Okay, I get it. You are probably going “Not another ‘first’!”.. We recently announced the first sighting of a Jaguar warbird in India at Sainik School Chandrapur. And it turned out to be a French airframe sporting Indian Air Force Colours – a strange outcome for this particular airframe and model that never flew in India but was only shipped as part of a spares package from France in recent years.
That airframe was destined to be cannibalized for spares and the hulk that remained was thankfully earmarked for preservation. While we thought it was the first ever Jaguar on display, we were informed that it wasn’t.
Another french Jaguar already existed – recently installed as a gate guardian at a traffic junction in vayu sena nagar in Nagpur where the Maintenance Command HQ is located. And if we have to set the record straight, THIS example is the very first Jaguar warbird that was put up.. just that it was not publicly announced till we reported the Chandrapur example.
The above two photos show the nighttime display of the Nagpur Jaguar. The Jaguar can be spotted on Google Maps as seen in the below twitter post. Amartya Ghose followed up with a photo he found that reveals the aircraft’s identity as A103.
I got to say that it is still a strange feeling to find aircraft that were given to the IAF as spares source being put up for warbird display in IAF colours.. This hasn’t happened before.. and we probably need to get used to it as its reported that over 30 of these airframes were given to us!