Britain had promised to give independence to India once World War II was over, and sought its cooperation in fighting the Axis powers of Germany, Italy and Japan. This was the driving force for a band of Indian youth to join the armed forces then during the war, one of them being Flying Officer B. Ramachandra Rao, Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC), who hailed from Ongole in Andhra Pradesh.
Incidentally, Ramachandra Rao was born in Madras (now Chennai) on September 22, 1914, and was given the nickname of Emden as it was on that very day that the Madras harbour and its landmark lighthouse were bombarded by the German submarine SMS Emden during the beginning of World War 1, recalls his son B. Ravi.
The incident had inspired Ramachandra Rao to pursue a career in the then Royal Indian Air Force which he joined in 1941 after graduating from Madras University. He was commissioned into the No. 1 Squadron (the ‘Flying Tigers’) and served in Karachi, Peshawar and the Northwest Frontier Province, among other places, and thwarted the Japanese advance into India. As World War II progressed and the Japanese threat to eastern India via Burma (now Myanmar) grew, he moved with his squadron to the Burma front in 1944 where they were stationed at Imphal, and served under noted Marshall of the IAF Arjan Singh.
