Somnath Sapru Author

In a four-decade-long career as a journalist and author, Mr Somnath Sapru has over the years, specialized in writing on the military and civil aviation. He has several books on this subject to his credit. His first book dealt with four Indian pilots who flew in World War I, which is now being revised and expanded to include the hitherto untold story of one more pilot, with a new title: Laddie Goes to War: Indian Pilots in World War I. Mr Sapru was initially the Defence Correspondent of the Deccan Herald and later with the Indian Express, first at Bengaluru and subsequently in New Delhi. He served as the Editor of The Pioneer, with editions in Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi and New Delhi. He later served as the Regional Editor for the Indian Express at Chennai, Madurai and Coimbatore. He covered the activities of the three Services of the armed forces and specialized in the history of military aviation. He has bagged several professional awards such as the American Jefferson Fellowship in the United States in 1979 and the Asian Journalist of the Year in 1988. Though he has written on myriad themes, his preferred area of research has all along been aviation.