Chronicles of the 1971 war from the sky

Hydererabad: In the book Eagles over Bangladesh, which chronicles the role of the Indian Air Force in the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, there are photos shot by Air Vice Marshal B.K. Bishnoi of the bombed Tezgaon runway, from his half-rolled aircraft several thousand feet above ground.

The same event was chronicled by Squadron Leader Dilawar Hussain from Pakistan. Hussain, who was grounded on the same runaway because of the bombing, stated, “As I was having breakfast I saw an IAF MIG-21 come over Tezgaon airfield and do victory rolls.”

P.V.S. Jagan Mohan, who was born and brought up in Hyderabad, wrote the book in collaboration with Samir Chopra, a professor based in New York. “It was one of the great thrills of writing this book — to see two versions of one single event match. While Bishnoi, whom I had interviewed two to three times while writing the book, was merely documenting the bombing, the Pakistani pilot thought of it as a victory roll,” adds Jagan.

The author, who is an alumnus of Osmania University and had started reading military history from a young age, says, “It made me realise that while we have several Army war histories, the history of the Air Force hadn’t been documented at all,” he says. Just out of college, Jagan started collating information about the 1965 war, which led to his first book, The India-Pakistan Air War of 1965, which came out in 2005.

He says that there was a huge difference between how the Indian Air force fought in the 1965 and the 1971 war. “We were unprepared for the 1965 war and were unable to make much of an impact. But in the Bangladesh War we had enough time to plan the war, even Pakistan didn’t expect us to hit them the way we did.”

Eagles over Bangladesh focuses on the role of Indian Air Force just in Bangladesh since it would be quite cumbersome to document both the war fronts (West and East Pakistan) in a single book.