American fighter pilot Chuck Yaeger died on December 8 at the age of 97 (AFP Photo)
Yeager, who died on December 8 at age 97, was appointed to serve in Pakistan as head of the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) with the “modest task” of seeing that the residual trickle of US military aid was properly distributed. the Pakistanis. and “teaching Pakistanis how to use US military equipment without committing suicide in the process,” according to Edward Ingraham, a US diplomat who served at the US embassy in Islamabad.
“One of the advantages of Yeager’s position was a twin-engine Beechcraft, a small aircraft provided by the Pentagon to help keep track of the occasional pieces of US military equipment that appeared sporadically in the country. Ambassador (Joseph) Farland, however, he had other designs on the plane. A passionate fisherman, found the Beechcraft to be the ideal vehicle for transporting it to Pakistan’s most remote lakes and rivers, with Yeager often piloting it from one side to the other, “Ingraham wrote in a article entitled “The Right Stuff in the Wrong Place”, drawing on Tom Wolfe’s celebration of American test drivers in his acclaimed book The Right Stuff.
Chuck Yeager, second from left with some cast members of the movie The Right Stuff (US Air Force Photo via The New York Times)
Ingraham describes a US embassy in Pakistan where staff were increasingly concerned about the deepening crisis between India and Pakistan and meetings became more frequent and tense. “We were preoccupied with the complex issues raised by the conflict. Such doubts did not seem to cross Chuck Yeager’s mind. I recall one occasion when Farland asked Yeager his assessment of how long Pakistani forces in the east could withstand an attack. -India attack. “We could stop them for 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 understand what he was saying, without realizing it. at the beginning that “we” was West Pakistan, not the United States, “writes Ingraham. When asked by Ingraham to be a little more impartial in his comments, he said Yeager shot him a withering look and said, “Damn, we’re assigned to Pakistan. What’s wrong with being loyal?”
Chuck Yeager never forgave India for destroying his twin-engine Beechcraft during the 1971 war
According to Ingraham, Yeagar began taking the war with India personally the morning after Pakistan’s then military ruler Yahya Khan opened the Western Front. On the eve of the Indian counterattack, he says, the Pakistanis had been cautious enough to evacuate their planes from airfields near the Indian border, but no one thought to warn General Yeager. “Therefore, when an Indian fighter pilot passed low over Islamabad airport in India’s first retaliatory strike, he could only see two small planes on the ground. Dodging anti-aircraft fire, he smashed both with fire 20 millimeter (sic) cannon. One was Yeager’s Beechcraft. The other was an aircraft used by United Nations forces to supply patrols monitoring the ceasefire in Kashmir, “Ingraham writes.
Captain Charles ‘Chuck’ Yeager with the Bell X-1 plane that flew to break the sound barrier (US Air Force Photo via The New York Times)
Ingraham says he never learned how the UN reacted to the destruction of his plane, “but Yeager’s response was anything but dispassionate. He raged at his cowering colleagues at a staff meeting. His voice echoed through the embassy, proclaiming that Not only did the Indian pilot know exactly what he was doing, but Indira Gandhi had specifically ordered him to blow up Yeager’s plane. In his book, he later said it was the Indian way of giving ‘the finger’ to Uncle Sam. ”
“Our response to this Indian atrocity, as I recall, was a top priority cable to Washington that described the incident as a deliberate affront to the American nation and recommended immediate countermeasures. Don’t I think we ever got a response?” Ingraham writes with mild disdain for Yeagar’s outrage.
Yeager insisted that while Pakistan was defeated on land and sea, it won the air war against India in 1971 (AFP Photo)
The Indian pilot who destroyed Yeager’s plane was Arun Prakash, who would become chief of the Indian Navy, but later was an exchange pilot with the IAF. In a tongue-in-cheek account of the episode in Vayu magazine a few years ago, Prakash describes how he decimated the Beechcraft by watching it during a second run from Chaklala Airfield after first destroying a C-130 Hercules in the first run.
“After reading Ingraham’s account, and especially after retiring from the navy, the thought has often crossed my mind that perhaps Yeager had told him about Mrs. Gandhi. And if Indira Gandhi ordered personally destroying Chuck Yeager’s Beechcraft, then Nixon may have been quite justified in personally directing the Enterprise task force to sail to the Bay of Bengal as an ‘immediate countermeasure, “Prakash writes, wryly adding,” In whose In any case the honors are shared equally, and I do not owe any apologies to anyone, except perhaps the UN Secretary, U Thant! ”
Much of Yeager’s account of the skirmish between India and Pakistan has been discredited by military historians (AP Photo)
Yeager, however, carried Pakistan’s torch well into his old age, insisting that while Pakistan was defeated on land and sea, it won the air war. When asked in a recent Twitter exchange which pilots among those he had flown with he respected the most, he named Pakistanis. “In 1971-73, I flew with the Pakistani Air Force in the war with India. They were the best in the world because they had the most experience – more than 75 hours a month,” he wrote.
While much of Yeager’s account of the India-Pakistan skirmish is noise that has been debunked by military historians, the feat for which he is remembered today is his breaking of the sound barrier.
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