HISTORY OF THE PAKISTAN AIR FORCE

When Pakistan Air Force was established on August 15, 1947, it had little to fly on and few to fly that little. And even fewer places to fly from. The PAF came into being with only thirty-two Dakotas, thirty-five Tempests, twenty-nine Harvards, sixteen Tiger Moths, three Auster Vs, and even Auster VIs most of which never arrived. Today, the story is much different. Pakistan acquired modern jet aircrafts in 1956, most of them from the United States and quite a few from Great Britian, France and PRC. It has added since then Mirages and F-16s to its fleet and stands a far stronger adversary than before.

The Air Force was initially founded by 2,332 members - 200 officers and 2,112 airmen, under the command of First Air Commander, Air Vice Marshal Allan Perry-Keene. But only a few were trained pilots and even fewer ground crews. The headquarter then was at Peshawar with other bases at Risalpur, Chaklala (Rawalpindi) and Lahore. On January 1, 1948 with Wing Commander Nur Khan as Station Commander, Mauripur, which is now Masroor, became a PAF base for the Tiger Moths.

December 1947, besieged and isolated in their mountain strongholds, wintery wastes, high passes and valleys, the 250,000 people and soldiers in Gilgit Agency and Azad Kashmir were desperate for food and supplies.

All PAF could muster in serviceable condition were two war-weary Dakotas at Mauripur in Karachi. One flew at once to Risalpur, where it began operations under Wing Commander M.Asghar Khan, first commandant of the RPAF College. The old workhorse had spent its power in the war. Its wheezing engines had to struggle to reach 10,000 feet and then struggle some more to maintain the altitude. It was not the plane to fly among the highest mountains in the world where scores of peaks, many still unsurveyed and unnamed, touch more than 20,000 feet. But there was no choice.

With its ceiling limit, the only route the Dakota could follow to Chilas, Bunji, Gilgit and Skardu - the main supply points - was the course of the narrow Indus Valley flanked on either side by mountains rising from 7,000 feet to the lofty heights of Nanga Parbat's 26,660 feet. Few planes had ever flown this route before.

Weather was unpredictable and the valleys narrow and, by any aviation standards, unnavigable. There were no weather forecasts and the only training captains and crews had were some dummy drops at Risalpur, which in no way resembled the narrow dropping zones in the valleys. These were so narrow that there was hardly room for the Dakota to turn around, and no available ground for an emergency landing. No wonder those who undertook this exercise soon began to call the Indus 'The Valley of No Return'.

For the first run early in December, the PAF deployed both its serviceable Dakotas, laden with rice, wheat and sugar in double gunny bags of thirty-six kilos each.

The PAF crews began a daily dawn-to-dusk shuttle, the old Dakotas zig-zagging their way through the valleys and hills in rain, storm cloud, fog and blinding sunshine, which continued throughout the winter, not ending until 15 April 1948. Just two days after, Quaid-i-Azam, Mohammad Ali Jinnah visited the flying training school at their Risalpur base, and said: "There is no doubt that any country without a strong Air Force is at the mercy of any aggressor. Pakistan must build her Air Force as quickly as possible. It must be an efficient Air Force second to none". Supply runs began again in October 1948 and two more Dakotas had been brought into service.

Within the span of a year this young air force had flown on little more than an often turbulent wing and a prayer and yet completed 437 mercy drops, delivering more than 500 tons of supplies and foods.

Despite the lack of funds and market-places, Pakistan Air Force entered the jet age in August 1951 with the arrival of three first-generation jet fighters - British built Attackers. They formed the nucleus of the new Number 11 Squadron. Pakistan began to court the Americans, who agreed in principle to supply F-94Cs, F-86 Sabres and F-84s, the USAF's standard fighter-bomber. Finally, PAF opted for the Sabres, and also looked at the USAF's B-50 and the USN's Neptune as a bomber, but first it wanted T-33 jet trainers - the first batch of which arrived in 1955.

One year later the first Sabres arrived, in 1956, the PAF's Falcon aerobatics team was assigned sixteen of the powerful new jets - the perfect number to form a diamond shape - and after only three months practice, on 2 February 1958, created a new world record for the largest number of planes to make a formation loop, above Masroor (Mauripur) Air Base, Karachi, and an enthralled crowd of 30,000 spectators, including King Zahir Shah of Afghanistan.

Fatefully, during the ten years from 1955 to 1965, the Air Force armed its squadrons with the most modern jet fighters and bombers - battle-tested supersonic Sabres and F-104 Starfighters for its fighter aces, B-57s for its bomber pilots and the ubiquitous C-130 for its transport wing - and reached new heights of operational efficiency and skills. Its pilots so prepared, its squadrons so armed, that PAF was ready for come what may - and they showed it all to the IAF during the war of 1965.

In 1965 there can be no argument that the PAF pilots were much superior horsemen in every way to those of the Indian Air Force. By 23 September when the war ended, India had lost 110 aircrafts and damaged nineteen, not including those destroyed on the ground at night - against 16 PAF planes. Of the 110, thirty-five were brought down by the Army ground fire. PAF could also claim the destruction of 149 tanks, more than 600 heavy vehicles including troop carriers, and sixty artillery guns. To corroborate its claims, after the cease-fire the PAF invited newsmen to visit bases where their squadrons were lined up, ready to be counted. Pakistan's Air Marshal Nur Khan even invited his Indian counterpart, Air Marshal Arjun Singh, to come along and see for himself. The invitation was not accepted.

The sense of commitment and self-sacrifice which exemplifies the PAF was perhaps the best demonstrated a few short months before the 1971 conflict escalated into a full-scale war by a twenty-year old Pilot Officer Rashid Minhas.

Still under training, Minhas was taxiing for take-off on a routine flight on 20 August 1971 when a revolting Bengali Instructor Pilot forced his way into the rear cockpit, seized control of the aircraft and took off.

Minhas, who realized that the absconding pilot was heading towards India, tried to regain control, but unable to do so. Only sixty kilometres from Indian territory, he made yet another effort to steer the aircraft back to the base. Then knowing that it meant certain death, he deliberately forced the aircraft to crash thirty-two miles short of the border. For this supreme sacrifice Pilot Officer Minhas was awarded Nishan-e-Haider, the youngest ever recipient of this, the highest award for valour which Pakistan can bestow.

In December 1981, the government of Pakistan signed a letter of agreement for the purchase of 40 F-16A/B fighters for the Pakistan Air Force. The first aircraft were accepted at Fort Worth in October of 1982. Transition training for Pakistani aircrews and ground personnel was carried out by the 421st Tactical Fighter Squadron of the 388th Tactical Fighter Wing at Hill AFB in Utah. The first two F-16As and four F-16Bs arrived in Pakistan in January of 1983.

The Pakistani F-16A/Bs were all from Block 15, the final version of the F-16A/B production run. They are powered by the Pratt & Whitney F100-P W-200 turbofan. The first unit to equip with the F-16 was No. 11 Squadron based at Sargodha. All 40 of the Fighting Falcons had entered PAF service by mid-1986. This made it possible to establish two more squadrons, No.9 at Sargodha and No. 14 at Kamra. No 11 Squadron operates as the OCU.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 in support of the pro-Soviet government in Kabul which was being hard-pressed by Mujahideen rebel forces marked the start of a decade-long occupation. Mujahideen rebels continued to harass the occupying Soviet military force as well as the forces of the Afghan regime that it was supporting. The war soon spilled over into neighboring Pakistan, with a horde of refugees fleeing to camps across the border in an attempt to escape the conflict. In addition, many of the rebels used Pakistan as a sanctuary from which to carry out forays into Afghanistan, and a steady flow of US-supplied arms were carried into Afghanistan from staging areas in Pakistan near the border. This inevitably resulted in border violations by Soviet and Afghan aircraft attempting to interdict these operations. Between May 1986 and November of 1988, PAF F-16s had shot down at least eight intruders from Afghanistan. The first three of these (one Su-22, one probable Su-22, and one An-26) were shot down by two pilots from No. 9 Squadron. Pilots of No. 14 Squadron destroyed the remaining five intruders (two Su-22s, two MiG-23s, and one Su-25). Most of these kills were by the AIM-9 Sidewinder, but at least one (an Su-22) was destroyed by cannon fire. Flight Lieutenant Khalid Mehmood is credited with three of these kills. At least one F-16 was lost in these battles, this one in an encounter between two F-16s and six Afghan Air Force aircraft on April 29, 1987. However, the lost F-16 appears to have been an "own goal", having been hit by a Sidewinder fired by the other F-16. The unfortunate F-16 pilot ejected safely.

Pakistani F-16s typically carry two all-aspect AIM-9Ls on the wing tip rails along with a pair of AIM-9Ps on the outermost underwing racks. Pakistani F-16s have an important strike role, being fitted with the French-built Thompson-CSF ATLIS laser designation pod and the capability to deliver Paveway laser-guided bombs. The ATLIS was first fitted to Pakistani F-16s in January of 1986. The F-16 became the first non-European aircraft to be qualified for the ATLIS pod.

CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS OF THE PAKISTAN AIR FORCE

1947-1962                             1963-1977                                 1978-1997

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