AFOVA New Letter 2 of Year 2021

Section 5 – War Diary CV 2 No. 02 / 2021 Page 59 of 332 06 Dec 71 On 6 th Dec 110 HU was ordered by Gp Capt Chandan Singh to move to Agartala. By afternoon hours on 6 th Dec, all 9 Mi-4s of 110 HU were deployed at Agartala. On 7 th Dec we were joined by 3 Mi-4s of 105 HU from Chabua, and on 11 th Dec, 2 Mi-4s of 111 HU from Hashimara joined us. 07 – 09 Dec 71 At Agartala, early morning on 7 th Dec, Chandan Singh briefed Sandhu and me that we are to proceed to Kailashahar, north of Agartala, to undertake a Special Heli Borne Operation to pick up troops from Kalura, and induct them at Sylhet, both places in East Pakistan. We had many questions to ask. Chandan Singh, had planned the operation well, had made arrangements, and therefore gave us satisfactory assurances. We immediately got down to flight planning and by noontime, Mi-4s, and part of our ground support staff, positioned ourselves at Kailashahar. In the war, we carried out four Special Heli Borne Operations, between 7 th and 15 th of Dec 71. We moved over 6000 + soldiers, 202 + tons of miscellaneous equipment, right into the battlefields, even across the mighty (over 5 km wide) Meghna river, nonstop, day and night, as well as evacuated hundreds of causalities of both friend and foe on the return leg . I don’t remember the exact number of soldiers we ferried, or the load we carried. It was war, there were no load manifests!! Nobody was keeping a count, or weighing the load, there was no time or facility. The figures I have quoted is from a small pocket diary that I used in war, for mission planning of the entire helicopter force from approximate load tables given by army units, as also post war debrief of aircrew and operational report submitted by the unit. I still have the diary and my log books. The number of troops carried may also include those lifted forward, as well as those causalities lifted backward, I don’t remember. Nobody looked at the charts to see what we can carry. We just filled up the helicopter and coaxed it to get airborne. We were overloaded most of the time. I can tell you MI- 4 helicopter was amazing, it never let us down. We were very fortunate that we had no accidents. I am also very grateful to our engineers and technicians, who kept all the helicopters flying, all the time during the war. They had very little resources, and they were doing all kinds of maintenance in the field, with some support from our base at Kumbhigram. Sadly the extraordinary contribution of our engineering staff were not recognized or rewarded.