On 22 November 1971, four IAF Gnats from Dum Dum intercepted four PAF Sabres over the Boyra salient, 11 days before war was formally joined.
Three raids on 22 November
Radar picked up four Pakistan Air Force Sabres at about 1448 hours on 22 November 1971. Within three minutes, four Gnats of No. 22 Squadron were airborne from Dum Dum. It was 11 days before Pakistan's air strikes of 3 December opened the full war.
The Sabres of No. 14 Squadron PAF were supporting Pakistani troops in the fighting at Garibpur, in the Boyra salient, where tanks had clashed the day before. They had already raided twice that day, at 0811 and 1028 hours, and left before the Gnats could engage.
No. 22 Squadron, under Wing Commander B.S. Sikand, was based at Kalaikunda and had kept a detachment at Dum Dum since September.
1459 hours
Flying Officer K.B. Bagchi, the fighter controller, talked the formation on to its targets. Flight Lieutenant Roy Massey led, with Flying Officer S.F. Soares as his wingman. Flight Lieutenant M.A. Ganapathy and Flying Officer Donald Lazarus made up the second section. The order to shoot came at 1459.
Two Sabres pulled out of their attack directly in front of Ganapathy and Lazarus. Both pilots fired, and both Sabres went down. Their pilots ejected and were captured: Flight Lieutenant Parvez Mehdi Qureshi and Flying Officer Khalil Ahmed. Indian accounts, reconstructed afterwards with the Pakistani version, credit Ganapathy with Ahmed's aircraft and Lazarus with Qureshi's.
Massey fired on a third Sabre, missed with his first burst and hit its port wing with a second at 700 yards. His starboard cannon then stopped. The Sabre crossed back into East Pakistan trailing smoke.
What the record claims
The usual count is two Sabres shot down and one damaged. Early reports said the third pilot, Wing Commander Chaudhary, had ejected near Jessore. It later emerged that he flew the aircraft back to Tezgaon. Bharat Rakshak marks its own detailed account as the version known in 2005, and points readers to an updated one in Eagles over Bangladesh by P.V.S. Jagan Mohan and Samir Chopra.
Massey, Ganapathy and Lazarus received the Vir Chakra. Bagchi received the Vayu Sena Medal for directing the interception. Sikand received the VSM for the action and for his squadron's later work in the war. Qureshi later became Chief of the Air Staff of the Pakistan Air Force.
Cover image: Aryan Gupta, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Resized for this page. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IAF_Gnat_IE1059.jpg