Chuck Yeager headed the US Military Advisory Group in Pakistan in 1971
www.theweek.in
Right Stuff was the name of a book on legendary test pilots, including Yeager, which was made into a movie of the same name in 1983.
The Beechcraft was assigned by the Pentagon to Yeager "to help keep track of the occasional pieces of American military equipment that sporadically showed up in the country,"
The Washington Monthly said. Following the incident, Yeager became furious. Ingraham wrote, "His [Yeager’s] voice resounding through the embassy, he proclaimed that the Indian pilot not only knew exactly what he was doing but had been specifically instructed by [Indian prime minister] Indira Gandhi to blast Yeager’s plane". "Yeager informed me that anyone dumb enough not to know a deliberate attack on the American flag when he saw one had no business wearing his country’s uniform," Ingraham wrote.
Tall claims?
While Yeager kept a low profile for the rest of the 1971 war, he interrogated Indian pilots who had been shot down. Ingraham claimed there was speculation Yeager played a more active role in helping Pakistan. "A Pakistani businessman, son of a senior general, told me excitedly that Yeager had moved into the big air force base at Peshawar and was personally directing the grateful Pakistanis in deploying their fighter squadrons against the Indians. Another swore that he had seen Yeager emerge from a just-landed jet fighter at the Peshawar base," Ingraham wrote.
However,
M. Kaiser Tufail, a retired Pakistan Air Force commodore and a strategic analyst, downplays Yeager's role in the 1971 war. In response to a column by Prakash in
The Print in 2018, Tufail wrote,
"About Chuck Yeager, all I have to say is that he was a big mouth and a braggart… All he did was to fly a couple of sorties on the Sabre in Peshawar, due to his friendship with Air Mshl Rahim, both having a penchant for hunting and fine Scotch.”
Grouse continues
It appeared decades later, Yeager could not forget the destruction of his aircraft in 1971. Yeager has repeatedly tweeted that Pakistan won the 1971 war as India did not annex it. He even claimed the Beechcraft had been used to rescue Indian pilots who had been shot down.
Yeager has been an admirer of Pakistani pilots. In 2015, he tweeted in response to a query, “When I was there in 1971-73, they were the best. They kicked the Indians butt!”