike as President Bandaranaike in a caption to a photograph of her cutting the first sod of earth to initiate the expansion of the BIA in 1970 with Canadian assistance. Interestingly these glaring blunders had been committed in a book in which the foreword has been written by none other than President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga.

Even incidents like the bomb blast at the Meenambakkam Airport in Chennai, which in fact was meant for an Air Lanka flight is without certain details.

In this incident the Air Lanka pilot Capt. Vajirapani had spotted the two large suspicious bags being carried into the aircraft as hand luggage and ordered them to be removed from the cabin, thus saving the aircraft and its complement of passengers and crew. Thereafter Panagoda Maheswaran and an accomplice who brought the bomb laden bags which were timed to explode after the plane landed in Colombo, left them at Customs and tried to warn the airport by phoning in the information without success. That blast killed 33 persons and injured 27 others on the ground in Meenambakkam Airport.

Capt. Vajirapani is the surviving captain of another aircraft, the City of Colombo, which was blasted by the Tigers on May 3, 1986 as it sat on the tarmac at the BIA waiting for a minor repair prior to departure for a short hop to Male. This incident is described thus: “Without warning, a device hidden in the aircraft’s fly away kit exploded, severing the tail from the main body of the aircraft almost cleanly. Twenty one people were killed, including an Air Lanka steward, and forty one injured. Among the dead was a Japanese couple who were returning home after celebrating their honeymoon in Sri Lanka.”