The HF-24 Marut
How India made an indigenous fighter and then threw it away.
Introduction:
The HAL HF-24 Marut (“Spirit of the Tempest”) was India’s first attempt at building an indigenous fighter aircraft. It was the brainchild of then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his Defence Minister, Krishna Menon. The design and development of the aircraft commenced in 1956 under the guidance of Kurt Tank, a German aircraft designer. He had previously led the design department at Focke-Wulf in Nazi Germany from 1931 to 1945. He was responsible for the creation of several important Luftwaffe aircraft of World War II, including the Fw 190 fighter aircraft, the Ta 152 fighter-interceptor and the Fw 200 Condor airliner.
The Marut was manufactured by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), an Indian public sector aerospace and defense company established in 1940. While HAL did have some experience with designing trainers and license-production of the Gnat, this was a ccompletely new, very daunting undertaking with its own challenges.
Conception:
The Marut was conceived as a Mach-2 supersonic-capable multi-role combat aircraft. It would serve as an all-weather, high-altitude interceptor, a low-level ground attack aircraft, could be adapted as a naval ship-based aircraft, and an advanced trainer. Other requirements were a service ceiling (the maximum aircraft an aircraft can go to) of 60000 feet/~18300 meters and a combat radius (distance between takeoff and landing) of 800 kilometers. In other words, it was an extremely ambitious project for its time. The wide-ranging demands for the Marut point towards a lack of clarity and focus which is vital for a project like this. Kurt Tank and his team understood that they were not just creating an aircraft, they would also be building a new aircraft production line and its corresponding supply chains from scratch. This was going to be a herculean task, but one that Tank decided to embark on anyway.
Problems:
The project suffered a significant setback when the engines around which the plane was originally designed, the Orpheus 12 Turbojet, was scrapped by NATO. Initial prototypes used the older Orpheus 703 turbofan engine, which offered much lesser power and prevented the aircraft from even reaching Mach 1.
This was a bad situation to be in. The airframe was designed to fly at speeds of up to Mach 2. An underpowered engine would make the aircraft inefficient and hamper its capabilities. At the same time, even the Indian Government refused to continue funding for the Orpheus 12 engine as requested by Rolls Royce. Other attempts to source alternate engines in Egypt, the USSR, and France also went nowhere due to lack of effort, technical limitations, and lack of interest respectively. The Indian Government entered an agreement with Egypt to share development costs for an engine it was working on for its own Helwan He-300 aircraft (which was led by another legendary German aircraft designer whose aircraft saw action in World War 2, Wilhelm Emil “Willy” Messerschmitt). When Egypt abandoned its He-300 Project after the 1967 war, India made no attempt to acquire the Egyptian Engine Development team. The Soviets promised a top speed of Mach 1.4 with a modified RD-9 Engine, which was less than what the IAF demanded, and thus rejected. The Indian Government also reportedly showed no interest in a French proposal to use the ATAR-9 Turbojet Engine, which actually provided more power than what was required for Mach 2 on the Marut and was deployed on the French Mirage aircraft. To top it all off, the 1962 war with China also forced India to purchase MiG 21s from the USSR in large numbers and then license-build the MiG-21 in India. The MiG 21 fell in the same category as the Marut. The Indian Air Force reluctantly placed an order for 147 Marut aircraft all the while having the old Orpheus Engine. The plane envisioned as supersonic-capable multi-role combat aircraft, all-weather high-altitude interceptor, ground attack aircraft was relegated to a low altitude ground attack aircraft. It saw moderate success as a fighter-bomber, most notably seeing combat at the battle of Longewala in the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War, where the plane saw combat in a decisive Indian Victory over a Pakistani Tank squadron. A Marut scored one air-to-air kill against a Pakistani F-86 Sabre, piloted by Squadron Leader KK Bakshi of 220 Squadron. No aircraft was lost in air-to-air action, although 3 were shot down by ground fire. On multiple occasions the Marut flew back from missions on just a single engine after the other was rendered unusable by ground fire. Production of the aircraft ceased in 1974 and all existing planes were withdrawn from service by 1990. Rather than being replaced by a new indigenous aircraft, the IAF sourced the SEPECAT Jaguar, and the MiG-23 to replace the Marut. With hindsight, it is fair to say that the project could have been managed better. The lack of focus as well as the failure to procure a power plant ended up hurting the program immensely. The IAF ended up with an aircraft that could barely reach speeds of Mach 1, a range of roughly 700 kilometers and a service ceiling of around 40,000 feet. In their refusal to use a slightly inferior engine that could guarantee a speed of 1.4 Mach, the program fell way behind than it otherwise would have. The quote,
“For want of a nail the shoe was lost;
For want of a shoe the horse was lost;
For want of a horse the battle was lost;
For the want of the battle the kingdom was lost” resonates here.
Essentially,
”For the want of an engine the aircraft was lost;
For the want of the aircraft, the project was lost;
For the want of the project, all expertise was lost.”
In other words, for the want of an engine, the entire Marut project had to be abandoned. The failure of this project was a massive setback to the Indian Aeronautics Industry. To add salt to the wound, any experience and expertise gained by this project was also lost by the time the new Light Combat Aircraft (now known as Tejas) Project was commissioned. Had the requirements been more focused, India would have an aircraft that could be iterated upon. It could have been the catalyst that was needed to build a strong aircraft manufacturing industry in India.
Conclusions:
The Marut was a very promising project which could have propelled India’s Aeronautics industry to a very advanced stage, where it could offer an alternative to American, European, and Soviet Military Aircraft. This would have been vital in pushing the Non-Aligned Movement that Nehru championed for so long. The failure/unwillingness/refusal of the Political Establishment in New Delhi to crack the whip and ignore the engine debacle forced the program into a place from where it could not progress. It also forced the IAF to rework its entire strategy to protect the skies of India while wasting resources on a throwaway order. It shows the value of focus in a project as important as this. It is also important for lessons to be learned from this saga (although HAL does not seem to have learned). Calling the Marut a failure is a big disservice to the designers and engineers who worked on it, because it was the Political Establishment that refused to engage with engine manufacturers for whatever reason. The same issues have risen today with the LCA Tejas, and it is important that the incumbent government does not repeat the same mistakes as before. The Marut is a good example of what could have been, and what was lost.