[11] In 1940, news of the unceasing German air attacks besieging Britain and civilian losses was reaching British India, Pujji's sense of duty and daring adventurism instinctively caused him to attend the advertised appeal for pre-qualified "A" licenced pilots at the fourth pilot's course of the Royal Indian Air Force—despite his parents' fears; becoming one of the first batch of 24 pre-qualified "A" licenced Indian pilots accepted through this route to receive a Volunteer Reserve commission with the Royal Air Force during the early part of the Second World War.

From the first 24 volunteer candidates, 18 including Pujji, successfully completed the course and qualified as Royal Air Force pilots, receiving their RAF wings on 16 April 1941.

I was made to feel very much at home by everyone I met"[8] and "I wrote back to my father saying that I did not mind if I was killed because the British people were wonderful and so brave, and I was being so well treated.

Pujji's insistence on wearing the dastar inflight meant he could not attach the oxygen mask, it would later cost him an irreparably damaged lung caused by exposure to high-altitude flying.

[1][6][7] On 16 January 1942, Pujji embarked at Suez for Colombo, British Ceylon in the South-East Asian theatre of World War II.

4 Squadron IAF of the Royal Indian Air Force at Kohat, Pujji would fly both the Hurricane and Westland Lysander over the North-West Frontier Province and other locations in British India.

Pujji served from March 1944 in Burma, where the Japanese posed a threat to British India, moving with the squadron to the Buthidaung region which was the theatre of a major ground offensive.

When some 300 US troops were lost without rations, food and radio contact, in the dense Burmese jungle swarming with Japanese soldiers, the US sent out a search party to locate them, however, after the US search party failed after 3-days to locate them, Pujji was personally requested by General William Slim, 1st Viscount Slim of the British Fourteenth Army to find them.

[6][14] Pujji climbed into his plane and in adverse weather flew low over treetops across Japanese occupied territory into the suspected area—and with jubilation for everyone—Pujji found them.

With the approaching monsoon season, the role of the squadron was changed from fighter reconnaissance to light bombing, seeing action along the Sangu River during the Third Arakan Offensive.

Pujji had spent almost four years on continuous operational flying duty, considered unusual even by standards of the Second World War.

[1][6][7] For his service bravery over Japanese occupied territory, Pujji was awarded the DFC, in recognition of gallantry and devotion to duty in the execution of air operations.

[1][2][6][7] Announced in The London Gazette on 17 April 1945,[2] and followed with a personal letter of congratulations from Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park,[15] the DFC citation reads in part: Acting Flight Lieutenant Mahinder Singh Pujji No.

[12] Some years later, Pujji moved to the United States to work as manager of a pizza retail chain,[3] before returning to England in 1984 and settling in East Ham, and in 1998 retiring to Gravesend, Kent.

In 2005, Pujji protested the British National Party's symbolic usage of a Spitfire aircraft image in their political campaign literature.

[4] In 2009, Pujji acknowledged he had received no invitations to any of the many commemorative events in Britain that marked the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War, or any other year, he says.

[13] Shortly before his death on 18 September 2010 aged 92, Pujji was invited to attend a wreath-laying ceremony by Philip Sidney, 2nd Viscount De L'Isle, at a memorial outside the former RAF Station Gravesend Airport, to commemorate "The Few" on the 70th Anniversary of the Battle of Britain.

A statue of Pujji, by English sculptor Douglas Jennings, was unveiled by Air Vice-Marshal Edward Stringer in St Andrew's Gardens, Gravesend, on 28 November 2014.