Khusro's Story - Tony Cunnane's Life and Times

One day towards the end of my tour in Pakistan, an Iraqi student called Hatam flying a solo aerobatic sortie at about 18,000 feet entered a spin, presumably by accident since this particular student was not one to break the rules. For exactly 95 seconds he transmitted a Mayday message over and over again in English, his second language. His last words just before the aircraft struck the ground sounded like 'Dive, dive, dive', although some members of the Board of Enquiry listening to the tape recording thought it was 'Die, die, die.' There was no doubt the aircraft was in a spin when it crashed because it struck the ground almost flat at a low forward speed. The subsequent Board of Inquiry concluded that the student failed to recover from an inadvertent spin following mishandling of the controls and he then failed to use his ejection seat because he was concentrating on transmitting the Mayday message. Perhaps there was another explanation that the Board did not consider, but I did a few days later when flying with an Iranian student called Lieutenant Khusro.

Khusro was a difficult name for me to pronounce properly. The 'kh' has to be voiced very strongly and is similar to the guttural 'ch' in the true Scottish pronunciation of 'loch' but even stronger. Early in my tour I could not manage that and I always called the unfortunate student 'Kusro' - I say unfortunate because 'kusro' in Farsi, the Iranian language, is a particularly foul expletive with an equally foul four-letter English equivalent. I could not understand why all the students broke into howls of laughter whenever I summoned Khusro from the crew room. They put me out of my ignorance only when I was half way through my first term with them.

Khusro was an excellent, aggressive pilot and a delightful personality even though at a squadron barbecue he tried to fool me into sampling grilled house sparrow - apparently an Iranian delicacy. A few days after Hatam's fatal accident I flew with Khusro on a progress check flight that included stalls and spins as a matter of routine. He had an interesting technique. Instead of recovering from a practice spin when I told him to do so, he took his hands and feet off the controls and looked across the cockpit at me with what I can only describe as an air of resignation.

"Inshaa'allah! Allah has control," he said simply, abandoning the flying controls and raising his hands as far as he could in the confined cockpit.

"No he hasn't, I have control!" I said, hastily grabbing the controls as the T37 started to wind itself up into a very dangerous high rotational spin. "Allah may look after you but he won't look after me."

Fearing that the deeply religious student might have thought that I was making mock of his religion, something I would never do to anyone of any religious persuasion, I discussed the incident with him during the debriefing after landing.

'You were quite right to take control of the aircraft, sir, because you are an infidel,' Khusro said in all seriousness. 'Perhaps you should consider embracing Islam?'

He genuinely believed that his God would save him from the spin should he wish to do so and, of course, no good Muslim would ever question the will of Allah. “Inshaa'allah” is one of the most common phrases used by Muslims worldwide; it may be translated as 'whatever Allah wills, will be'. There was perhaps some small, non-religious, reason for Khusro believing that leaving control of the aircraft in the hands of Allah was the right thing to do. As I wrote in an earlier story, the Cessna T37 could be so unpredictable when spinning that sometimes, but only sometimes, simply letting go of all the controls, including the rudder pedals, would induce the aircraft to recover to controlled flight. It was not a technique I would have put my trust in and not something we ever mentioned or taught to students. With the aid of my Pakistani staff colleagues, who were almost all Muslims, I persuaded Khusro that some things he had to do for himself without waiting for divine intervention. At the end of the academic year he graduated from the Air Force Academy and returned to the Imperial Iranian Air Force, as it was then, whilst I returned to England at the end of my tour of duty. I have often wondered what happened to him. A quarter of a decade later I returned to Risalpur, on tour with the Red Arrows.

Postscript. I learned in 2001 from a Pakistani source that Lt Khusro, and possibly other Iranian officers I knew during my tour of duty with the Pakistan Air Force, was executed when he refused to denounce the Shah and pledge allegiance to the new Revolutionary Government led by Ayatollah Khomeini. I am sure Khusro's final words would have been “Inshaa'allah”.

Postscript 2. I trust this story will not offend any Muslim readers but if it does I apologise. I took advice from Muslims friends before putting it on my web site; they all assured me it would not cause any offence.

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