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How India brought down the US' supersonic man
January 17, 2012
Rakesh Krishnan[color="5"] Simha, specially for RIR ,
Chuck Yeager is an American icon and will go down in history as the first man to break the sound barrier. But during the 1971 India-Pakistan War, when an Indian pilot shot his personal aircraft, the air ace lost cool, and demanded retaliatory against India.
Mercifully, his antics were ignored by then US President Richard Nixon.[/color]
.
.
Below are extract of the actual article.
.
.
For full article please visit the following link. . . . How India brought down the US' supersonic man | Russia & India Report
.
** The 1971 India-Pakistan war didn't turn out very well from the US' point of view. For one particular American it went particularly bad Chuck Yeager, the legendary test pilot and the first man to break the sound barrier, was dispatched by the US government to train Pakistani air force pilots but ended up as target practice for the Indian Air Force, and in the process kicked up a diplomatic storm in a war situation.
** Yeager enjoyed was a twin-engine Beechcraft, an airplane supplied by the Pentagon. It was his pride and joy and he often used the aircraft for transporting the US ambassador on fishing expeditions in Pakistan's northwest mountains.
.
** Yeager may have been a celebrated American icon, but here's what Ingraham says about his nonchalant attitude. "We at the embassy were increasingly preoccupied with the deepening crisis (the Pakistan Army murdered more than 3,000,000 civilians in then East Pakistan, now Bangladesh). I remember one occasion on which the ambassador 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 realising at first that "we" was West Pakistan, not the United States."
.
The best part.--
** As briefings
for the first wave of retaliatory strikes on Pakistan
were being conducted, Prakash had drawn a
two-aircraft mission against the PAF base of
Chaklala, located south east of Islamabad.
Flying in low under the radar, they climbed to
2000 feet as they neared the target. As Chaklala
airfield came into view they scanned the runways
for Pakistani fighters but were disappointed to see
only two small planes. Dodging antiaircraft fire,
Prakash blasted both to smithereens with 30mm
cannon fire. One was Yeager's Beechcraft and the
other was a Twin Otter used by Canadian UN
forces.
Fishing in troubled waters
When Yeager discovered his plane was smashed,
he rushed to the US embassy in Islamabad and
started yelling like a deranged maniac. His voice
resounding through the embassy, he said the
Indian pilot not only knew exactly what he was
doing but had been specifically instructed by the
Indian prime minister to blast Yeager's plane. In
his autobiography, he later said that it was the
"Indian way of giving Uncle Sam the finger".
Yeager pressured the US embassy in Pakistan
into sending a top priority cable to Washington
that described the incident as a "deliberate affront
to the American nation and recommended
immediate countermeasures". Basically, a
desperate and distracted Yeager was calling for
the American bombing of India, something that
President Richard Nixon and his Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger were already mulling.
January 17, 2012
Rakesh Krishnan[color="5"] Simha, specially for RIR ,
Chuck Yeager is an American icon and will go down in history as the first man to break the sound barrier. But during the 1971 India-Pakistan War, when an Indian pilot shot his personal aircraft, the air ace lost cool, and demanded retaliatory against India.
Mercifully, his antics were ignored by then US President Richard Nixon.[/color]
.
.
Below are extract of the actual article.
.
.
For full article please visit the following link. . . . How India brought down the US' supersonic man | Russia & India Report
.
** The 1971 India-Pakistan war didn't turn out very well from the US' point of view. For one particular American it went particularly bad Chuck Yeager, the legendary test pilot and the first man to break the sound barrier, was dispatched by the US government to train Pakistani air force pilots but ended up as target practice for the Indian Air Force, and in the process kicked up a diplomatic storm in a war situation.
** Yeager enjoyed was a twin-engine Beechcraft, an airplane supplied by the Pentagon. It was his pride and joy and he often used the aircraft for transporting the US ambassador on fishing expeditions in Pakistan's northwest mountains.
.
** Yeager may have been a celebrated American icon, but here's what Ingraham says about his nonchalant attitude. "We at the embassy were increasingly preoccupied with the deepening crisis (the Pakistan Army murdered more than 3,000,000 civilians in then East Pakistan, now Bangladesh). I remember one occasion on which the ambassador 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 realising at first that "we" was West Pakistan, not the United States."
.
The best part.--
** As briefings
for the first wave of retaliatory strikes on Pakistan
were being conducted, Prakash had drawn a
two-aircraft mission against the PAF base of
Chaklala, located south east of Islamabad.
Flying in low under the radar, they climbed to
2000 feet as they neared the target. As Chaklala
airfield came into view they scanned the runways
for Pakistani fighters but were disappointed to see
only two small planes. Dodging antiaircraft fire,
Prakash blasted both to smithereens with 30mm
cannon fire. One was Yeager's Beechcraft and the
other was a Twin Otter used by Canadian UN
forces.
Fishing in troubled waters
When Yeager discovered his plane was smashed,
he rushed to the US embassy in Islamabad and
started yelling like a deranged maniac. His voice
resounding through the embassy, he said the
Indian pilot not only knew exactly what he was
doing but had been specifically instructed by the
Indian prime minister to blast Yeager's plane. In
his autobiography, he later said that it was the
"Indian way of giving Uncle Sam the finger".
Yeager pressured the US embassy in Pakistan
into sending a top priority cable to Washington
that described the incident as a "deliberate affront
to the American nation and recommended
immediate countermeasures". Basically, a
desperate and distracted Yeager was calling for
the American bombing of India, something that
President Richard Nixon and his Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger were already mulling.
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