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Originally Posted by PetrolRider Seems like an interesting story in itself which I am totally unaware of. Tried to unsuccessfully search the topic in Google.
What would it take to entertain some of us poor soul on this? |
The "legend" of the Tu-126 Moss was born in the minds of the Pakistanis and their American advisors (specifically) the legendary Brig. Gen Chuck Yeager because they could not believe and dumbfounded how the IAF MiG-21FLs and Su-7s were able to accurately navigate to their targets at night, bomb them successfully and reach their home bases without any trouble or losing their way. They believed the IAF aircraft were guided by a Tu-126 Moss AWACS, that was directing communications, guiding them into & out of their targets.
But the truth was that just before the 1971 war, TACDE's(TCDTS - Tactics & Combat Development Training Squadron, as it was known then) MiG-21 and Su-7 pilots, trained and were tasked specifically with night Offensive Counter Air Operations against PAF airfields. Neither the MiG-21FL nor the Su-7 had the equipment to carry our low level strikes at night nor did the pilots have any exposure to any such operations at that point in time. The objective of such strikes was to ensure that the PAF and its Air Defence get overextended and hence be less efficient . It was expected that even if these low level night strikes were less successful, the harassment factor would have a considerable impact on the PAF. The pilots trained at night for low level navigation accurately using stopwatches by dead reckoning. Remember at night, no terrain features are visible for visual navigations. So the pilots had to concentrate extremely hard not only their instruments, watches, but also an eye on their turn, climb and descent rates. Even a minor error could have easily thrown them off course.
Navigation was mainly be dead reckoning. Zero on the Altimeter meant a height of 150 to 200m and it was accurate flying through checkpoints. John Fricker, a British journalist who was hopelessly biased towards the Pakistanis and helped creating many fake legends about the PAF, attributed the success if IAF night strikes to the use of "Moss" AWACS, which he claimed that Soviets were operating in IAF's support during the war.
Sqdn Ldr D S Jafa, a TCDTS Su-7 pilot who was shot down over Pakistan and taken POW, was interrogated not only by PAF officers but by Chuck Yeager as well. Yeager was specifically interested in knowing the mechanism IAF Su-7 pilots were using , which enabled them to hit targets deep inside Pakistan time and again, even at night, flying singly or in formation, with unerring accuracy. The IAF pilot said there was a magnetic compass and a watch and nothing more, which was the truth. Not satisfied, the questioning went on and on. S/L Jafa stuck to is guns and both parties were losing patience. Ultimately, Jafa retorted - " The only other aid our pilots have, in addition to the magnetic compass and a clock, is Eyeballs Mark II installed in an Indian skull!!!". The interrogation regarding it stopped thereafter.
The story of the TCDTS pilots, their training and the missions they flew have been described in great detail in this book by Air Marshal T J Master released not so long ago (A/M Master was a TCDTS MiG-21FL pilot and one of the founding members of TCDTS)
TCDTS MiGs & Sukhois were expected to go deep into Pakistan at night and PAF air defences were expected to be alert in picking up VHF comms. The use of homing beacons was out of questions because it would have have given way the position of IAF aircraft to the Pakistanis. Air Marshal M M Engineer thought of ingenious innovation - to use the MiG-21 as a relay station. The callsign of such relay aircraft was Sparrow and the aircraft wouls pass on necessary information from the signals units to other aircraft flying in the region to specially help those strike aircraft returning to their home bases at night after strikes in Pakistan. RT procedures were abbreviated & coded for the purpose.
All of this led to the legend of the Tu-126 Moss in the IAF -an a aircraft which was never in service with the IAF and which was figment of the enemy's imagination
An artwork of the night strike missions flown by TCDTS MiG-21s- Teshter Master in the 1971 war strikes PAF base Shorkot Road by night- 1971 Indo-Pak War, by Deb Gohain
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Originally Posted by locusjag * All lights were routinely put out in air bases and villages near them for safety; a PAF B-52 (the USAF version of our Canberra) once spotted a villager walking in an open field at 4 AM with a lamp and decided to bomb him. The poor guy survived a walk to answer nature's call |
It was the Martin B-57 Canberra, an American license built and slightly different version of the English Electric Canberra- variants of which the IAF was operating at that time.
The PAF operated B-56s also....PAF designation for the Harbin H-5 bomber( Chinese version of the IL-28 Beagle) . These B-56s served alongside B-57s. but were not popular with Pakistani pilots and they were eventually traded back to China in exchange for more Shenyang F-6s..
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Originally Posted by locusjag * One of our air warriors bombed Chuck Yeager's personal Cessna or a Learjet (can't remember) that was parked at a PAF airbase. Yeager was there as a "coach" for the PAF's pilots during the 1971 war. He was so incensed that he lodged a complain via diplomatic channels; unconfirmed reports also state that he personally flew sorties against India after that since he took it personally |
The IAF pilot who destroyed Yeager's Beechcraft was Lt. Arun Prakash(who was a Naval Sea hawk pilot on deputation to IAF's No. 20 Sqdn. He later went on to fly home the Navy's first Sea Harriers and rose to become the Naval Chief) flying Hunters. He was pretty upset that his own personal aircraft was destroyed and he believed that PM Mrs Indira Gandhi had personally ordered destruction of his aircraft, which was not true, and life long he held a bias against the IAF and its pilots ,so much so that one of his delusions was that Pakistan had "won" the 1971 war. Truth is Mr "Right Stuff" was at the wrong place at the wrong time and he could not digest the fact that Indian pilots got better of the American trained PAF time and again.