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THE RIGHT STUFF IN THE WRONG PLACE
Most of us know by now about Chuck Yeager: World War II ace, first man to break the sound barrier, star of TV commercials, subject of a critically acclaimed book by Tom Wolfe and a Hollywood movie, and, most recently, author of a best-selling autobiography. Yeager's autobiography understandably focuses on his days as a war hero and America's greatest test pilot. He devotes just seven of the book's 340 pages to another period in his career, after age had grounded him and before The Right Stuff immortalized him. That was when I knew him, and for one rather giddy period of two weeks, I even served as his ostensible boss. The place was Pakistan, and what I saw of Yeager left me no doubt that he was a brave and courageous pilot. I much admired the man. Unfortunately, men like Yeager are well suited to play certain roles, but not others. In my guise as political counselor at the U.S. embassy there, I learned that the role of diplomat suited him as little as the role of test pilot would have suited me. I can well understand why his autobiography skips so lightly over this time of his life.
In 1970, the Air Force faced the problem so often encountered with aging super-pilots who manage to stay alive--namely, how to extract the 47-year-old Yeager from the cockpits in which he had spent his adult life and put him behind a desk. It wasn't made easier by Yeager's obvious lack of enthusiasm or talent for paperwork, office routines, and the principles of modern management. Shopping around for a quiet corner to place a brigadier general who also didn't fit comfortably into the mainstream of the military bureaucracy, someone finally suggested that he be sent off to head our Military Assistance Advisory Group in Pakistan.
One might naturally think that a diplomatic assignment was about the worst place for a hell-bent-for-leather pilot. This assignment, however, wasn't as foolhardy as it looked. First, the job didn't involve diplomatic chores. We already had a whole diplomatic establishment--from ambassador to military attaches--in Pakistan. All the chief of the advisory group had to do was teach Pakistanis how to use American military equipment without killing themselves in the process. The job wasn't all that difficult because the Pakistani armed forces already were reasonably sophisticated. It was made still easier by the fact that, at the moment, they weren't getting any new American military equipment, having temporarily fallen out of our favor after attacking India in 1965.
In 1971, with his wife, Glennis, in tow, Yeager arrived in Pakistan's shiny new capital of Islamabad to head the group. Yeager's new command was a modest one: about four officers and a dozen enlisted men charged with the equally modest task of seeing that the residual trickle of American military aid was properly distributed to the Pakistanis. Not large enough for a separate existence, the group was part of the regular American diplomatic establishment, along with the political officers (over whom I presided), and the people who issued visas, got Americans out of jail, and handed out photographs of a smiling President Nixon.
The U.S. ambassador to Pakistan was a political appointee named Joseph Farland, a captain of industry from West Virginia, who had become president of a large coal company through perspicacity, hard work, and marrying the owner's daughter. Farland had held several small ambassadorships in Latin America during the Eisenhower administration. By virtue of this diplomatic experience, enhanced perhaps (or so Farland told me) by a generous contribution to Nixon's campaign, he had obtained the appointment to Pakistan. The depth of Farland's political understanding can be deduced from his rejoinder to an uncomplimentary remark I once made about the late dictator of the Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo, one of Latin America's more notorious thugs, in whose capital Farland had once served as American ambassador. "Ed,' he declared, "you don't understand. Trujillo was a fine man, an upstanding man. He was just misled by evil companions.'
Farland was inordinately vain, "in love,' as one of my political officers put it, "with his own right profile.' His only piece of artwork that hadn't been supplied by the Government Printing Office was an immense oil portrait of himself--an allegorical study of Farland in a gray suit, clutching a ship's wheel, profile extended, the American flag behind him, looking rather like a corporate Columbus approaching the New World. He knew little about the Indian subcontinent and didn't really like the place or its people. He did, however, have two virtues. Conscious of his limitations, he left the running of the embassy largely in the hands of his deputy, a talented career officer with decades of experience on the Indian subcontinent. And Farland wasn't around much, spending most of his time on vacations and incessant "business trips' back to the United States.
During the time he was unavoidably in residence in Pakistan, Farland developed a weekly routine that separated him as much as possible from the lively, dirty nation beyond his doors. Every Friday--Thursday on occasion--he would be chauffeured to his summer residence in the cool heights of Murree, a mountain resort an hour from Islamabad. There, in a large, walled palace perched on a ridge at the edge of the Himalayas, he would relax until Monday with a small coterie of court jesters, companions, and ladies-in-waiting. They would play bridge and parlor games, crack off-color jokes, serve bloody marys, and even dress in funny clothes and women's hats, secure from the world outside the walls.
It was into this sad little court that America's greatest test pilot was inducted when he and Glennis arrived in Islamabad in 1971. Yeager relates in his autobiography that Farland, a fellow West Virginian, had personally selected him for the military advisor's slot. This puzzles me because, arriving a few months later, I found that Farland had only the vaguest idea of Yeager's history, didn't realize he had broken the sound barrier, and wasn't all that sure what the sound barrier was. In any event, Farland quickly enlisted Yeager to play two key roles: weekend courtier at Murree and aerial chauffeur.
One of the perks of Yeager's position was a twin-engined Beechcraft, a small airplane supplied by the Pentagon to help keep track of the occasional pieces of American military equipment that sporadically showed up in the country. Farland, however, had other designs on the plane. An ardent fisherman, he found the Beechcraft was the ideal vehicle for transporting him to Pakistan's more remote lakes and rivers. Yeager's mission was not only to fly Farland to the fishing grounds, but to take on such logistical details as prepositioning the fishing poles, bourbon, and other essentials at the site. He performed these chores without complaint.
Yeager had the military man's awe of high civilian authority, and he treated the ambassador with the sort of deference that Farland relished but didn't get from the rest of us. But try as he might to be a good sport, Yeager didn't seem all that happy with his lot. Farland's habit of referring to him publicly as "my pilot' didn't help. I recall one weekend when Yeager brought up to Murree a movie projector and a Pentagon film showing how he had broken the sound barrier. I found it fascinating. The other courtiers made funny remarks, while, as I remember, Farland and his wife dozed.
Major Hoople meets Caliban
While Farland and his court cavorted at Murree, the country outside the palace walls began to crumble. Pakistan in 1971 encompassed both the present-day country and the more populous East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. The country's two wings were separated by a thousand miles of Indian territory and a massive cultural barrier. From its inception, Pakistan had been ruled by the politicians and soldiers of the West Wing, whose view of their Eastern compatriots was best expressed to me by a Pakistani general: "Our East Wing, you see, is a low-lying country inhabited by . . . heh, heh . . . low, lying people.'
In early 1971, the Western rulers inexplicably permitted a free, nationwide election--the first in the country's history. The downtrodden masses of East Pakistan united behind a single candidate, swept the polls, and ended up in complete control of the nation's parliament. The dumbfounded Westerners promptly annulled the election, tossed the victorious Eastern leaders in jail, and shipped a good part of Pakistan's army to the East to ensure tranquility. The result was a campaign of brutal oppression, followed quickly by a civil war, the flight of ten million refugees into neighboring India, and, in due course, Indian intervention in support of the resistance.
Back in Islamabad, we at the embassy were increasingly preoccupied with the deepening crisis. Meetings became more frequent and more tense. The ambassador fulminated against our consulate in Dhaka, East Pakistan's capital, for reporting to the State Department the enormity of the slaughter. We argued over what we should recommend to Washington, and we were troubled by the complex questions that the conflict raised.
That is, most of us were troubled. No such doubts seemed to cross the mind of Chuck Yeager. I remember one occasion on which Farland asked Yeager for his assessment of how long the Pakistani forces in the East could withstand an all-out attack by India. "We could hold them off for maybe a month,' he replied, "but beyond that we wouldn't have a chance without help from outside.' It took the rest of us a moment to fathom what he was saying, not realizing at first that the "we' was West Pakistan, not the United States. After the meeting, I mumbled something to Yeager about perhaps being a little more even-handed in his comments. He gave me a withering glance. "Goddamn it, we're assigned to Pakistan,' he said. "What's wrong with being loyal?!' Disloyally, I slunk away.
The dictator of Pakistan at the time, the one who had ordered the crackdown in the East, was a dim-witted general named Yahya Khan. Way over his head in events he couldn't begin to understand, Yahya took increasingly to brooding and drinking. Somehow he also took a fancy to Farland, who had met with him on several occasions to deliver suggestions and ukases from Washington. He would invite the reluctant ambassador over to his office to drink and brood with him. It would have been fun to hear their conversations: Major Hoople chatting with Caliban. The link proved less useful than we hoped, however, as it became clear that Yahya was more interested in having a drinking partner than an advisor.
In December of 1971, with Indian-supplied guerrillas applying more and more pressure on his beleaguered forces, Yahya decided on a last, hopeless gesture of defiance. He ordered what was left of his armed forces to attack India directly from the West. His air force roared across the border on the afternoon of December 3 to bomb Indian air bases, while his army crashed into India's defenses on the Western frontier.
Yahya's attack caught the embassy more than normally unprepared. As it happened, Farland's deputy, the career officer who had actually been running the embassy, was halfway around the world on a long-delayed vacation. Although he rushed back, it was several days before he could reach war-torn Islamabad. Meanwhile, Farland was quite uncomfortable, since he was now in actual, rather than nominal, control of the embassy. Faced with a host of urgent decisions, he sat frozen behind his desk, unable to decide on much of anything (which, in retrospect, turned out to be the best thing to do). Yeager, meanwhile, spent the first hours of the war stalking the embassy corridors like Henry V before Agincourt, snarling imprecations at the Indians and assuring anyone who would listen that the Pakistani army would be in New Delhi within a week.
It was the morning after the initial Pakistani strike that Yeager began to take the war with India personally. On the eve of their attack, the Pakistanis had been prudent enough to evacuate their planes from airfields close to the Indian border and move them back into the hinterlands. But no one thought to warn General Yeager. Thus, when an Indian fighter pilot swept low over Islamabad's airport in India's first retaliatory strike, he could see only two small planes on the ground. Dodging antiaircraft fire, he blasted both to smithereens with 20-millimeter cannon fire. One was Yeager's Beechcraft. The other was a plane used by United Nations forces to supply the patrols that monitored the ceasefire line in Kashmir.
I never found out how the United Nations reacted to the destruction of its plane, but Yeager's response was anything but dispassionate. He raged to his cowering colleagues at a staff meeting. His voice resounding through the embassy, he proclaimed that the Indian pilot not only knew exactly what he was doing but had been specifically instructed by Indira Gandhi to blast Yeager's plane. ("It was,' he relates in his book, "the Indian way of giving Uncle Sam the finger.') At this meeting, I ventured the timid suggestion that, to an Indian pilot skimming the ground at 500 miles per hour under antiaircraft fire, precise identification of targets on an enemy airfield might take lower priority than simply hitting whatever was there and then getting the hell out. Restraining himself with difficulty, Yeager informed me that anyone dumb enough not to know a deliberate attack on the American flag when he saw one had no business wearing his country's uniform. Since I was a civilian wearing a gray sweater at the time, I didn't fully grasp his nuances, but the essential meaning was clear.
Our response to this Indian atrocity, as I recall, was a top priority cable to Washington that described the incident as a deliberate affront to the American nation and recommended immediate countermeasures. I don't think we ever got an answer.
The destruction of the Beechcraft was the last straw for Yeager. He vanished from his office, and, to the best of my knowledge, wasn't seen again in Islamabad until the war was over. It wasn't a long period; the Indians took only two weeks to trounce the Pakistanis. East Pakistan, known as Bangladesh, became an independent country, and Yahya resigned in disgrace. He was so drunk during his televised farewell speech that the camera focused not on him but on a small table radio across the room.
And where had Yeager been during these dramatic two weeks? The slim entries in his autobiography aren't much help. Yeager says that he "didn't get involved in the actual combat because that would have been too touchy.' He then goes on to explain casually that he did "fly around' on such chores as picking up Indian pilots who had been shot down, interrogating them, and hauling them off to prison camps. There are clues, however, that suggest a more active role. A Pakistani businessman, son of a senior general, told me excitedly that Yeager had moved into the big air force base at Peshawar and was personally directing the grateful Pakistanis in deploying their fighter squadrons against the Indians. Another swore that he had seen Yeager emerge from a just-landed jet fighter at the Peshawar base. Yeager was uncharacteristically close-mouthed in succeeding weeks, but a sly grin would appear on his leathery face when we rehashed the war in staff meetings. I once asked him point-blank what he had been up to during the war. "I went fishing,' he growled.
Human fighter jet
After the war, Yeager had even less to do in Pakistan since the tiny pre-war trickle of American arms had been shut off completely. He divided his time largely between the Pakistani air force, where he was a welcome compatriot in the mess halls, and the mountains of the far north, where he carried on a running war with the resident population of wild sheep.
Before Yeager left Pakistan in early 1973, I had one last memorable encounter with him. The career officer who had quietly run the embassy for Farland had become the embassy's acting chief upon Farland's departure shortly after the war. (Farland was reassigned to Iran, only to be unceremoniously removed after a few months to make way for Richard Helms, whose recently exposed activities as CIA director had made him somewhat of an embarrassment in Washington.) When the situation in Pakistan had sufficiently calmed, the deputy decided to resume his interrupted vacation. Some weeks later the next man on the totem pole decided to take his vacation. I suddenly found myself elevated to the position of mission chief ad interim, complete with a flag-flying limousine and the right to sign my name to all cables leaving the embassy. (A flood of cables quickly went out to our missions in every world capital I could think of.)
One morning, as I contemplated the world from my exalted position, the embassy's public relations officer frantically called. Had I seen that morning's news summary? The wire services were carrying a story from Islamabad quoting an unnamed American embassy official as making some dreadfully undiplomatic statements. I don't recall the exact words--something about Indian perfidy and the resumption of American military aid to Pakistan--but when I saw the piece it was all to obvious that the source could only have been Yeager.
As my colleagues quickly pointed out, I had no choice other than to call Yeager in and read him the riot act. With some reluctance, I asked my secretary to phone General Yeager and have him come to my office. I leaned back, wondering which approach to use with him: a stern fatherly lecture (I was a year older than he), a cold, level-voiced scolding, or a more-in-sorrow-than-anger admonition. I had tentatively decided to blend the latter two techniques when my secretary buzzed me, the door flew open, and in marched Yeager.
He had obviously seen the offending news report and knew exactly why he had been summoned. (I suspect the story was the product of some casual comments to newsmen that Yeager hadn't really intended to be repeated and that he was as surprised as anyone to see them in print.) In any event, Yeager had decided on an age-old strategy of his own--that the best defense is a good offense.
As I opened my mouth to suggest he sit down, Yeager began his first strafing run. Who-the-hell-was-I-to-call-him-in, and he didn't-have-to-take-any-crap-from-me, and what-he-told-the-press-was-none-of-my-goddamned-business. Before I could get a word out, he whipped around, rhetorical guns blazing, for his second pass.
If-I-had-any-complaints-I-could-take-them-up-with-the-Defense-Depart m ent, and he-was-sick-of-mush-mouthed-diplomats-screwing-things-up. His target in flames, or at least breathless, he fired a few parting shots, spun on his heels, and marched smartly out. I had been able to get across a total of four, perhaps five, words before being blasted out of the sky. You win some, you lose some.
I saw Yeager a few other times before he left Pakistan. But that's the way I'll always remember him, straight as a ramrod, striding out of my office, rectitude intact--and with the Right Stuff.
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A followup article by the man who blasted Chuck's plane in Pakistan
http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/IAF/History/1971War/ArunPrakash.html
1971WAR
How I crossed swords with Chuck Yeager
OR WHY THE USS ENTERPRISE WAS SENT TO THE BAY OF BENGAL IN 1971
This piece is a "first person" account of an episode of the 1971 Indo-Pak war written a lighter vein by Adm Arun Prakash for Vayu magazine. He was on deputation to No. 20 Squadron, commanded by (then) Wing Commander CV Parker, MVC, VM. This IAF unit is credited with having won the highest number of gallantry awards in the conflict. |  |
The First Supersonic Man
Lest the title of this story mislead people into thinking that I am attempting to wreck the newborn Indo-US détente, let me start by quoting Henry Kissinger's words from his book "My White House Years". He says, "An aircraft carrier task force that we had alerted previously was now ordered to move towards the Bay of Bengal, ostensibly for the evacuation of Americans, but in reality to give emphasis to our warnings against an attack on West Pakistan".
There can be little doubt that the sailing of Task Force 74, headed by the carrier Enterprise into India's backyard on 10th December 1971 is something that has rankled Indians ever since. Especially since attacking West Pakistan was not on the agenda. However, with the Henry Hyde Indo-US Cooperation Act of Congress now in place, it is time to iron out these wrinkles. Fortunately, information has come to light recently, which shows that there may have been good and valid reasons for this action by the Nixon administration. And what's more, it also appears that Brig Gen Charles "Chuck" Yeager USAF, and I may have contributed to this denouement!
For those (very few) readers who may not be familiar with Chuck Yeager, let me just mention that he is the person who inspired the book "The Right Stuff" by Tom Wolfe, and the famous Hollywood movie of the same name. A few words about this legendary test pilot's career would not be out of place here.
 | The first man to break the sound barrier - Brigadier General Charles E "Chuck" Yeager, USAF. |
He enlisted as a Private in the US Army Air Corps in 1941 and entered pilot training to
graduate two years later as a flight officer. During World War II, he flew 56 combat missions, which he shot down 12 German aircraft (including five Me-109s during a single mission). Returning to the USA in 1945, his remarkable flying skills caught the eye of his superiors and he was assigned to the USAF Test Pilot School then at Wright Field.
On graduation, Yeager was selected as project pilot for one of the most important flight test programmes in history; to fly the rocket powered Bell X-1. On 14 Oct 1947, after launch from the belly of a B-29, he accelerated to Mach 1.06 at 42,000 feet and became the first pilot to shatter the once dreaded "Sound barrier". During his career he flew over 10,000 hours on 330 different types and models of aircraft.
After commanding the USAF Test Pilot School and a fighter wing in Philippines, (flying 127 missions over Vietnam). In 1969 he was promoted to Brigadier General and in January 1971, in his penultimate assignment, he was sent as the US Defence Representative to Pakistan in Islamabad. And that is where fate decided that our paths should cross.
Tribe Twenty
The cramped and cryptic entry in my flying logbook for 4th December 1971 reads as follows:
| Date | Type Flown | No. | Mission: | Duration | Results |
| 4 Dec | Hunter Mk 56-A | 463 | 2 aircraft gun strike (Lead) PAF Base Chaklala | 1 hr 15 mts | 424 rounds HE fired, one C-130 on ground |
The preceding entry for the same day says simply: "Delhi-Home Base". And thereby
hangs the somewhat unusual tale that I am going to relate.
As a young naval Lieutenant, in the late 1960s, having recently carrier-qualified on the Armstrong-Whitworth Sea Hawk, from the deck of the Indian Navy's sole flat-top Vikrant (R-11) I was just settling down to polish up my embarked flying skills when I received orders
for an exchange posting with the Indian Air Force (IAF). So I packed my bags and with great reluctance, left the sunny beaches of Goa (where our Naval Air Station was located) and headed for north India.
Having converted to the British Hawker Hunter ground attack fighter (a second-generation trans-sonic descendant of the Sea Hawk) I was posted to No.20 Squadron "The Lightnings" based close to New Delhi in end-1970. It did not take me long to find my feet on terra firma;
the air force did everything more or less like the navy, except that they were very serious and professional. But we thought that we performed with greater style and panache, and wore orange "mae wests' while doing it!
The IAF was good enough to give me a longish spell of leave in mid-1971, during which a friend and I hitch hiked to Europe via Iran, Turkey, Greece and the Balkans. We spent 4th of July amidst boisterous GIs in the Hoffbrauhaus in Munich, and Bastille Day amongst celebrating Parisian crowds on the Champs Elysees. But everywhere we went, the newsstands flashed an unfamiliar but ominous new word: "Bangladesh".
I returned to New Delhi to find that my IAF squadron had been moved further north and went looking for it. Our new base was located within 2 minutes flying time (at 420 knots) from the India-Pakistan border and would certainly be an interesting place to be in when the "Balloon" went up.
My Squadron "Boss" was an unusual combination; a great flyer, and also a martinet[1]. He made it clear that if we ever went to war, he wanted to be sure of two things: (a) that he had prepared us for it in the best possible manner, and (b) that he went in ahead of everyone else. So for the next four months we were put through a most rigorous training programme, focusing on target recognition, low-level navigation, weapon delivery at dawn/dusk and air combat.
The only long-range combat aircraft in the sub-continent in that era were the Canberra light bomber in the IAF inventory, and its US derivative, the Martin B-57 that equipped our rival, the Pakistan Air Force (PAF). The Hunter Mark 56-A that my squadron flew carried four large under-wing fuel tanks, which gave it (for those days) an extraordinary radius of action at low level. Therefore, as far as reach was concerned, apart from the Canberra, my outfit had the longest legs in the IAF.
As single a single-seat fighter, the Hunter's operating milieu was, however, restricted to daylight hours, whereas night bombing missions were the forte' of the Canberra. It was therefore an unstated sine qua non that wars on the Indian sub-continent would commence only on a full moon night so that the Canberras and B-57s could be fully exploited.
During summer of 1971, as we watched the sequence of tragic events unfolding in East Pakistan, most of us were convinced about the inevitability of conflict. At the end of the monsoons, to avoid becoming "Sitting ducks" for a PAF pre-emptive strike; every full moon phase saw my squadron retiring to a rear base (a few hundred miles away from the international border). Since the December full moon was to be on the 2nd of the month, on 25th November we flew down to Ambala (in Punjab) for some firing exercises and on 1st December we flew even further south (and east) to Delhi.
Sure enough, on the evening of Friday 3rd December the radio announced that at 5.40 pm, PAF fighters had carried out a coordinated strike on nine Indian air bases all along the western border. Later that night we clustered around the radio to hear Prime Minister Indira Gandhi tell the nation that we were at war with Pakistan.
 |
| TRIBE TWENTY: The Pilots of No.20 Squadron. The author, Arun Prakash can be seen kneeling in the middle row , 2nd from left. |
Lightning Strike
Since the die had now been cast, our first task was to get back to base and commence the retaliatory air war ASAP. Having briefed for a 5.30 am take-off, we grabbed a couple of hours of fitful sleep, and tumbled out of bed at 4 on a bitterly cold morning to find the base completely fog bound! Starting up and taxying in blackout conditions would have been bad enough, but the fog made things even more interesting. Some people took a wrong turn on the taxiway and got lost, but my wingman and I were glad to find ourselves lined up for a timely take-off.
It was eerie to be airborne in the pre-dawn dark, flying at 500 feet with a hint of moonlight in the sky and a sheet of fog below. We knew no enemy fighter could be around, but that did not prevent the hair on your neck prickling now and then. We had a safe transit of about 45 minutes to base, save two minor incidents.
As we neared home, one could see in the distance, a very pretty but intense fireworks display. It was the "Friendly" tracer, which our local air-defence gunners seemed to be putting up to welcome us back! Some frightfully bad language on RT from the Flight Commander soon put a stop to it.
Shortly after I had touched down on the darkened runway, I saw from the corner of my eye, a green light whizzing rapidly past my port wingtip. It was my wingman who, in his excitement, had landed a few knots "hot" and after overtaking my aircraft came back on the centerline ahead of me, luckily missing the runway lights! I heard a muttered apology on the radio, but we had more important things on our minds.
It was still dark as we taxied into our blast pens, and there was just time for a quick wash and bite, while the aircraft were fuelled and armed. Briefing for the first wave of retaliatory strikes on Pakistan was businesslike and we walked to our aircraft just behind the Boss. I had drawn a two-aircraft mission against PAF base Chaklala, located a few miles SE of the new capital city of Islamabad. The briefing was to carry out a single pass attack on briefed targets and to look out sharply for enemy Mirage III fighters on patrol, both over target and en-route.
The direct distance to Chaklala was not great, but we were going to do some tactical routing over mountainous terrain and approach from the northwest, so that the radars would not see us till very late. A few minutes into the mission, the butterflies settled down in the stomach as one concentrated on the map, compass, airspeed and stop-watch (which were all the navigational aids one had 35 years ago!). As we approached the target, it became apparent that the fog, which had bedeviled us over north India a few hours ago, was going to spoil our fun again; the sun was still low, and the slant visibility poor, but one could see tall objects and feature right below.
Anyway, we pulled up from low level to about 2000 feet by the stopwatch, and were gratified to see the murky outlines of the cross-runways of Chaklala airfield, but little else. Then a huge tower appeared out of the haze and I thought that the air traffic control would be a worthwhile target for want of anything better. A short burst from my four canon saw the tower collapsing, and as I flew over it, a huge column of water rose to greet me from the debris. Oops! A water tower! I consoled myself with the thought that the PAF would at least go thirsty tonight.
Pulling out of the dive, I desperately scanned the airfield for something more lucrative on the surprisingly bare tarmacs. Suddenly, from the corner of my eye, I spied protruding from a large mango grove, the unmistakable shape of a tall aircraft fin, and a sharply swept-up rear ramp section. A Hercules C-130 under camouflage!
With a bootful of rudder, and the stick hard over, I swung my fighter around and in a shallow dive, hosed the grove with 30 mm shells. A thin wisp of black smoke gave cause for optimism, and I thought that another pass would be necessary. My wingman[2], keeping a vigilant eye for enemy combat air patrols felt that we were stretching our luck in hostile territory and made his views known.
Pulling out of the second dive, through a gap in the fog I caught a glimpse of a row of small transport aircraft lined up on the secondary runway. The sight was too tempting. Putting all thought of the Hercules out of my mind, and ignoring the multiple arcs of tracer fire, I swung around in a tight high-G turn and emptied my guns on whatever was visible of the light aircraft. By now my wingman had lost patience and was yelling on RT. We departed Chaklala at full throttle hugging the deck amidst intense antiaircraft fire, which seemed to grow by the minute.
Fate was kind, and empty guns notwithstanding; we had an uneventful return passage. We landed back safely at base, feeling elated that we had opened our account and given the enemy a dose of his own medicine. In the de-brief, I concentrated on the hidden Hercules, and other target details, with a passing mention of the light aircraft and skipped the water tower episode altogether.
That evening I heard that Radio Pakistan had complained bitterly about an IAF attack on UN aircraft but decided to ignore it as enemy propaganda. The Boss, sharp as ever, would however not let go, and for many months after the war, I had my leg pulled mercilessly about the Navy attacking "unarmed neutrals".
The Right Stuff in the Wrong Place
The 1971 war had receded into the depths of my memory when last year, I received via e-mail from a young aviation journalist, a copy of an article published in the Washington Monthly of October 1985, with the cryptic remark: "You may find this of interest!"
The article titled, "The Right Stuff in the Wrong Place", was written by Edward C. Ingraham, a (former?) US diplomat, who had served as political counselor to Ambassador Farland in Islamabad, when Brig Gen Yeager was head of the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG). Since the article dwelt exclusively on Chuck Yeager, and touched upon events of the 1971 Indo-Pak war, I did find it of interest, and the reason will emerge shortly. However, at this juncture, I must emphasize that the views and opinions that I am going to quote, are entirely Ingraham's and I continue to hold Yeager in great regard for his professional skills.
"In 1971" says Ingraham, "Yeager arrived in Pakistan's shiny new capital of Islamabad to head the MAAG. Yeager's new command was a modest one: about four officers and a dozen enlisted men charged with the equally modest task of seeing that the residual trickle of American military aid was properly distributed to the Pakistanis. All the chief of the advisory group had to do was to teach Pakistanis how to use American military equipment without killing themselves in the process. The job wasn't all that difficult because the Pakistani armed forces were reasonably sophisticated."
He goes on, "One of the perks of Yeager's position was a twin-engined Beechcraft, a small airplane supplied by the Pentagon to help keep track of the occasional pieces of American military equipment that sporadically showed up in the country. Farland, however, had other designs on the plane. An ardent fisherman, he found that the Beechcraft was the ideal vehicle for transporting him to Pakistan's more remote lakes and rivers, with Yeager often piloting him to and fro."
Speaking of the worsening situation in East Pakistan, Ingraham says, "We at the Embassy were increasingly preoccupied with the deepening crisis. Meetings became more frequent and more tense. We were troubled by the complex questions that the conflict raised. No such doubts seemed to cross the mind of Chuck Yeager. I remember one occasion on which Farland asked Yeager for his assessment of how long the Pakistani forces in the East could withstand an all-out attack by India. "We could hold them off for maybe a month" he replied, "but beyond that we wouldn't have a chance without help from outside⦣". It took the rest of us a moment to fathom what he was saying, not realizing at first that "we" was West Pakistan, not the United States."
He continues, "The dictator of Pakistan at the time, the one who ordered the crackdown in the East, was a general named Yahya Khan. Way over his head in events he couldn't begin to understand, Yahya took increasingly to brooding and drinking. In December of 1971, with Indian supplied guerrillas applying more pressure on his beleaguered forces, Yahya decided on a last, hopeless gesture of defiance. He ordered what was left of his armed forces to attack India directly from the West. His air force roared across the border on the afternoon of December 3 to bomb Indian air bases, while his army crashed into India's defences on the Western frontier."
"It was the morning after the initial Pakistani strike that Yeager began to take the war with India personally. On the eve of their attack, the Pakistanis had been prudent enough to evacuate their planes from airfields close to the Indian border and move them back into the hinterlands. But no one thought to warn General Yeager. Thus when an Indian fighter pilot swept low over Islamabad airport in India's first retaliatory strike, he could see only two small planes on the ground. Dodging antiaircraft fire, he blasted both to smithereens with 20-millimeter (sic) canon fire. One was Yeager's Beechcraft. The other was a plane used by United Nations forces to supply the patrols that monitored the ceasefire in Kashmir."
"I never found out how the UN reacted to the destruction of its plane, but Yeager's response was anything but dispassionate. He raged to his cowering colleagues at a staff meeting. His voice resounding through the embassy, he proclaimed that the Indian pilot not only knew exactly what he was doing but had been specifically instructed by Indira Gandhi to blast Yeager's plane. In his book he later said that it was the Indian way of giving Uncle Sam "the finger" ".
Ingraham's suggestion that "To an Indian pilot skimming the ground at 500 mph under antiaircraft fire, precise identification of targets on an enemy airfield might take lower priority than simply hitting whatever was there and then getting the hell out" was met by withering scorn from Yeager.
"Our response to this Indian atrocity, as I recall," adds Ingraham (tongue firmly in cheek), "was a top priority cable to Washington that described the incident as a deliberate affront to the American nation and recommended immediate countermeasures. I don't think we ever got an answer⦣".
Ingraham says that Yeager's movements and activities during the subsequent conflict remained uncertain, but "A Pakistani businessman, son of a general, told me excitedly that Yeager had moved into the big air force base at Peshawar and was personally directing PAF operations against the Indians. Another swore that he had seen Yeager emerge from a just landed jet fighter at the Peshawar base."
After reading Ingraham's account, and especially after retiring from the navy, the thought has often crossed my mind that perhaps Yeager had it coming to him from Mrs. Gandhi.
And if Indira Gandhi did indeed personally order the destruction of Chuck Yeager's Beechcraft, then Nixon may have been quite justified in personally directing the Enterprise task force to sail into the Bay of Bengal as an 'immediate countermeasure'..
In which case the honours are equally shared, and I owe no apologies to anyone, except perhaps UN Secretary U Thant!
Confirmation from Chuck that he flew in the India Pakistan war 1971: about 1.23 min into the interview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0tku2b-Xms
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