Triumph in Surrender: A Gathering of Karamvir Yodhas - An Excerpt
- In Book Reviews
- 08:29 PM, Jun 19, 2016
- Vijainder K Thakur
When Sunil and Jeff took off around 6 a.m., the visibility was 2-km and there was dust haze up to 10,000 ft., typical of Jodhpur weather in May.
They climbed to 6 km for combat; at that height the sky was blue with visibility well over 10 km.
They were allotted Sector Alpha for the exercise, as Sunil had discreetly arranged with the SATCO (Senior Air Traffic Control Officer) last night. The sector runs east to west, so flying eastwards looking down into the dust haze the visibility would be very poor.
The first combat commenced with Jeff and Sunil flying abreast at cruise speed, 3 km apart. They engaged reheats, turned into each other and climbed steeply. Jeff went higher and turned inside Sunil. Both tried to surprise each other by not reversing after the merge crossover. Having completed a tight 270 degree turn, they merged a second time with their speeds rapidly bleeding. After the second cross over they were locked in slow speed scissors.
The MiG-21 is difficult to handle and unforgiving at slow speeds and high angles of attack, flight conditions characteristic of visual combat end game. A large percentage of MiG-21 crashes in the IAF are attributed to the aircraft’s poor slow speed handling. Sunil had gone over his maneuvering hundreds of time in his mind and had drilled himself to alternately scan the sky and his flight instruments in quick succession, so as to keep the adversary in sight while flying close to the edge of the MiG’s safe flight envelope.
Meticulous preparation and an adrenaline rush helped Sunil overcome the stress from a DASI assessment sortie and a restless night.
Despite Sunil’s skillful handling of the aircraft, Jeff inexorably gained an advantage over him with each scissor. He was definitely flying the aircraft better than Sunil; taking it closer to the edge of its safe flight envelope than Sunil could.
Even as Jeff gained advantage, the two aircraft rapidly lost height. Sunil realized that the sun was still too close to the horizon to take advantage of from this height and attempt a getaway. His only hope lay in the two aircraft descending to minimum permissible combat height before Jeff was able to steadily track his gunsight on him.
And that’s just what happened!
“Panther formation, stop, stop, combat stop!” Jeff called out over the RT at exactly 2 km height, as per the SOPs. Sunil heaved a sigh of relief. Jeff was in his rear but too far off bore to claim a kill.
“Good show, Panther leader,” Jeff encouragingly called out on R/T, acknowledging that Sunil had held him off long enough; despite the advantage that Jeff had gained.
***
The second combat involved radar vectoring and head on merge. Jeff and Sunil separated from each other under instructions from their independent radar controllers who later vectored them on to each other using different R/T channels.
Sunil had made other discreet calls the night earlier, besides the one to the SATCO to arrange for Sector Alpha! One of them was to the CO of the SU covering the combat. (SU or Signal Unit is an arcane IAF designation used even for Air Defense Radar units!)
When the interception started, Sunil was flying West and Jeff, East, into the sun, as Sunil had arranged with the SU!
In air combat, the first to see enjoys a considerable advantage. Flying West, Sunil had a better chance to spot Jeff before he did.
Sunil did spot Jeff first, exactly where his controller asked him to look, an indication that Jeff hadn’t spotted him yet! Buoyed by the advantage, Sunil immediately engage full power and started to maneuver. As soon as he pulled up to gain height, Jeff did the same, and Sunil knew Jeff too had spotted him! Both pilots had made contact at almost the same time, despite Jeff being forced to look into the Sun! Sunil realized he was up against a formidable opponent.
The two adversaries held their heights and waited for the merge.
Sunil knew Jeff would pull up after the merge and drop speed, because in the previous engagement Jeff had established that Sunil’s slow speed handling of the aircraft wasn’t as good as his.
At the point of merge, Sunil did a sharp, diving turn to head east into the dust haze accentuated by the rising sun. With full afterburners his MiG rapidly gained speed. His aim was to make Jeff lose sight of him, but it was a risky maneuver because Sunil, with Jeff in his rear quarter, would get unsighted first!
Sunil had done the math for the maneuver the previous night. He was prepared to lose contact with Jeff for around 10 secs and had calculated where to look for him on turning back westward.
As anticipated by Sunil, Jeff checked his climb as soon as he saw Sunil dive down and eventually lost Sunil in the haze.
“No contact Panther leader. Do you have contact,” Jeff asked on R/T.
“Affirmative Panther 2, I have contact,” Sunil lied. Loss of mutual contact mandated calling off combat according to regulation.
Ten seconds later, Sunil turned 180 again and started to climb sharply heading West, hoping Jeff would take some time to spot him after he emerged out of the haze.
To his great relief, Sunil picked Jeff up just as he had calculated and continued to climb well above him. Had he not spotted Jeff, Sunil would have been in big trouble for continuing combat after losing visual contact.
“Confirm in contact Panther lead,” a by now desperate and incredulous Jeff asked on R/T.
“Affirmative,” Sunil said. This time he wasn’t lying. He had outmaneuvered Jeff and was closing in for a gun kill.
Seconds later Jeff picked Sunil up in his rear view mirror. Sunil was in his rear quarter closing to gun range.
“Damn...,” Jeff called out in dismay on R/T.
“Stop, Stop, combat stop!” Jeff called out, adding, “Good work, panther lead.”
***
It’s not enough to score a kill in a DASI assessment sortie. During the subsequent debrief, you have to illustrate your maneuvering on a blackboard, drawing flight paths using distance, time, and height approximations. The challenge before Sunil was to prove that he had remained in visual contact throughout the engagement, which he actually hadn’t!
The debriefing, attended by the entire squadron, was turbulent, but once again some homework the previous night, helped Sunil, who had secretly planned the entire maneuver with the help of Squadron Leader Satish Soni.
Soni and Sunil were good friends and had flown around 10 combat sorties together while they were together in Maruts, and in each one of those sorties Soni had shot Sunil out of the sky!
After each mauling, Soni would tell Sunil, “Your maneuvering is too predictable. If your adversary can guess what you are going to do next, the adversary will win.
“Each maneuver has a counter. To win against an equally skilled adversary, you have surprise him with your maneuvering. Do something which he has not practiced a counter to.”
Sunil had never managed to surprise Soni. Last night, going over his past air combat experience, Sunil had hit upon the idea of seeking Soni’s help in surprising Jeff.
“Jeff has two weaknesses which I am aware of,” Soni told Sunil over the phone. “Pedantry and vanity.”
“He doesn’t break rules and he doesn’t wear glasses. His left eye has 6/9 vision. He is supposed to fly with glasses, but partly out of vanity and partly out of inconvenience, he never does!
“To win against him, you will have to make him lose sight of you.”
Soni and Sunil had then worked out the maneuver that Sunil had just flown.
For the debriefing, Sunil drew maneuver diagrams such that they showed him within 11-12 km of Jeff. With visibility reported at 10+ km during the sortie, going by Sunil’s charts no one could positively claim that he had lost sight of Jeff at any time during the entire maneuvering.
Everyone understood that the maneuvers on the board were drawn using mental recall and couldn’t possibly be very accurate. The distances shown could be incorrect, but they could also be correct.
Jeff repeatedly questioned Sunil’s claim of having had him in contact throughout, but Sunil stuck to his guns and it was Jeff who blinked, troubled by the thought that his uncorrected vision may have caused him to lose contact.
“All right Sunil, I will give you the kill,” he said ending the discussion.
There was silence in the briefing hall.
Jeff continued, “I could give you an average plus rating on the sortie, or an above average rating. An above average rating would mean your squadron remains in reckoning for best fighter squadron trophy.”
There was a long pause, as he looked from Sunil to the CO and then at the other squadron pilots attending the briefing.
“I am inclined to give the sortie an average plus rating, because I am not convinced Sunil could have pulled this off without losing sight of me...
Everyone seemed to slump in their chairs. There was a chorus of “Uhhh….”
Jeff continued, “But I will still go with an above average rating, because had it been war, I would have been shot out of the sky.”
Loud cheers filled the briefing room; Jeff came and shook Sunil’s hand.
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