How the Dakotas of No. 12 Squadron, RIAF, carried troops to Srinagar in October 1947 and opened landing grounds at Poonch and Leh.
Srinagar, 27 October 1947
Wing Commander K.L. Bhatia made the first landing at Srinagar on 27 October 1947, in Dakota VP 905 of No. 12 Squadron, Royal Indian Air Force. Three squadron Dakotas flew that first lift. By nightfall 28 Dakota sorties had been flown, six of them civil.
No. 12 was the only transport squadron in the service at Independence, and it had ten aircraft. The operational order for 1 Sikh allowed each RIAF Dakota 17 men and 500 lb, and each civil Dakota 15 men and 500 lb.
The landing was unopposed. Losses came quickly all the same. On 31 October Dakota MA 965, under Flight Lieutenant C.J. Mendoza, went missing with crew and passengers. The wreckage was not found for many months. RIAF Tempests supported 161 Brigade at Shalateng on 7 November, when the raider column was routed.
Poonch by day and by night
Poonch was cut off, and the only way in was by air. Refugees took six days to finish a landing strip, on ground about 600 yards long, under mortar fire. Air Commodore Mehar Singh, commanding No. 1 Operational Group, flew in a Harvard and then a Dakota, and his citation calls him the first pilot to land there. The logbook of Flying Officer Desmond Pushong, however, records his own Harvard flight into Poonch on 10 December. Pushong brought in Dakota VP 903 on 12 December 1947 with Flying Officers Menon and Roy and Warrant Officer Nanu.
Enemy guns soon had the strip bracketed. Dakotas flown by Pushong and Lal Singh Grewal then carried in 3.7-inch howitzers of the 4th (Hazara) Mountain Battery by moonlight, landing without lights.
On 21 March 1948 an attempt to deliver 25-pounder guns failed when Bhatia's Dakota was hit as it landed. That night four Dakotas landed at Poonch, with Mehar Singh in the first.
Leh at 11,554 feet
On 24 May 1948 Mehar Singh landed a No. 12 Squadron Dakota at Leh, at 11,554 feet. Major General Thimayya was among the passengers. Mehar Singh's Maha Vir Chakra, dated 26 January 1950, records that he was the first pilot to land at both Poonch and Leh.
Cover image: Naman Vishwajeet, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Resized for this page. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_Douglas_C-47_Skytrain_(Dakota)_of_the_Indian_Air_Force.jpg