General Chuck Yeager and the Pakistan Air Force

[Kompromat]

so basically what you are saying is ....."there is basically no proof, leave stuff as it is...."

Planet believes Chuck Yeager so do i , you can chose to think/do what you can.

 

[Roybot]

Battlefield data is classified information , anyone with basic knowledge of combat aviation or either common sense would know.

I will be honest, I have no knowledge of combat aviation, not even basic, but am just using common sense and logic here.

This is his claim,

The air war lasted two weeks and the Pakistanis scored a three-to-one kill ratio, knocking out 102 Russian-made Indian jets and losing thirty-four airplanes of their own.

And this is how he is substantiating his claim,

I'm certain about the figures because I went out several times a day in a chopper and counted the wrecks below.

If he really was privy to some "classified battlefield data", he could have just mentioned that instead of saying "I am sure of the IAF losses because I personaly counted the wreckages."

 

[Kompromat]

Yes, but the record of kills and tail signs would not have constituted classified information or does it?

I was only pointing out that he does not seem like a true professional in his mannerisms and the use of language..

Also, his another analysis of PAF about reaching Delhi in a week turned out to be a bummer, hardly lending him any merit..

May or may not be , but that sort of information is usually not available to civilians. This is the 5th time you are mentioning dehli comment. War is an uncertain situation , at that time when he said so it may have been the case in his mind but it is not his area of expertise either and there was no tangible proof to it. What i am asking you is to discuss what IS his area of expertise and the evidence he gathered was there. I am not trying convince you because i know you will bring back the circular argument once again. I Dont expect a single Indian members to believe Chuck here because they only would if , it was in IAF's favor which is why i said this thread is not aimed at convincing Indians.

 

[RazPaK]

Feel free to correct me, we are all here to learn something.

Well for one system and radars.
These threads always make me feel uncomfortable because I have a lot of info on engines and radar, but being a civilian I don't want to overstep my boundaries.

 

[airuah]

I will be honest I have no knowledge of combat aviation, not even basic, but am just using common sense and logic here.

This is his claim,



And this is how he is substantiating his claim,



If he really was privy to some "classified battlefield data", he could have just mentioned that instead of saying "I am sure of the IAF losses because I personaly counted the wreckages."

that is the same thing i fail to understand...lets say he did count but what I want to know is that was all of IAF's loses inside Pakistan's territory ?

 

[Kompromat]

I will be honest, I have no knowledge of combat aviation, not even basic, but am just using common sense and logic here.

This is his claim,



And this is how he is substantiating his claim,



If he really was privy to some "classified battlefield data", he could have just mentioned that instead of saying "I am sure of the IAF losses because I personaly counted the wreckages."

Roy , this is my last reply to you , please do some study. Its a common protocol for technical teams , analysts or Air forces to state stuff in laymen terms when its aimed at public.

Every single time a plane goes down , air force simply says: "Bird crashed while on a routine flight due to technical issues "
Behind that an entire research takes place , ever watched air crash investigation ? , similarly they collect data which never would make it to the public and i have explained it how exactly it works [didn't seem to help though].

PAF prepares on anatomy of enemy tactics and this is how other NATO air forces prepare , please do not reply me if you dont have an intelligent question.

 

[EzioAltaïr]

Since Chuck Yeager was "mentoring" the PAF pilots, he obviously exaggerated the casualties on the side of the IAF. He wouldn't want any blame to come on him right?

And one guy's claims, no matter how professional he is, do not outweigh a world of other assessments.

http://www.defence.pk/forums/military-history-strategy/18071-who-won-air-war-1971-a.html

Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://orbat.com/site/cimh/iaf/IAF_1971_kills_rev1.pdf

EDIT: And there's also the fact that majority of IAF losses were not by "PAF whipping our arses", but rather AAA positions on the ground.

 

[SamantK]

May or may not be , but that sort of information is usually not available to civilians.

I think not, from here
http://orbat.com/site/cimh/iaf/IAF_1971_kills_rev1.pdf

if you see the tables, in many cases the s/n and t/n for the PAF fighters killed are given and it is in the public domain, hence your statement cannot be accepted.

This is the 5th time you are mentioning dehli comment.

And you deleted my posts many times too

War is an uncertain situation , at that time when he said so it may have been the case in his mind but it is not his area of expertise either and there was no tangible proof to it. What i am asking you is to discuss what IS his area of expertise and the evidence he gathered was there.

Evidence not presented cannot be verified so it is just his words and seeing the way he behaved, it does not inspire a lot of confidence for anyone to see.

I am not trying convince you because i know you will bring back the circular argument once again. I Dont expect a single Indian members to believe Chuck here because they only would if , it was in IAF's favor which is why i said this thread is not aimed at convincing Indians.

You have your own reasons for not believing the arguments presented, up to you. However, its not about whom you started it for, Indians or Pakistanis, you cannot expect a patriotic Indian not to analyse the comments and material present and ignore Chucks emotional state.. which was compromised by unknown factors, maybe war adrenaline?

 

[Kompromat]

I think not, from here
http://orbat.com/site/cimh/iaf/IAF_1971_kills_rev1.pdf

if you see the tables, in many cases the s/n and t/n for the PAF fighters killed are given and it is in the public domain, hence your statement cannot be accepted.

And you deleted my posts many times too

Evidence not presented cannot be verified so it is just his words and seeing the way he behaved, it does not inspire a lot of confidence for anyone to see.

You have your own reasons for not believing the arguments presented, up to you. However, its not about whom you started it for, Indians or Pakistanis, you cannot expect a patriotic Indian not to analyse the comments and material present and ignore Chucks emotional state.. which was compromised by unknown factors, maybe war adrenaline?

I went through the above link before , what else is it than usual chest beating !

 

[RazPaK]

Aero bhai, can you please close the thread. Obviously it hurts Indian ego. close the the thread and in it's stead make an anti Pakistani thread. Please.

 

[Kompromat]

Aero bhai, can you please close the thread. Obviously it hurts Indian ego. close the the thread and in it's stead make an anti Pakistani thread. Please.

Its a discussion relevant to the board and will stay alive , i will see & deal with trolls according to forum policy.

 

[SamantK]

I went through the above link before , what else is it than usual chest beating !

Im not here to beat my chest unlike you; highlighting obviously biased statements. What I wanted to point out was that the serial numbers and tail numbers of the PAF aircrafts have been mentioned in that pdf many times.. that means that the information you said is not available to civilians is actually available.. Do you have any which can show us that data from PAF or Chuck, if he was so meticulous in recording the tail numbers and such information?

 

[Vinod2070]

He seems to be terribly misinformed or fed with one sided propaganda.

And is this really surprising? America was Pakistans biggest ally back then, so he is obviously going to say good things about PAF. I mean he was was the military advisor to the PAF after all, it would stupid to say that nah they were no good. Am sure Soviets would have only good things to say about the IAF.

PAF may or may not have won the air battle, at the end of the day it was India who won the war, and thats what is more important.

He was a completely biased person and too much into the USA/USSR rivalry to see things straight.

Brig General Chuck Yeager's account [29] of the war, from his autobiography, is selectively quoted by Pakistanis in support of PAF claims. However, the credibility of the same is also completely destroyed through the inclusion of certain laughable gems in his own assessment, such as the claim that India wanted to keep East Pakistan for itself, that the IAF operated the MiG-21J (not inducted until 1973 as the MiG-21MF) and that F-86 and F-104 Starfighters constituted half the PAF fleet of 500 aircraft! Yeager gives away his agenda by explicitly labeling the conflict as a surrogate war between the Soviet Union (India) and America (Pakistan). Yeager also mentions that the outcome on the ground was the complete opposite of the outcome of the air war, where the PAF "whipped their (Indian) ***** in the sky ". Yet, without the IAF's dominance over the battlefield and the consequential ability to provide uninterrupted support to ground forces throughout the conflict, how could that have ever happened?

Perhaps this embarrassingly false account simply added to the PAF's lack of credibility, fueled in the past by ridiculous claims. Pakistani sources even needed to fabricate the IAF's strength in order to once again portray a David-vs-Goliath struggle. For example, a prominent PAF author [37], claims that the IAF had no less than 1200 combat aircraft alone, against the IAF's actual strength of 625 combat aircraft. Another author, a retired Pakistani Brigadier, claims [38] that the IAF was in fact, in possession of, MiG-23s and MiG-19s, as early as 1965.

Funnily enough, it was the PAF itself and not the IAF, which had a MiG-19 variant, the Shenyang F-6C, during the follow on 1971 conflict. It is thus unsurprising to see so many independent air-power and airwar analysts [30] [33] [35] castigate the PAF for the use of rather bare faced propaganda

Source: http://www.defence.pk/forums/milita...071-who-won-air-war-1971-a.html#ixzz23OLyCD8e

 

[RazPaK]

PAF has documented every exchange and have tagged and bagged all of the remains of Indian fighters that were shot down. My father can even attest to that because according to him it wasn't trophy gathering, but field research.

 

[Vinod2070]

By the end of the first week of the war, PAF fighters in the West appeared to have lost their will to fight. By this time, the IAF was repeatedly hitting secondary targets including railway yards, cantonments, bridges and other installations as well as providing close air support to the Army wherever it was required. The most dangerous were the close air support missions which involved flying low and exposing aircraft to intense ground fire. The IAF lost the most aircraft on these missions as is proved by the high losses suffered by IAF Sukhoi-7 and Hunter squadrons. But their pilots flew sortie after sortie keeping up with the Army and disrupting enemy troop and tank concentrations.

Once it was known that the Indian Army was knocking at the gates of Dhaka, the PAF in the West virtually gave up flying. During the last few days of the war, the IAF brass ordered attacks on PAF airfields with the sole purpose of drawing out their aircraft. But that rarely succeeded as the PAF aircraft for the most part remained secured inside their pens, refusing to come out and fight. The strongest indictment of the Pakistani Air Force was made not by an Indian but by the Pakistani leader, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who took over from General Yahya Yahya Khan after the 1971 defeat. On taking over, he made a speech in which he castigated the PAF chief Air Marshal Rahim Khan and several other officers by name.

A better analysis of effectiveness of the two air forces is provided by the losses per sortie figure. The IAF flew at least double the number of combat sorties per day than the PAF, thereby exposing itself to ground fire and enemy interdiction. Despite this, the IAF's attrition rate of 0.86 per 100 sorties during the 1971 War compares favourably with the Israeli rate of 1.1 in the Yom Kippur War. The PAF's overall attrition rate works out to 2.47 (including transporters and recce aircraft lost on the ground). If aircraft destroyed on the ground are not taken into account, the rate works out to 1.12, which is still very high given that PAF aircraft never really stood back to fight.

The question of loss is important but, in the ultimate analysis, secondary. Achieving air superiority cost the IAF dearly in 1971 but in the end it managed to achieve complete dominance over the skies in both East and West Pakistan.

Source: http://www.defence.pk/forums/milita...071-who-won-air-war-1971-a.html#ixzz23ONzkgEN

Air war was part of a larger war, not an end in itself as some try to project it as.

The facts and figures speak for themselves. India won the war and it won it in all three theaters, land, sea and air.

It was a comprehensive victory.