Violations of Nepal’s airspace during WWII

The Pundits don’t approve

On 5 January 1939, Adolf Hitler was in Berghof, his mountain retreat in the Bavarian Alps, a place from where a considerable number of decisions related to World War II were taken in addition to being a place where plans were set out that would result in some of the most atrocious genocidal crimes the world has known.  

Photographs of the place reveal a stunning, idyllic landscape, the actual retreat not appearing too impressive, a structure rather plainly mounted with ordinary corrugated sheet. But then you focus on the images containing Hitler himself.

What is striking about such images is the order and tranquility they betray, order reflected in the dress of the man and another lady who appears to be his partner or companion; order reflected in the two slender German shepherds bound to their masters by these delicately studded leashes but oblivious to the horror that war and aggression instigated by these people was wrecking across the lands.

To Berghof Castle had arrived that winter morning the Polish Foreign Minister Jozef Beck who had come determined to rebuff Hitler’s claims upon the port city of Danzig (Gdansk) and some other border guarantees on offer. Beck was known not just as foreign minister but as a Polish statesman, not a trifling designation and one wonders whether his Calvinist Protestant upbringing was to some extent the cause of the esteem he enjoyed.

That same day in January 1939, 7,000km away in Kathmandu, Prime Minister Juddha Shumsher Jung Bahadur Rana was sitting in his office with his assistant hovering about, wondering what the task of the day would be. The prime minister asked him to load the typewriter with paper, as important correspondence had to be dispatched that afternoon via telegram.

A servant had quietly surfaced in the room, made his way towards the Maharaja who used to sport a handlebar-walrus moustache. That early in the morning he was seen wearing a slightly Nepali-fied brown Kashmiri firan, the length of the arms not covering the wrist on which he was wearing a Longines Aviator watch with a huge brass dial that had been gifted to him a few months before. The servant set down the large brimmed cup of tulsi tea that sat upon a delicately ornate tea plate, possibly of Chinese provenance.

Word had become privy to the Maharaja via intimation he received by speed horse messenger the evening before, informing him of news from Hanuman Nagar in Saptari in the Tarai adjoining British Indian district of Bhagalpur. The news was rather ominous for the de-facto ruler of Nepal which was officially the Kingdom of Nepal but its Monarch had been so utterly emasculated that he was not really even a titular King.

In his letter to His Britannic Majesty’s Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary at the Court of Nepal, Sir Juddha brought to the attention of the British Envoy that on the afternoon of 29 December 1938, an aeroplane had been spotted flying northwards from the British side into Nepal’s airspace and had proceeded past Barmajia, the ‘head work of the Trijuga Canal’, navigating further for ten minutes before the aircraft took a sharp turn back south.  

The Maharaja could not say in his letter to the British Minister exactly where in British territory the plane had come from but he ventured to guess that the aircraft may have originated from Bhagalpur or Purnea. Then he went on to tell the Minister: ‘I should feel obliged if you would kindly make an enquiry and take needful steps to have the aviators warned not to fly across into Nepalese territory.’

His Britannic Majesty’s Minister at Kathmandu sat with this information for about a week after which he determined that the best course of action would be to write to the Chief Secretary of the Political and Appointment Department (in Patna), Mr R E Russel, Esq., C.I.E., I.C.E. (who had just completed his tenure as Collector of Puri, Orissa) to understand what exactly was going on.

Consequently, on 13 January 1939, such a letter was dispatched to the Chief Secretary whom the British Minister addressed by saying, ‘I would be grateful if the enquiry asked for could be made and needful steps taken to warn the aviators concerned not to fly across Nepalese Territory.’

At issue here was the fact that the Nepal government did not like planes flying over its territory, and several reasons were advanced by the leadership to explain why. First, Nepal felt that unless the government’s permission was obtained in advance for such flights, its independence was being denied.

The second and perhaps more proximate reason that gave rise to Nepal’s displeasure was that superstitious Pandits in Kathmandu objected to it on religious grounds, citing scripture and astrology to make the point that mechanised flying objects in Nepal could portend various manner of disturbances including natural calamities. 

One wonders, however, whether in fact the Pandits were more practical and shrewder in dispensing their ecclesiastical judgements than they let on: flights coming in and out of Nepal would surely erode their mystique and reduce their indispensable status.

Chief Secretary R E Russel went on to launch an investigation into the overflight that lasted about a month at the conclusion of which the British Minister in Kathmandu received correspondence from Patna that explained that no aeroplane except one belonging to a Mr Fairweather had flown on that particular date and that too did not ‘really’ fly over Nepal’s territory.

He explained: ‘It is probable that the Maharaja of Nepal is referring to this aeroplane whose course was misjudged by the people in Nepal.’ However, the Chief Secretary went on to say that Mr Fairweather and others were being informed ‘not to fly in future on a course which would involve any likelihood of crossing the Nepalese boundary without obtaining previous permission’.

W M Fairweather at the time was stationed in Muzaffarpur, and was himself compelled to write to the Chief Secretary explaining that though he regretted that the Nepal government had complained to them about a delinquent flight in their airspace, ‘this is not correct’.

He explained that when his plane was well above the clouds, ‘the people on the border heard it, and imagined it was flying into Nepal’. Actually, according to Fairweather, the border was roughly 20 miles north from where he was flying to view a specific section of the Kosi river, and then he had ‘climbed right above the clouds heading north for about 10 miles’, taking in a view of Mt Everest and then circling back down south.

Upon receipt of the Chief Secretary’s letter, the British Minister went on to write to His Highness the Prime Minister relating all of this information adding at the end: ‘Mr Fairweather has asked if he should write Your Highness a personal letter explaining exactly what he did. Would Your Highness like him to do so?’

A few days later the Maharaja wrote back, noting with thanks the information supplied to him by the British Minister but expressing rather sternly, ‘there is no mistake in the fact reported from Barmajia that an aeroplane was seen flying over that place steering northwards and back again after a few minutes’.

Explaining the obvious fact that as Barmajia was situated several miles from the Nepal-Britain border, ‘the appearance of the aeroplane there on a fine day could not have been due to the pilot having lost his bearing owing to atmospheric disturbance’.

The Prime Minister, however, was now satisfied with the action being taken to prevent a repeat of such an incident and under the circumstances did ‘not see any necessity of asking Mr Fairweather to write a personal letter to me in the matter’.  

Nepal’s fear of Japanese planes

Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, is a tropical haven of small verdant green rolling hills looking out to lagoon blue waters of the Coral Sea beyond which is northern Australia. 

With rather moderate temperatures for a place that features a tropical savanna climate, the flora and fauna, the kangaroos and Birds of Paradise from which were drawn the feathers used for the Crown worn by Monarchs of Nepal, makes it an attractive location.

On 8 May 1942, United States and Australian naval and air forces engaged with the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Battle of the Coral Sea off the coast of Port Moresby. A Japanese carrier air attack had bombed the USS Lexington which had to be abandoned and scuttled — the first American carrier lost in World War II.

Though tactically this was perceived as a success for the Japanese, the battle was in fact a strategic victory for the Allies as it prevented the Japanese capture of Port Moresby and halted its southward expansion into Australia, cutting off vital sea lanes.

Imperial Japan had enjoyed a string of military successes leading up to 1942 by which time it had established numerous military bases on captured territories across Asia and the Pacific including Singapore, Rabaul, the Philippines, Dutch East Indies, Burma and outposts in the Andaman Islands, New Guinea and the Solomons, all places where the Japanese maintained naval and air facilities.

The British Minister at the Legation in Kathmandu had probably not yet heard the news that the USS Lexington had gone down. Had such news reached the British envoy on 8 May 1942, perhaps the tone of his letter written the same day would not have been so utterly lacking in urgency and disjointed from global events of the day. 

The letter was to Major A S B Shah, the Deputy Secretary to the Government of India in the External Affairs Department in New Delhi.

Four days earlier, the Nepali officer attached to the British Legation sought a special tete-a-tete with the British Minister to inform him that on 29 April 1942, an aeroplane was seen flying over Amlekhganj in Nepal and that numerous other planes had been flying over Nepali territory as well.

The officer explained to the Minister that though the Nepal government did not wish to complain, it felt compelled to bring this to his notice as it was wrong to violate Nepali air space ‘particularly now when it was difficult to convince the Nepalese that they were out of long-range Japanese bombers’.

In fact, Nepal was not out of range of Japan’s air force which had among other assets, a number of Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighters that boasted impressive range of some 3,100km. But that did not figure into the calculus of the British Minister when he told A S B Shah that he assured Nepal’s leadership ‘that Japanese bombers could not reach any portion of Nepal yet’ but that he agreed that our aeroplanes should not fly over Nepal’s territory if it could be avoided.

In his discussions the British Minister informed the officer that it would be useless for him ‘to tell the Government of India vaguely that planes had flown over [Nepal]. I must give details’. And details were furnished to the Minister — surprisingly meticulous ones too given the circumstances — containing exact place, date, time, number of planes observed, and adding the point of reference in British Indian territory as well (pictured, below).

With respect to a plane that had reportedly flown over Sisagarhi, the British Minister was probably not too enthusiastic to relate to New Delhi that the Post Commander reported that incident as having occurred at precisely ‘10:21am’ (and not 10:20am!) on ‘6.5.42.’, and ‘found that the Sepoys had fallen in and were about to open fire when he stopped them saying that the plane must be a British or American plane’.

That Nepal had nearly fired upon an Allied aircraft using small arms (probably Martini-Henry rifles) would not just have been injurious to global war propaganda, but would have likely created a significant fall-out in British-Nepal relations with immediate and serious repercussions for Gurkha recruitment. 

Which explains why the Minister went on to inform A S B Shah that he would be grateful if this information could be passed on to Air Force Headquarters immediately ‘with the request that they will warn airmen against flying over Nepal territory’ because this was having a ‘bad effect’ on the Nepali people.

The British Minister decided to dispatch another confidential letter on 26 May 1942, in which he shared a further list of planes (pictured, below) which had been seen flying over Nepal. ‘This is not a good thing to happen,’ the British Minister emphasised, unless the Government of India ‘first obtained His Highness’ permission’ because the Nepal government did not like planes flying over its territory.

Four specific reasons were cited by the British Minister to explain why Nepal took umbrage: firstly, that unless prior permission was obtained, the Nepalis felt their independence was being trampled upon and secondly, that ‘so far their superstitious Pandits have objected to it on religious grounds’.

The third reason cited was that the morale of the people was being upset while the fourth point was a conundrum to even the Minister: apparently Nepal’s leadership insisted ‘that there is nothing to stop aerial photography of their country to which they strongly object, and curiously enough, are particularly averse to Indians flying over it’. What difference would it have made to Nepal whether airmen flying over the country were British or Indian? 

The Deputy Secretary to the Government of India in the External Affairs Department in New Delhi did not respond for 18 days, which appeared to leave the British Minister in Kathmandu in a state of some distress because he was likely receiving frequent reminders from the Nepalis seeking an official and definitive explanation.

The British Minister dispatched a confidential note on 26 May 1942, to His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs at the Foreign Office in London that contained the two letters sent to A S B Shah with the subject line ‘Aeroplanes seen flying over Nepalese territory’. This was almost as if to state the obvious: that this was a serious matter and he could not comprehend as to why no official clarification had been issued thus far.

We find no direct response to the British Minister’s telegram in official records, but notes scribbled on the bottom of the page of the telegram indicate that the authorities in London seconded to oversee the case observed two essential points arising out of the incident. 

The first was that the British believed that ‘the Nepalese Govt. adopt a more tolerant attitude than the Afghans, but then they haven’t had any bombs dropped [on them]!’ The other thing that caught the attention of the official in London who studied the enclosures forwarded to him from Kathmandu was that ‘the point about Nepalese fear of Japanese planes is a telling one and it is to be hoped that the Govt. of India will confirm with G.H.Q about violation’.

In other words, it could very well have been that the British underestimated Japan’s ability to strike at distances as far afield as Nepal, which implied that many parts of British India were even more vulnerable to such air attacks. Why else would the official in London find the point about Nepalese fear of Japanese planes so ‘telling’?

A S B Shah finally responded to His Britannic Majesty’s Minister in Kathmandu on 10 June 1942, informing him that the position had been ‘personally explained to the Air Staffs of Air Headquarters of Royal Air Force and of the United States Air Force’. Both had been informed that the Government of India ‘attach very great importance to the maintenance of good relations with the independent State of Nepal and the undesirability of further violations of her territory’. 

Pilots had been instructed not to fly over Nepal and furthermore, he wished the British Minister to know that ‘the second lot of violations took place probably before the orders could get out. There was a certain amount of time lag’.

The incident had drawn sufficient interest and curiosity by now that internal secret memoranda began circulating within British officialdom to provide a basis upon which authorities could properly comprehend the events in Nepal ending 30 June 1942. 

The Maharaja Prime Minister of Nepal had realised that a large number of British and American planes were being ‘flown from West to East over India from centres such as Karachi, Delhi, Ambala and Lahore and that, latitudinally, a part of Nepal lies in the way’.

The conclusion drawn by British analysts was that the principal reason planes were overflying Nepal was that ‘many of the pilots are young British and Americans who have never been East before … steps have been and are being taken by the Government of India’.

In July, another incident consumed the attention of the Secretary of State himself in London who in his cypher telegram to the Government of India, External Affairs Department, explained that the Times newspaper had published a report from ‘Chungking’ (Chongqing in southwest China) ‘that United States airman Colonel Scott has flown military aircraft over Everest’.

The Secretary of State instructed the Government of India to repeat to Kathmandu ‘Forminka No. 135 of 21st July’ and settle with the United States Commissioner in New Delhi exactly how the matter was to be handled if the Nepalis protested. The main point the Secretary wished to convey was that because the United States Government was not at the time represented in Kathmandu, ‘it might be convenient for us to assume technical responsibility’.

Forminka No. 135 was reference to a Cypher Telegram from Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, India Office, to His Majesty’s Minister in Kabul in which it was explained that ‘the fact that aircraft are based on British territory would not itself constitute British responsibility’ unless the aircraft were under British command and control. 

In this case, United States military aircraft in India were organised in ‘homogeneous American formations’ and were under the strategic control of the British Commander-in-Chief (India) yet the aircraft in question carried American markings.

The Secretary of State appeared to be uncertain as to ‘exactly what degree of British control this will mean in practice’ but that the position was essentially that either the US or British government could accept responsibility while His Majesty’s Government would be content to allow the British Minister in Kathmandu to confer with his United States colleague, based upon ‘instructions he receives from Washington, [and decide] which Government should do so’. 

The issue also seemed to hinge on the possibility that if the Americans accepted responsibility, this ‘might facilitate settlement of liability to pay compensation in remote contingency of this point arising’.

On 13 August 1942, Commanding General of the Nepal Army Sir Bahadur Shumsher Jung Bahadur Rana, G B E, happened to meet the British Minister in Kathmandu. General Bahadur was the son of Maharaja Prime Minister Juddha Shumsher Rana himself and was in fact widely believed by the British establishment to be the real power behind the scenes. He certainly resembled his father with the walrus moustache yet at times also looked like a mathematician when he decided to wear spectacles.

General Bahadur related to the British Minister that he recently had an ‘interview’ with a certain ‘Captain Boileau’ of the US Air Force, who had come to see the General while the latter was in New Delhi about American planes flying over Nepal. The General explained to the British Minister that Captain Boileau had initially inclined to be ‘overbearing’ when he asserted: ‘If you are helping the British, what is your objection to our flying over Nepal?’

To which the General said that Nepal was indeed helping the British which was in fact ‘an ancient and most friendly ally’ of Nepal but that Nepal was not a part of India and the British had always respected Nepalese territory and had not flown over it’. 

Captain Boileau responded initially that he ‘thought all this was nonsense’ and that it was a narrow-minded approach of the Nepalese to deny American planes access to their airspace. General Bahadur replied that ‘on the contrary he thought it was very rude of the Americans to do so without first asking for permission from the Nepalese Government’. 

The General was clear in his message to the American officer that if permission was sought and if the reasons for wanting to fly over Nepal were adequate, he was sure that the Prime Minister of Nepal would grant permission. Captain Boileau finally understood this message after which ‘he was very nice about everything and had promised that all possible steps would be taken to prevent American pilots flying over Nepalese territory’.  

Bhaskar Koirala is a New Delhi based writer. bhaskar.koirala@gmail.com