AFOVA New Letter 2 of Year 2021

Section 5 – War Diary CV 2 No. 02 / 2021 Page 51 of 332 ‘Perhaps he is Buster’, I thought to myself, taking my finger off the trigger. Though so close, in the fading light, I did not discern the distinctive contours of a Sabre. Then the thought occurred to me, just two drop tanks, Buster had four under his wing, ‘this is a bloody Sabre’. I began the chase a few seconds too late. The enemy seemed to have sensed danger. I think he bashed open throttle and the last I saw him, he was diving and accelerating away from me. I lost him against the myriad colours and darkness of the ground in the fading light. It was such a close thing, so easy a kill, but I lost the opportunity because I took a few seconds too long to make up my mind. It was his day, to live another day. Doing a 3rd kill was something that even I could not imagine. On one of the CAS missions, Lele and I were briefed to attack Birkal. The attack was to be coordinated with a Chetak h/c acting as an airborne FAC to help us locate the targets easily. Once we reached the area, we saw that there were two hills with a river in between, going from north to south west. The river had a prominent bend that took it around the hill. The enemy had fortified bunkers and gun positions right on top of the two hills as well as on the eastern bank of the hill in the north. We neutralised the gun positions, direct hits with rockets, and the bunkers by strafing with front guns. I was given to understand recently that Maj Parvez Mushraff was present there in the bunkers and survived our attack. Perhaps his destiny was not to die that day, but to go on and become the President of Pak. Once I was briefed thoroughly, a long briefing using reconnaissance photographs and what seemed very accurate grid coordinates. I was to go and strike a black top building, 400 yards opposite the railway station that was believed to be an ammunition dump. On reaching the target area unmolested, we orbited, correctly identified the building and attacked it with rockets. After repeated direct hits, all I managed to achieve was to make a big hole, but there was neither an explosion nor fire. Rather strange for an ammunition dump. While orbiting, I saw that there was another black top building further away, with what looked like ventilators just above the ground. The rockets were finished but I decided to put a few rounds into this strange building with ventilators. We strafed the building and perhaps a few bullets went through the ventilators. To my utter surprise the whole building exploded, the debris narrowly missing me as I was pulling out. That much for detailed briefing and interpretation of reconnaissance photographs!! On another ground attack mission, the FAC on ground asked us to fire on a low building with a large red cross on it. Though beset with some moral qualm, we engaged the target. Once again to my utter consternation, the building blew up like a gigantic Napalm bomb and set fire to the entire neighbourhood. Apparently it was a fuel dump.