AFOVA New Letter 2 of Year 2021

Section 5 – War Diary CV 2 No. 02 / 2021 Page 63 of 332 It was pitch dark, and all we had was a compass to navigate and 20 minutes of flying time to Sylhet. Of course I knew what and where the helipad was in day time. I had no idea how I was going to find it at night, and everything looks different at night in blacked out conditions. Luckily for us, Fg Offr SC Sharma, the FAC with 4/5 GR, whom we had dropped in the first rotation, came on the GRU radio set when he heard the helicopter and said ‘about time you guys came back’. I was so glad to hear Sharma. I asked him what the situation was like on the ground and he said it was ‘quiet’, and that he would light a fire for us so we would know where to land. When I saw the fire, I headed straight for it. My briefing to the troops in my helicopter was - as soon as I land, everybody to jump out with their equipment and I would be airborne in 30 seconds. We had removed our clam shell doors for the duration of the war, made it much easier to load and unload the Mi-4 helicopter. That also meant that there was a big hole at the back of our cabin. When I was on finals, I saw tracer bullets coming towards me from all directions, I was sure we would have dozens of bullet holes. We landed at Sylhet, dropped our load and got airborne within a minute, climbed very quickly and set course back to Kalura where the rest of 4/5 GR was waiting. I asked my flight engineer to look for bullet holes, and few minutes later he came back with a big grin and said that there was not even one bullet hole. I was amazed! The enemy could not see us – they could only hear us, that’s why they were just firing with no target in view. I contacted Kailashahar, and told the rest of the helicopters to proceed to Kalura and recommence the SHBO ASAP. I picked up the next load from Kalura, and dropped them at Sylhet, and came running back still with no bullet holes, picked up the third load and dropped it at Sylhet. After dropping my third load, when I got airborne from Sylhet, I noticed that our fuel gauge was showing zero fuel. The helicopter was still flying, so of course we had fuel. Three of us in our Mi-4 prayed to whoever was up there to get us back safely. We got back to Kalura without much ado, very fortunate. Four helicopters had got ready and arrived at Kalura when I came back from my third flight. I took off from Kalura, landed at Kailashahar and switched off to check why my fuel gauge was showing zero. At Kailashahar my engineers discovered a bullet had cut the cable to the fuel gauge. That was changed quickly, we refuelled, and once again joined others and the operation continued throughout the night. We did a total of 14 sorties with 5 helicopters between 0000 and 0500. We carried 124 troops and 2500 kg equipment During the next day we did a number of flights to Sylhet. We finished moving all the soldiers and load of 4/5 GR to Sylhet by 9 Dec morning including two 75/24 Howitzers,