AFOVA New Letter 2 of Year 2021

Section 5 – War Diary CV 2 No. 02 / 2021 Page 50 of 332 starvation. The fire warning was perhaps spurious. After I got down from the a/c, I heaved a sigh of relief. I had lived to fight another day. While we were returning to Hashimara, a second 2 x 2 formation of Hunters led by Wg Cdr Chatrath (CO 17 Sqn) had got airborne, perhaps for the same target Kurmitola. I was busy preparing for a second strike and hence did not keep a track of Chatrath’s mission. My second mission, about an hour after we returned, was once again a 2 x 2 strike package led by Lele, a repeat of the earlier mission, with the same pilots, this time to strike Tezgaon (Dacca) airfield. To my utter dismay, my aircraft would not start. So Lele left me behind, with Buster as my wingman, to follow as soon as possible. Lele and Bajwa managed to strike Tezgaon without being bounced by Sabres and were recovered at Kumbigram since they did not have enough fuel to come back to Hashimara. Because of the undue delay in repairing my Hunter, and none other was available, Buster and I were then asked to proceed directly to Kumbigram to join Lele and operate from there. Rest of 17 Sqn led by our venerable CO also moved to Kumbigram and we operated from there for the rest of the war. By 6th Dec Lele, Buster, Bajwa and I had become a team and continued to fly together. Early morning on 6th, we did another 2 x 2 strike mission with Lele leading to strike Kurmitola. Due to poor visibility, we missed the target on the first pass. Much against my wishes, Lele decided to climb and make another run. We were bounced by two Sabres, perhaps assisted by ground control radar. We spotted them as we began our run-in. However, because we had by then begun to descend, we perhaps went into the ground clutter on the enemy radar and the Sabres perhaps lost visual contact. They broke off and went away. We continued with our attack and returned to Kumbigram home safe. Rest of the day, and on the next day we did several more uneventful missions mostly destroying other tactical targets indicated by the army. On 7th evening four of us were once again at it, this time an attack on Comilla Cantonment. Lele and Buster were to do the attack while Bajwa and I were to set up a CAP overhead Comilla to cover them. On target, while Lele and Buster went into attack, Bajwa and I circled overhead, 180° opposite to each other, round and round exercising our eyeballs, looking out for Sabres. ‘Sabre on your tail’, Bajwa called out suddenly. Instantly, reacting out of conditioned reflex, I punched and jettisoned my drop tanks, pushed open the throttles to the gate, and commenced a hard left climbing turn. Still climbing, I saw an aircraft 50 yrds ahead and slightly higher than me. I rolled out of the turn facing North East in the same direction as the other a/c. He suddenly jettisoned his two tanks and the tanks zipped past, almost colliding with me.