Speed Shooting Classic

The evening of 6th September 1965 saw mixed fortunes for the PAF after its pre-emptive strikes against IAF’s forward air bases. Pathankot had been administered a crippling blow, with ten aircraft destroyed and several more damaged on the ground[1]; however, the strikes against Adampur and Halwara proved largely futile. The latter strike was particularly costly, as PAF had lost two of its top pilots. The mood at Sargodha air base was therefore as vengeful as it was sombre.

Propping himself on a table in the oft-frequented bar, Sqn Ldr Muhammad Mahmood Alam, the plucky Squadron Commander of No 11 Squadron set the tone for the next day’s operations with a fiery oration. Addressing the fighter pilots of No 33 Wing who had huddled together in this popular hangout, Alam promised to avenge the blood of Rafiqui and Yunus, the two downed airmen of Sargodha. Only hours before, Alam had brought down a Hunter while leading a dusk strike that was intercepted on the way to Adampur. Brimming with confidence and enthusiasm, Alam assured the gathering that the Sabre could out-manoeuvre the Hunter, a proposition that did not have many takers thus far. Now, with a kill to prove his point, he bayed for more blood.

Sargodha came to be at the business end of IAF’s retaliatory strikes that commenced at dawn on 7th September. Just after the exit of the first Mystère raid, two pairs of Sabres and a singleton Starfighter were scrambled to replenish the ongoing Combat Air Patrols. Within a few minutes of getting airborne, they were directed by ground control towards an incoming raid. After flying eastwards for 10-15 minutes, they were told to turn back as the raiders were already overhead Sargodha. The time was 0547 hrs (PST).

Sqn Ldr D S Jog of No 27 Squadron based at Halwara, was leading a formation of five Hunters that included Sqn Ldr O N Kacker, Flt Lt D N Rathore, Flt Lt T K Choudhry and Flg Off P S Parihar. They had initially pulled up to attack Chota Sargodha[2], a disused, non jet-capable airstrip of World War II vintage, which somehow figured out as vital in IAF’s war plans. Unable to locate any aircraft, the formation turned for the main Sargodha Base which lay about eight miles east; however, with attack mechanics not quite under control, the Hunters ended up targeting ‘a factory-like installation’ which, as the Sargodhians would know, was Sultan Textile Mills! Beating a hasty exit through the barrage of Anti-Aircraft Artillery fire, the Hunters headed home but the mission was not quite over.

A pair of Sabres led by Flt Lt Imtiaz Bhatti swooped down on the two trailing Hunters but to his dismay, Bhatti found another pair of Sabres already in a dive, looking set to shoot. The redoubtable Alam and his wingman Flt Lt Masood Akhtar had beaten him to the ‘go for the bogeys’ call by Killer Control, an eagle-eyed lookout tasked to assist in visual sighting of raiders. Bhatti had to be content with being a grandstand spectator of what was to become a celebrated mission. The lone Starfighter flown by Flt Lt Arif Iqbal continued to perform its role of a ‘bouncer,’ keeping an eye for troublemakers in the area.

The rear pair of Hunters kept a good lookout and on spotting Alam’s Sabre, did a sharp defensive turn into him. Alam pulled up to avoid an overshoot and then repositioned again. Still out of gun range Alam pressed on, but with the Hunters doing a full power run, he settled for a missile shot against the last man. Firing a Sidewinder from a dive at very low altitude, Alam was not surprised to see it go into the ground. The best way of launching the early model Sidewinders at such altitudes was to get below the target and fire with a cooler sky for a background, thus easing the missile seeker’s heat discrimination problem. However, with the Hunters skimming the treetops, going any lower was out of question. Alam’s predicament was soon resolved when the Hunters pulled up to clear a stretch of high-tension cables. In good range, dead line astern and hearing a loud growl that signalled a positive heat source, Alam couldn’t have asked for better firing conditions. He let go his second Sidewinder, but didn’t see it hit directly. With an apparent proximity detonation, the missile warhead had dangerously ruptured the Hunter’s fuel lines. Jog’s formation members heard desperate messages of illuminated warning lights and engine rough-running from the stricken pilot. Overshooting the crippled Hunter, Alam noticed with amazement that its canopy was missing and there was no pilot inside. With other Hunters as well as his own wingman to keep an eye on, Alam had obviously missed the ejection sequence. Looking around, he noticed the pilot coming down by parachute. Bhatti, who was watching from a distance, recalls, “While Alam was chasing, I continued to look out for other Hunters as I hadn’t yet given up the prospects of achieving a kill. We were just short of the river when a flash in the sky caught my eye and I observed an aircraft go down in flames. I learnt later that the pilot had ejected shortly before the aircraft hit the ground.”

Sqn Ldr Onkar Nath Kacker had come down near Burjlal, a village (now abandoned) by the bank of Chenab River, about 25 miles south-east of Sargodha. Quick-witted, he got rid of his map and log card as well as the badges on his flying coveralls. As the villagers rushed towards him, he cleverly introduced himself as a PAF pilot. The gullible village folk, who had never seen a fighter pilot for real, were easily taken in. An instant hero, Kacker became the centre of adulation as large crowds gathered. Seeming to be in a hurry to get back to duty after a refreshing cup of tea, he demanded arrangements for a horse-ride till the main road so that he could flag a bus for his home Base, Sargodha! Kacker almost made a getaway but for a sharp-eyed villager, Imdad Hussain Shah, who noted Kacker’s demeanour with some suspicion. A smart check of the flying suit brand gave away the ‘Made in India’ label and, an ashen-faced Kacker found himself trussed up in front of the speechless villagers. A few hours later, a search party from Lalian Police Station arrived and mercifully, saved Kacker from a crowd that was angry and sneering by then. He spent the next five months as a POW[3].

Alam had lost sight of the other Hunters, but with ample fuel he was prepared to fly some distance to catch up with them. Soon after crossing the Chenab River, his wingman Akhtar called out, “Contact, Hunters one o’clock.” They were flying at 100-200 ft and around 480 knots. As Alam closed in to gunfire range, the Hunters did a half-hearted defensive turn which did nothing to spoil his aim; rather, it set them up in line astern for easy shooting in a row. Alam fired at the last Hunter against the glow of the rising sun and saw fuel spew out of the drop tanks, which had taken hits from the Sabre’s six guns. In a hurry to score fast, Alam shifted his aim ahead on to the next aircraft and fired another short burst. The Hunters seemed to fly across Alam’s gunsight like a gaggle of geese, and he obliged repeatedly, four times in all.

Headed towards Sargodha, Wg Cdr Toric Zachariah, Officer Commanding of No 7 Squadron based at Halwara, had been leading the third raid with five Hunters. The formation included Sqn Ldr A S Lamba, Sqn Ldr M M Sinha, Sqn Ldr S B Bhagwat and Flg Off J S Brar, the latter two performing the role of armed escorts. Flying at low level, they were expecting a criss-cross with No 27 Squadron Hunters that were on their way out. However, just after crossing Sangla Hill, Lamba noticed two Sabres at 11 o’clock position, about 4,000 ft high, diving down. He immediately ordered a hard turn to the left and Zachariah followed up with instructions to abort the mission and exit. Bhagwat and Brar, however, made the fatal mistake of engaging without jettisoning their external stores[4]. Weighed down by ordnance, the Hunters had no chance and were picked off in quick succession. The wrecks of the two aircraft along with the remains of the pilots were found in the fields near Siranwali Bulher and Chahoor Mughlian, two villages near the small town of Sangla Hill[5].

Jog’s formation meanwhile, collected itself and sped away, having miraculously survived Alam’s onslaught. Jog and his wingman Choudhry had, however, received hits and their aircraft were badly holed up, as they were to discover later after landing[6]. Rathore and Parihar had remained unscathed. The four Hunters that had been hit were, in fact, from different formations; by an amazing coincidence and bad timing, they had ended up in a horrific jumble!

No 27 Squadron’s egressing and No 7 Squadron’s ingressing formations were about a mile apart when they flew past each other’s port sides, near Sangla Hill. As Alam dived down upon Jog’s Hunters tail-on, Lamba had spotted Bhatti’s pair appearing at a frontal aspect; thinking that they were being attacked, he called a hard turn to the left. Once Alam was through with firing at Jog and Choudhry in about half a turn, Bhagwat and Brar were neatly placed in line of fire for the second half.

If Lamba had somehow known that Bhatti was really out of the fight, having had a hung drop tank a short while ago, No 7 Squadron’s strike could have pressed on. However, with Arif’s Starfighter lurking on top, the inevitable would only have been delayed a few more minutes. A warning call by Jog might have helped, but that was possible only if he had enough time to change over to Zachariah’s radio frequency. It all happened so fast that even Alam was confounded.

Zachariah’s pilots, as might have Jog’s, considered themselves fortunate that Alam wasn’t aware of the mass exodus that was under way. Unleashing his wingman could have doomed several more of the fleeing raiders. Nonetheless, three Hunters shot down and two damaged was not a bad tally, considering that for some anxious minutes, Alam and his wingman were up against nine of them!

Obviously pleased with himself, Alam announced to the radar controller that he had shot down five Hunters. An ace-in-a-mission must have sounded like a splendid achievement and, the news spread like wildfire right up to the highest echelons. Alam had barely stepped back in the squadron when Radio Pakistan announced the unparalleled feat of jet combat. The die had been cast; confirmation of the kills was now of little consequence. Alam’s prolific shooting in the war had, however, left a tidy balance in his account. Besides the ‘damages’ which, in the heat of combat got overestimated as kills, Alam went on to bag five aircraft[7] in just three dogfights, including the speed-shooting classic at Sangla Hill. For his superb performance in that mission, Alam was awarded a ‘Bar[8]’ to the Sitara-i-Jur’at that he had already earned a day earlier for his first successful encounter with the Hunters. He continues to remain the top-scoring pilot of the sub-continent, a region that has witnessed numerous dogfights in two major conflicts. Alam is rightly worthy of a place in the annals of air warfare as ‘one of the great aces of jet age[9].’

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[1] India’s Official History of Indo-Pak War, 1965 acknowledges ten aircraft destroyed and three damaged, during the Pathankot raid.
[2] IAF is uncertain if the strike reached Chota Sargodha, as gun camera ciné seems to suggest that the target may have been mistaken for Wegowal.
[3] Six surviving eyewitnesses of erstwhile Burjlal village (now relocated in Changranwala due to floods) were interviewed recently (2000). All clearly remembered having seen Kacker’s aircraft being hit, catching fire and, tail section breaking up, contrary to Kacker’s claim of experiencing an engine flame-out at exactly the same instant. Details of Kacker’s escape charade were narrated by surviving villagers. His POW interrogation report also recounts the incident.
[4] The wreckage of Bhagwat’s Hunter included ‘twelve bombs of various sizes,’ as recorded by security staff that seemed unfamiliar with aircraft ordnance; these were actually T-10 rockets. This important configuration detail seems to have been overlooked in Carless’ painting as well.
[5] The remains of Sqn Ldr Bhagwat were taken away by officials of Sangla Hill Police Station and buried in its precincts; those of Flg Off Brar were buried in Acre # 21, Square # 56, now belonging to Mr Noor Muhammad of Siranwali Bulher village.
[6] IAF accounts state that Jog and Choudhry saw the Sabre fire at them and they took evasive action. The timing of the Sabre’s attack is, however, incorrectly stated as being just after the exit from Sargodha. Alam fired his guns four times in succession near Sangla Hill only and, not on any other occasion. No other pilot fired his guns during the engagement.
[7] Alams kills:
– 6th Sep, One Hunter, Sqn Ldr Ajeet Kumar Rawlley, No 7 Squadron, KIA, near Tarn Taran.
– 7th Sep, Three Hunters; Sqn Ldr Onkar Nath Kacker, No 27 Squadron, POW, Burjlal; Sqn Ldr Suresh B Bhagwat and Flg Off Jagdev Singh Brar, No 7 Squadron, KIA, near Sangla Hill.
– 16th Sep, One Hunter, Flg Off Farokh Dara Bunsha, No 7 Squadron, KIA, near Amritsar.
[8] A metallic ‘bar’ on a ribbon denotes an additional award.
[9] Tribute by Jon Guttman in ‘Pakistan’s Sabre Ace,’ Aviation History, Sep 1998.

This article is an excerpted chapter from Air Cdre Kaiser Tufail's book, Great Air Battles of Pakistan Air Force, published by Ferozsons (Pvt) Ltd, 2005. It was also published in Defence Journal, Sep 2001 issue, as well as the daily newspaper, The News International on 6 Sep 2006.