Page 14 - Seniors Today Dec 2019
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dominance over us. I distinctly remember
looking helplessly at the Sabres, and trying to
explain to my battery as to why our own air
force was not coming in. I had seen one of the
Sabres at a little over treetop level, dive over my
gun position between the neighbouring 100
Field Battery, where the Gun Position Officer
was Gabriel Pereira. But for some unknown
reason then, the pilot didn’t release his payload
and instead flew across and then pulled up. We
learnt later that the bombs were dropped on the
engineers’ location, ahead of us, where they had
spotted a tank stuck on the bridge. Apparently
there weren’t any casualties.
The enemy Sabres had been dominating the
skies over us, when suddenly we saw our Gnats
from 22 Sqn IAF at Dum Dum airport near
Brig Ajit Apte with medals, after retirement
of 17 December 1971, wondering if I had heard Calcutta, arriving with a sense of authority.
correctly that the war was over, I deployed my They soon locked onto the tail of the enemy
battery and opened fire immediately thereafter aircrafts as they were strafing, our locations. We
on enemy targets. No sooner had I done that, were about to witness a dogfight between our
than our Adjutant Jay Sapatnekar made a radio Gnats and the enemy Sabres, that afternoon.
transmission that the Pakistani armed forces This is what exactly happened in the
had agreed to a unilateral ceasefire, and were transmissions on the Air force Radio Telephony
ready to surrender unconditionally to the or RT that developed into the classic air battle
Indian army. This signalled that the war was or dogfight between the Gnats of the Indian Air
finally over, and was a moment of great triumph Force and the Sabres of the Pakistan Air Force
for us all. on 22 November 1971. This RT Conversation
is what actually transpired, between Fighter
Air attack Control and the pilots who had sprung into
The Battle of Garibpur and the Boyra Air action.
Battle were actually intertwined. The Pakistan
Air Force had been making frequent runs on
21 November in the Garibpur area, but was
uncontested. The Pakistani Sabres, not seeing
any Indian response, thought they could have
a free run and thus were very active since 8am
on 22 November. They had made numerous
runs at treetop level intermittently over our
corps zone, with special focus on our guns,
tank concentrations and on the engineers
bridging areas. They again launched an air
strike at 2.50pm on 22 November 1971 with four
Pakistan fighters engaging forces deployed in
the lodgement areas across the border.
We ground forces were desperately looking
for our own IAF to step in and do something, Boyra Air Battle FAC Air Marshal Sharad Savur (left) with Brig
because the PAF appeared to be in total air Ajit Apte after the 1971 War
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