AFOVA New Letter 2 of Year 2021

Section 5 – War Diary CV 2 No. 02 / 2021 Page 49 of 332 What may have seemed incredible to others afterwards, I had got Bajwa and myself into a scissor manoeuvre at low level. Many said afterwards that this is not possible, but that was perhaps exactly what I did, the unconventional thing. We perhaps did three scissors, with Bajwa taking pot shots at the enemy. I was too unsettled, could not get the enemy within the pipers on my gun sight and hence never pulled the trigger during the initial three scissors. Sometime during the third scissor, my fire warning light and the low fuel warning light started to blink. I tried not to look at the blinking lights, there was nothing I could do about them. Instinctively I pulled back the throttle and eased out of the turn. I saw Bajwa over shoot me, guns blazing. The enemy now was turning into Bajwa with his guns blazing, each hell bent on killing each other. I was being ignored. I bashed open throttle instinctively and did a wing over turning upside down. And right there, while being on my back, I saw the enemy glide by. He was so close that I could perhaps have reached out and touched him. With my left hand, I adjusted the pipers, got the shooting configuration using a bit of trigonometry and the wing span of the Sabre, perhaps it took just a second. I now had the enemy right in the centre of my gun sight. I pressed the trigger. The four Aden guns blazed away, I was lucky that there was no jamming of the guns. I could see the yellow tracer arrow into the enemy followed by high explosive and armour piercing rounds. A few seconds later, I saw him disintegrate. The wings broke away from the body of the Sabre and they plummeted towards the earth individually. I did not see the pilot eject. Incredible even to myself, I had achieved my second kill. I rolled over, got my aircraft level and did a quick check of the controls and the instruments on the dashboard. The fire warning and the low fuel light were still blinking. I perceived that I may have been hit, that I was low on fuel and my engine on fire. I suppressed my panic and for a few fleeting seconds, I thought of ejecting. But the aircraft was still flying and responding to me and the panic subsided as quickly as it came. By then I was all alone. My formation had disappeared somewhere in the blue sky. I decided to divert to Rupsi (Bhagdogra) which was closer than Hashimara from where I had got airborne. However, when I reached overhead Rupsi, I was overwhelmed by ‘get- home-itis’, and decided to head for home. There was an a/c doing an emergency landing at Hashimara with unserviceable air speed indicator. But to my good luck, he landed safely and did not crash or block the runway. Buster and I landed one after the other uneventfully. While taxying back to dispersal my engines conked-out due to fuel