Coimbatore is one of the important cities of Tamil Nadu. It has a temperate climate and excellent atmosphere that is conducive to good education and training. This place also houses one of the oldest training institutes of The IAF at RedFields. This is the Air Force Administrative College which has been in existence for over six decades.
The college came up after the site was reviewed by Wg Cdr S Mukherjee (who later became the Chief of Air staff as an Air marshal) in 1946. The college which had earlier been set up in 1943 at Pune was then shifted to this location. The land for the college was donated by Cavalier GK Devarajulu, a prominent businessman of Coimbatore. I have fond memories of this college as I attended the 46th GDOC course at this academy nearly four decades back. I recollect the first hoarding we saw which stated ‘If you want to win in war, then bleed during peace’. Thus we all knew what to expect.
The college was, as a first step set up to provide initial training to officers of the Pilots branch. This was a three month ab initio course, that gave basic General Service training like drill and other matters to the would be Pilots. The course was generally for about 10 weeks and served its purpose of grounding the civil recruits into the Air Force ethos.
The college also started conducting courses for flight cadets for commission in the various ground duty branches.Gradually the Junior Commander’s Course also shifted to this college from Jalahalli. In 1957, the college was named as Air Force Administrative College.
The college has now risen to be one of the premier training institutes of the IAF. The Ground Duty officers courses have been shifted to the Air Force Academy at Hyderabad. However the college is now tasked with in-house training of advanced and professional courses for officers of all branches. In particular the Meteorology courses for officers have gained great significance.The faculty of meteorology at this college is affiliated to Bharathiar University, Coimbatore for awarding Post Graduate Diploma, M Phil and Ph D programmes in meteorology.
The college is commanded by an Air Commodre of the Admin Branch and is replete with playing fields, parade ground and an excellent officers mess.The college remains a specialist training institute for branch or special list officers who graduate from the ranks. In addition the courses at the college are attended by officers from many other countries as well. It is thus a premier Administrative training institute of the IAF.