Bangladesh war: This Vijay Diwas, let's hail the US Air Force
The imposing US Air Force C–141 Starlifter had me wonderstruck. This strategic and tactical behemoth having swept high mounted wings with four engines dwarfed the Canadian Caribous looking rather sheepish on one side of the tarmac.
Brought up on a diet of Russian cargo planes like AN-12s, IL -14s, TU -124s at the air force bases where my late air force pilot father was posted, the sight of this American plane was a spectacular experience. Having grown up reading publications such as Jane's All The World's Aircraft Flight Safety and Air Clues, and counting aircraft identification as my hobby, this was dream come true!
Refugees
This was June 1971 at the Guwahati air force base (Borjhar) which my father was commanding. On the night of March 25, 1971, the Pakistan army had already begun a crackdown on Bengalis all across what was then East Pakistan. Millions of refugees poured into India to escape the grim events.The war clouds were not yet looming. The Bangladesh war was still six months away but the events leading up to it had already been set in motion. In popular imagination, the US’ involvement could be encapsulated by two defining moments – Nixon’s hatred for India and Indira Gandhi – the frostiness so eloquently captured in the photograph of their meeting later in November; and the US dispatching the seventh fleet to put pressure on India during the war.
The US was not siding with India. It was neither neutral nor playing the honest broker. So what was the US air force C-141 doing in Guwahati? The air fleet that descended on Guwahati consisted of four C-130s – to behold them was a matter of much joy. The fact of the matter is that the Americans had come to help and this aspect of history is still relatively unknown.
These planes had been sent for a refugee evacuation effort. The refugee camps were deluged by a massive exodus across the border into Bengal, Tripura, Meghalaya and Assam. These planes were used to airlift refugees from Agartala to Guwahati. The sorties were daunting – eight to ten hours a day with no night halt possible at Agartala because of security reasons and shelling from across the border – the barbed wire fencing between India and East Pakistan ran 15 feet from the dumbbell of one of the runways. Navigation aids were rudimentary and weather inclement. The refugees, were packed inside the aircraft like sardines. But this was a small price to pay for escaping the genocide happening inside their country.
In May 1971, Indian requested the US to provide four C-130 transport aircraft and crews to help ferry the Bengali refugees. The US state department asked the request be routed through the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). After the UNHCR took on this task, the US approved the deployment of four C-130s for 30 days from June 12 till July 14, 1971. The C-130s flew from Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina, to Guwahati air force station. To support C-130 operations, ten C-141 Starlifter sorties flew in equipment and provisions from Frankfurt to Guwahati.
Sorties
Squadron leader Gautam Guha, a former AN-12 navigator was seconded from 49 Squadron at Jorhat to act as liaison officer to the USAF contingent. The initial Starlifter sorties were commanded by colonel Charles Turnipseed. Guha apprised the American crews of local conditions and flight restrictions over northeast airspace. He had fond memories of his American counterparts. Guha had earlier worked with my father in Chandigarh where my father was commanding an AN-12 squadron. This is what he said:
“Col Turnipseed, a Texan veteran of WWII and Korea and a Packet pilot was the head of the group. He was rugged, and quite active, very humane. Captain Roman, one of the pilots, was a PhD in industrial engineering, who told me that a job was waiting for him in the US as soon as he finished his tenure in the Air Force.
Captain Wayne Wiltshire was a Texan pilot who insisted on wearing a Texan gallon hat with his flying overalls. He used to fly the C-130 Hercules like a fighter, so much so that when he was executing a tight turn on finals for the runway in Gauhati, a woman refugee in the same aircraft who was in an advanced stage of pregnancy, delivered a baby during the turn. The Americans promptly christened the baby "Bonny Jack". The pilots were Vietnam war veterans where they had carried out operations under trying circumstances. Wing commandeer Mankotia used to provide nans, tandoor roti, and tandoori chicken to the Americans in the officers’ mess so he became their hot favorite. There never was a dull moment with him around.”
Contribution
The C-130s carried out a total of 308 sorties in 30 days of operations. They flew out 23,000 refugees and in the flights to Agartala, brought in over 2,000 tons of food and medical supplies. The aircraft were promptly withdrawn at the end of the 30-day deployment. The US was reluctant to antagonise its West Pakistani allies by becoming too involved with the airlift. While the aircrew involved in the airlift may have appreciated the travails of the refugees, Washington was being blind to the military crackdown in progress in East Pakistan. The new air force colony was at that time in the final stages of completion. It was located at the foothills of a hillock and appropriately called "The Mountain Shadows" which name my father had come across when he had gone to the US on a flight safety course six years earlier. The MES burnt the proverbial midnight oil and completed the project just in time to welcome the Americans.
As the country gears up to observe Vijay Diwas on December 16, the American airmen’s contribution needs to be acknowledged. They ran a successful mission against heavy odds in alleviating India’s refugee relocation efforts; they saw at close hand the dehumanising impact of the pogrom but were helpless to convert Washington. They deserve more than a footnote in the history of the Bangladesh war.