First woman Air Marshal of IAF: The doctor who dreamed of flying planes
When a young doctor was asked which armed force she wished to join, Padmavathy Swaminathan chose the Indian Air Force. She assumed the choice would put her in a cockpit.”I thought I would fly a plane if I join the Air Force,” she later said. That assumption preceded a 37-year career that reached its highest rank on 1 October, 2004, when Dr Padmavathy Bandopadhyay became the first woman Air Marshal of the Indian Air Force.
Born in Tirupati on 4 November, 1944, she looked after her ailing mother from the age of three until she was 13, moved to Delhi, and learnt English from a college teacher before topping the medical entrance examination.
After the 1962 war with China, the song Aye Mere Watan Ke Logo prompted her to tell her father that she wanted to join the army, although she did not yet know how the three forces differed.
At a time when very few women thought of joining the defence forces, the Military Nursing Service was her only option, and it required her to leave if she married. She therefore chose the Armed Forces Medical College in Pune, which also paid a stipend. There she won the Chief of Air Staff’s Silver Medal for topping Physiology and a gold medal for Medicine, and on 22 January, 1968 she was commissioned as a flying officer.
Aviation medicine, the study of how flight affects the human body, soon placed her at the heart of the service. She completed a postgraduate diploma in the subject at Bangalore University in April 1975 and worked on hypoxia and the design of flying clothing.
Her wish to fly was eventually met in a different way. Male officers at first would not share their medical problems with her, so her husband asked her to fly with them, which made them comfortable with her. As a researcher, she later flew the Gnat, the Hunter and the MiG-21.
In the early 1970s she improvised an incubator that helped three premature babies, weighing 0.75 kg, 1 kg and 1.20 kg, survive. During the 1971 war, while posted at Air Force Hospital, Halwara in Punjab, she volunteered for hazardous duties in the operational areas. She and her husband both received the Vishisht Seva Medal in the same investiture parade.
Her research then moved to high altitude. She contributed to the acclimatisation schedule for armed forces personnel posted at such heights and studied High Altitude Pulmonary Oedema.
In 1989 and 1990 she joined an expedition to the Arctic, a 10-week trip that evaluated the physical and psychological problems linked to extreme cold. She became the first Indian woman to conduct scientific research at the North Pole.
In 1978 she had already become the first woman officer to successfully complete the Defence Services Staff College course at Wellington. She became the first woman Air Commodore in 2000 and the first woman Air Vice Marshal in 2002, before taking charge as Director General Medical Services (Air) in 2004.
Her rise came while women were still new to the flying branch. Women had piloted IAF transport aircraft and helicopters only since 1991, and the first three women fighter pilots were commissioned on 18 June, 2016, nearly 12 years after her promotion.
