The 1971 War for liberation of Bangladesh seemed to be coming to a finale. We had achieved complete dominance in the air from the night of December 06/morning of the 7th . This was after shooting down three F-86 Sabres in air combat on December 04, over and above the three over Boyra on November 22. I did not see any Sabres when we went Sabre-hunting on the 5th since they didn’t pick up our gauntlet and challenge us in the air, perhaps wisely. From then on, the Command then changed over to bombing of the runways at Tezgaon and Kurmitola by MiG-21s from Gauhati. As I read later, Sqn Ldr Dilawar Hussein, the Flight Commander of the Pakistani 14 squadron at Tezgaon, said on the night of the 6th after a bombing raid, ‘With tears in my eyes, I almost said aloud that from this moment onwards, the fate of East Pakistan has been decided’. From that moment onwards, for us from Hasimara flying Hunters, all our effort was devoted to close air support of the Army to aid in their rapid advance, reports on which kept coming to us from our friendly GLO, Major Tripathi. Lt General Sagat Singh of 4 Corps had already hopped across the mighty Meghna to the West bank and beyond on December 09 through the medium of air utilizing the limited number of Mi-4 helicopters at his disposal and was rapidly building up almost a division-sized force for a pincer on Dhaka from three different axes from the East/South East. The para-drop of 2 Para at Tangail had been successfully carried out on December 11 after my CO, ‘Suppi’ Kaul and I had carried out a photo reconnaissance mission over and around the area a couple of days before the drop. Having linked up with units of 101 Comm Zone, 2 Para was also making rapid progress towards Dhaka from the North.
While all this was good news, most of us were sitting on the ground waiting for requests for support from the ground forces and, frankly, feeling that we were missing out on the war. When the requests did not come, some of us would be launched before sunset on interdiction missions based on the Forward line of Own Troops (FLOT) given to us by Major Tripathi. Because of this, there was a bit of frustration since we were all raring to go but not getting as many wartime missions as we wanted. As a matter of fact, I had just returned from a mission at last light on December 10, when Suppi called me to the office. Being the adjutant, I took my diary with a pencil to his office next door to take down his instructions. Suppi told me that the diary was not required and to sit down. He then slowly broke the bad news that my younger brother, Lt Bharat serving in 7 Para, had been shot on December 08 somewhere around Jessore and had not survived. Suppi then advised me to get drunk that evening and take the next day off. I firmly rejected the suggestion since losses in war were a part of life and one had to carry on with his duty, as taught to me by my mother from the Gita.
Even though we were young and inexperienced, based on the chats with Major Tripathi, we were now wondering whether there would be street fighting in Dhaka and whether a lot more blood would be spilled before we liberated Bangladesh. Just then, on the morning of the 14th, Suppi led three more of us to the Base Operations for a briefing on an unexpected mission. It seemed that last minute intelligence inputs indicated that the Pakistani Governor in the East, Malik, and Lt Gen AAK ‘Tiger’ Niazi were going to hold a meeting with their senior officials in the Governor’s House around noon and we had been tasked to attack that house to send a message that further resistance was futile. Quite obviously, we all wanted to know where exactly that house was so that we avoided collateral damage and unnecessary civilian casualties. By an amazing stroke of luck, the Base Ops Officer and Major Tripathi pulled out an old tourist street map of Dhaka printed by Burmah Shell and we all memorized the location of the house in relation to the prominent features around. In the meantime, four aircraft had been readied and armed with 8xT-10 rockets and 4×135 30mm guns.
Suppi and I took off first as the lead pair, with Sqn Ldr AA Bose and Flt Lt KB Menon about 10 minutes later as the second pair. As per the R/T conversation and the post-mission report, Bose did not carry out the attack due to some problems and orbited on top over Dhaka while KB went in alone. Having done some missions over Dhaka by then, we knew the anti- aircraft fire was very heavy and effective till about 6000 feet and we would have to fly through the flak in the attacks. We cruised out at medium altitude and did an orbit over Dhaka above 6000 ft to spot the target building as also to align ourselves for the attack on the designated conference hall, all this while watching the balls of fire of the flak below us. Swooping down from that height like eagles in a steep dive, we carried out two attacks, the first with rockets and the second with guns, putting our ordnance accurately on the conference hall. Our attacks were very accurate and I saw all the ordnance go right through the verandah around the conference hall without any collateral damage. In the second pass with guns, the charring due to the rockets of the first attack was visible. After the second attack, when we exited north hugging the deck at high speeds close to 500 Knots to evade the flak, I found the Intercontinental Hotel towering above me right in front. We knew that this hotel housed most of the diplomatic community, foreign media and some local ministers and had avoided attacking it. However, just for the thrill of it, I headed straight towards it before pulling away at the last minute when I was close enough to see the faces of the people in the balconies watching the whole attack. Somehow, this mission and the exit are still imprinted vividly in my mind. Fortunately also, we came back without even a scratch on our aircraft due to such steep and quick attacks. I was the regular wingman for Suppi and flew with him on all his missions including the many reconnaissance ones we did inside East Pakistan from October onwards. God was truly our co-pilot since both of us did not get even a bullet hole on our aircraft from small arms through the entire war.
By all accounts, this attack was a great psychological blow on the Pakistani leadership and hastened the surrender of Pakistani Forces in the East, literally as the coup de grace. Lt General ‘Shammi’ Mehta, then a Major, commanding the PT-76 squadron under 4 Corps, later called it a ‘victory of mind over matter’. To make certain that the Pakistani leadership had got the message; we attacked the university area in Dhaka the next day in a similar manner, where the troops for the defence of Dhaka were reportedly holed up thus conveying that they could run but could not hide from our air attacks. After the instrument of surrender was signed in Dhaka on December 16th, Air Marshal HC Dewan, the AOC-in-C of Eastern Air Command asked Lt General Niazi why he surrendered though he had the troops to hold out much longer. Niazi, pointing to the wings on Group Captain Chandan Singh’s chest, has been quoted as saying, ‘This had hastened the surrender. I and my people have had no rest during day or night, thanks to your Air Force. We have changed our quarters ever so often, trying to find a safe place for a little rest and sleep so that we could carry on the fight, but we have been unable to do that’.
When I read that later, I felt proud to have been a part of these raids. Unfortunately, nobody from Hasimara was air lifted to Dhaka after the war since all the transport aircraft flew out of Gauhati or Jorhat and I never got to see the damage we had actually done in these attacks. C’est la vie.
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