Hakimpet has been the Alma mater for fighter pilots in IAF since 1951. The name of the stn/unit kept changing but the role didn’t. This patch is the earliest known patch (with the old school feel!) of JTW, as it was known in 1959 & this is the short story of the Patch.
AVM Agtey designed it when he was the Chief Inst –
Crests are usually a Weapon like a Dagger, a Sword or a Battle Axe, or some Bird or some wild animal. These are things that can be seen – so easy. I wanted to be different. I wanted my crest to depict the role of my Unit.
JTW was training pilots to fly Vampire ac, a subsonic aircraft, which would qualify them to fly the Transonic ac, like Hunters and Mysteres’ which could go through the sonic Barrier in a Dive. So I wanted a Sonic Barrier to be my Crest.
A typical diagram would show say 5 circles of different radii with their front edge being common. It took me quite some time to convince AirHQ of my idea, but finally, I did and got their approval
The crest itself was sourced from Album of late Air Mshl AR Pandit.
Originally published on Twitter
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