Vice Admiral Mihir Kumar 'Micky' Roy, PVSM, AVSM was a flag officer in the Indian Navy.
As DNI, he was the architect of the successful naval commando operations, for which he was awarded the Ati Vishisht Seva Medal.
Promoted to flag rank in 1976, he served as the Assistant Chief of Personnel at naval HQ before taking over command of the Eastern Fleet.
Regarded as a scholar, he was the first officer from the Indian Armed Forces to be selected as a Jawaharlal Nehru Fellow.
He then attended the Presidency College, Chennai where he obtained a Master of Arts honours degree in Economics and Political science.
[2] He planned to study accountancy in the United Kingdom, but changed his mind and sat for the armed services exam.
He the transferred to the Algerine-class minesweeper HMS Mariner (J380) where he participated in operations clearing mines laid between Iceland and the USSR.
He was promoted lieutenant on 16 February 1951,[4] and in that year was among the first batch of five officers to be sent to the United Kingdom to train as naval aviators.
8 RN observer course, he stood first in flying and ground subjects and was awarded his wings on 12 May 1952 at RNAS St Merryn (HMS Vulture).
He also received letters of commendation from the First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral of the Fleet Rhoderick McGrigor.
A Short Sealand aircraft carried out a successful water landing after saluting the President Dr. Rajendra Prasad.
INS Vikrant was commissioned on 4 March 1961 at 1000 hours by Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, the High Commissioner of India to the United Kingdom.
[15] In April 1964, Roy was selected to attend the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington,[16] and was promoted substantive commander on 30 June.
Thousands of East Pakistanis died, and nearly ten million refugees fled to West Bengal, an adjacent Indian state.
He planned to set up a force of about 600 commandos and would complement the Indian Army's covert training of the Mukti Bahini.
This force would have the Bengali sailors who escaped from the Pakistani submarine PNS Mangro (S133) as the nucleus, trained by Indian naval officers and divers.
[25] The frogmen sank or crippled over one lakh tons of shipping, immobilised jetties and wharves and blocked navigable channels.
[27][28][29] In September 1972, he was one of two officers from the armed forces to be selected to attend the Royal College of Defence Studies (RCDS), London.
He was then appointed Chief of Staff (COS) to the Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief Western Naval Command Vice Admiral Ronald Lynsdale Pereira in the rank of Commodore.
[32] After a short stint as COS of the Western Naval Command, Roy was promoted to the acting rank of rear admiral on 21 June 1976 and appointed Assistant Chief of Personnel (ACOP).
[32] He served as the ACOP for a year before being appointed the sixth Flag Officer Commanding Eastern Fleet (FOCEF).
In early 1978, he was appointed Senior Directing Staff (SDS) at the prestigious National Defence College (NDC), New Delhi.
In February of that year, he relinquished command of the Eastern Fleet, handing over to Rear Admiral Oscar Stanley Dawson.
[36] On 24 March 1980, Roy was appointed Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief Eastern Naval Command (FOC-in-C ENC) at Visakhapatnam and promoted to vice-admiral with effect from 1 April 1980.
[43] In the same year, Roy was a part of a high-level technical team consisting of Director General Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) Dr. Raja Ramanna, Dr. P.R.
The team visited the USSR to study an offer from the Soviet Union to design and build a nuclear submarine.
[45] He instituted the FOC-in-C East Rolling Trophy to be awarded to the pilot standing first in overall merit.
[48] On retiring from the Navy, Roy was appointed the first Director General of the Advanced Technology Vessel project.
He held the rank of Secretary to the Government of India and reported into the Chairman of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).
[55] In 1987, he also co-founded the Society for Indian Ocean Studies (SIOS) with historians Saiyid Nurul Hasan and Satish Chandra.