Quoted from "Flight of the falcon- Demolishing myths of Indo-Pak wars of 1965-1971" by Air Cdr Sajjad Haider
"..................................that was possibly the moment when he[Rafiqui] spotted enemy aircraft on CAP at the
southern end of the runway. From here on, there are several versions of the famous air battle which ensued.
A reconstruction of events as evidenced in the recent dissertations by credible authors from India and Pakistan may help elicit the most probable pattern of what really occurred before and after Rafiqui and Yunus were shot down. In the final analysis, there were only four Hunters over Halwara and not 10-12 as claimed by the No 2[Cecil], the only survivor from that fateful strike. Rafiqui shot the leader of the first two Hunters spotted by him and by Cecil’s own irrefutable admission it was Yunus who had gone after the second Hunter flown by Flg Off Ghandhi. Ghandhi did manage a pot-shot at Cecil but was not able to get him. This distraction cost Ghandhi dearly as Yunus, who was chasing Ghandhi, eventually managed to shoot him down. The No 2 himself admitted to me recently that he did not shoot the second Hunter from the first pair spotted by Rafiqui. He had earlier claimed shooting down the third Hunter which did not happen because only the first two Hunters had been shot down – the third and fourth Hunters had shot Sarfaraz Rafiqui and Yunus when the battle had ended.
The Indian pilots who had shot Rafiqui and Yunus confirmed that there were only two F-86s in the air battle and not three. Could that be
construed to mean that the sole survivor, No 2, was no longer in the area when Rafiqui and Yunus were shot down? Since there were no further dog fights and consequently no further loss of any Hunters, the air battle had ended there with two Hunters downed by Rafiqui and Yunus as these consummate fighter pilots were themselves martyred within seconds and crashed six miles west of Halwara near the village of Haran. The Halwara dog fight had come to a tragic end.
The rest of the story narrated by the surviving wing man about fighting with ten Hunters and shooting down three more before deciding to
disengage at will, can at best be assigned to the fog of war; at worst a flight of fancy. Both of these are possible during war, but need to be cleared up half a century later. Air Cdre Kaiser Tufail, the authors of the India-Pakistan Air War of 1965 and the recently released air combat losses of the IAF explicitly state that only four Hunters were involved in the fight over Halwara and two of them were shot down in the periphery of the airfield. Consequently, the story told by Sarfaraz Rafiqui’s wing man is unsubstantiated, as is his claim of shooting down an Indian Canberra bomber at night. The story chronicled by the PAF’s official history-1988 also cannot stand the test of veracity as none of the doubtful and controversial claims by Sargodha were put through incisive scrutiny, including Cecil’s account, at any stage. The PAF’s official history needs to be corrected – PAF’s proud legacy should not be subjected to denigration by critics just because it would be embarrassing to admit exaggerations during the war (an understandable tendency at that time by both antagonists). These phantoms must be put to rest to retain the glory of the PAF. "
