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Honours and Awards are an integral part of the Armed Forces. It is therefore imperative that a consolidated record is maintained of the awardees along with their photographs. However, this part of history is more often than not neglected. This trend is not peculiar to the Indian Armed Forces but has been prevalent all over the world. This book attempts to rectify this situation in respect of the Indian Air Force.
As things stand today, there is no single known source that has citations and photographs of all decorated Air Warriors of the Indian Air Force. The official lists of awardees have missed out names of personnel recommended by the IAF and subsequently conferred with various awards. The availability of citations is even more difficult. As far as photographs of awardees is concerned, there is no system in place today and it is not possible to get hold of photographs of most decorated Air Warriors especially those who retired from the service in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
This Chronicle has attempted to fill in these gaps in the history of the Indian Air Force. The Chronicle covers the period right from the inception of the Indian Air Force i.e., 8th October, 1932 till 31st December, 2008. The names covered in this Chronicle not only include those belonging to the Indian Air Force but also members of the Indian Army, Indian Navy as well as the civilians whose names were recommended by the IAF. The Chronicle also includes those foreigners who were a part of or attached to the Indian Air Force when they were conferred with awards.
This Chronicle is a rare and never-before-attempted work in any part of the world.
The Chronicle is a saga of incredible courage, valour and supreme sacrifice of the IAF’s Air Warriors. The citations bring out various tales of the ingenuity, innovative spirit, determination, perseverance, making the best of meager resources and actions well beyond the call of duty. It is an enviable record of more than 4000 persons who were in the forefront in making the IAF what it is today.
Besides authentic citations (99%) and photographs (97%) of all the recipients of Presidential Awards the Chronicle also traces the origin and history of each award and gives other statistical data like the first winner of each award, number of awardees in each categories and other trivia that will be of interest to the readers. The Gazette notification for each award has also been indicated in the Chronicle.
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Pages : 918
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