Six Hunters at Jaisalmer attacked a Pakistani armoured column at Longewala on 5 December 1971. The Air Force and Army accounts still differ on the result.
Six Hunters at Jaisalmer
In the early hours of 5 December 1971, Major General R.F. Khambatta, commanding 12 Division, radioed the base commander at Jaisalmer, Wing Commander M.S. Bawa. An armoured column appeared to be heading for Ramgarh, and the post at Longewala had heard tanks through the night.
Jaisalmer then held four single-seat Hunter 56s and two two-seat Hunter 66s. Longewala was held by a company under Major Kuldip Singh Chandpuri, and the Army's 12 AOP Flight was ordered at 0400 to get airborne at first light and guide the Hunters. Captain P.S. Sangha, in an unarmed Krishak, found the column and directed four Hunter missions that day. Major Atma Singh also flew, and force-landed at the Longewala helipad.
Flight Lieutenant D.K. Dass and Flying Officer R.C. Gosain flew the first mission. By Bawa's account they claimed two tanks destroyed and five damaged. The next pair, Bali and Yadav, claimed two and six, and a later mission by Tully and Suresh three destroyed and seven disabled. Bawa wrote that tanks set ablaze were claimed as destroyed and crippled ones as damaged.
Whose battle it was
The totals are disputed, as is the credit. Bawa, writing in the Indian Air Force Journal in 1997, gave 20 tanks and many vehicles destroyed or damaged by the end of 5 December. He put the attacking force at about 45 tanks, of which 37 were accounted for, and held that the thrust was stopped by air action alone.
Another version gives the company at the post 12 tanks destroyed with its own anti-tank weapons before the Hunters came. The 1997 film Border followed that account, and Defence Minister A.K. Antony was given it at Longewala in 2008.
Atma Singh, later a major general, wrote a book to reject it. A review in Salute reports his count as 21 tanks destroyed from the air on 5 December, with artillery finishing the remnants after a second day of air attack.
The signal of 5 December
Sangha and Atma Singh were awarded the Vir Chakra. Bharat Rakshak's gallery of the Jaisalmer pilots also lists the Vir Chakra against Suresh, Jagbir Singh and Wing Commander D.M. Conquest. Khambatta's signal to the base at 10 pm on 5 December praised the accuracy of the pilots' shooting and credited them with destroying a number of enemy tanks. It gave no figure.
Cover image: Indian Air Force, GODL-India, via Wikimedia Commons. Resized for this page. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tank_tracks_during_the_Battle_of_Longewala_in_1971.jpg