Yeager: An Autobiography

PICKING UP THE PIECES

When we arrived in Pakistan in 1971, the political situation between the Pakistanis and Indians was really tense over Bangladesh, or East Pakistan, as it was known in those days, and Russia was backing India with tremendous amounts of new airplanes and tanks. The U.S. and China were backing the Pakistanis. My job was military adviser to the Pakistani air force, headed by Air Marshal Rahim Khan who had been trained in Britain by the Royal Air Force, and was the first Pakistani pilot to exceed the speed of sound. He took me around to their different fighter groups and I met their pilots, who knew of me and were really pleased that I was there. They had about five hundred airplanes- more than half of them Sabres and 104 Starfighters a few B-57 bombers, and about a hundred Chinese MiG 19s. They were really good, aggressive dogfighters and proficient in gunnery and air-combat tactics. I was damned impressed. Those guys just lived and breathed flying.

One of my first jobs there was to help them put U.S. Sidewinders on their Chinese MiGs, which were 1.6 Mach twin-engine airplanes that carried three thirty-millimeter cannons. Our government furnished them with the rails for Sidewinders. They bought the missiles and all the checkout equipment that went with them, and it was one helluva interesting experience watching their electricians wiring up American missiles on a Chinese MiG. I worked with their squadrons and helped them develop combat tactics. The Chinese MiG was one hundred percent Chinese-built and was made for only one hundred hours of flying before it had to be scrapped-a disposable fighter good for one hundred strikes. In fairness, it was an older airplane in their inventory, and I guess they were just getting rid of them. They delivered spare parts, but it was a tough airplane to work on; the Pakistanis kept it flying for about 130 hours.

War broke out only a couple of months after we had arrived, in late November 1971, when India attacked East Pakistan. The battle lasted only three days before East Pakistan fell. India's intention was to annex East Pakistan and claim it for themselves. But the Pakistanis counterattacked. Air Marshal Rahim Khan laid a strike on the four closest Indian air fields in the western part of India, and wiped out a lot of equipment. At that point, Indira Gandhi began moving her forces toward West Pakistan, and President Nixon sent her an ultimatum: An invasion of West Pakistan would bring the U.S. into the conflict. Meanwhile, all the Moslem countries rallied around Pakistanis and began pouring in supplies and manpower. China moved in a lot of equipment, while Russia backed the Indians all the way. So, it really became a kind of surrogate war-the Pakistanis, with U.S. training and equipment, versus the Indians, mostly Russian-trained, flying Soviet airplanes.

The Pakistanis whipped their asses in the sky, but it was the other way around in the ground war. The air war lasted two weeks, and the Pakistanis scored a three-to-one kill ratio, knocking out 102 Russian-made Indian jets and losing thirty-four airplanes of their own. I'm certain about the figures because I went out several times a day in a chopper and counted the wrecks below. I counted wrecks on Pakistani soil, documented them by serial number, identified the components such as engines, rocket pods, and new equipment on newer airplanes like the Soviet SU-7 fighter-bomber and the MiG 21 J, their latest supersonic fighter. The Pakistani army would cart off these items for me, and when the war ended, it took two big American Air Force cargo lifters to carry all those parts back to the States for analysis by our intelligence division.

I didn't get involved in the actual combat because that would've been too touchy, but I did fly around and pick up shot-down Indian pilots and take them back to prisoner-of-war camps for questioning. I interviewed them about the equipment they had been flying and the tactics their Soviet advisers taught them to use. I wore a uniform or flying suit all the time, and it was amusing when those Indians saw my name tag and asked, "Are you the Yeager who broke the sound barrier?" They couldn't believe I was in Pakistan or understand what I was doing there. I told them, "I'm the American Defense Rep here. That's what I'm doing."

India flew numerous raids against the Pakistani air fields with brand new SU-7 bombers being escorted in with MiG 21s. On one of those raids, they clobbered my small Beech Queen Air that had U.S. Army markings and a big American flag painted on the tail. I had it parked at the Islamabad airport, and I remember sitting on my front porch on the second day of the war, thinking that maybe I ought to move that airplane down to the Iranian border, out of range of the Indian bombers, when the damned air raid siren went off, and a couple of Indian jets came streaking in overhead. A moment later, I saw a column of black smoke rising from the air field. My Beech Queen was totaled. It was the Indian way of giving Uncle Sam the finger.

I stayed on in Pakistan for more than a year after the war ended, and it was one of the most enjoyable times of my life. From 1972 until we came home in March 1973, I spent most of my time flying in an F-86 Sabre with the Pakistani fighter outfits. I dearly loved the Sabre, almost as much as I enjoyed the P-5 I Mustang from World War II days. It was a terrific airplane to fly, and I took one to see K-2, the great mountain of Pakistan and the second highest mountain in the world, about an hour's flight away at over 28,000 feet.

It's a fabulous peak, as awesome and beautiful as any on earth, located in the middle of a high range that runs the length of the Chinese-Pakistani border. We actually crossed over into China to get there, and I've got some pictures of me in my cockpit right smack up against the summit. I made two or three trips up to K-2-real highlights. I also did some bighorn sheep hunting in the Himalayan foothills. Susie owned a little Arabian mare. She took her horse when I went hunting and actually learned some of the Urdu language of the mountain people.

Mumtaz Hussain was a village chief I got to know very well because his village was in good sheep hunting country. One morning, shortly after dawn, I drove up and noticed quite a few villagers standing around in mourning dress. I was told that during the night the grandmother of Mumtaz's wife had died. She was a woman of very high standing in the village, and Mumtaz said this meant he had to go into forty days and nights of mourning. I remembered that forty days and nights bit from Sunday school, so I told Mumtaz that out of respect for his wife's grandmother I would cancel my hunting that day. "Oh, no," he said, "you are my guest, and it would grieve me if you did not hunt this day."

So, I went on out in the desert with the shikari, the guide, hunting sheep and chucker partridge, and came back late that afternoon. By then all two hundred men in the village were seated in a big circle in the village square, all in mourning. Mumtaz was at the head. They drank tea and gossiped, but every few minutes one of the villagers would hold up his hand and say, "Let us pray for the old woman." They'd pray for about ten seconds and go back to their tea and talk. Nearby were steaming pots of curried rice, barbecued goat and sheep. A visitor would be invited to eat and drink tea with them and join in the ten second prayers

I returned the next weekend to see how Mumtaz was doing in his mourning, and I took Susie with me. This was during the war, and she was afraid her mare would be killed by the bombing and strafing, so I said, "Okay, we'll see if Malik Atta will take your mare and care for her." Malik Atta was Mumtaz's nephew and raised the most beautiful stallions I have ever seen. In Pakistan, men only rode stallions. No way they'd even climb up on a gelding, much less a mare.

We drove to the village, and I saw that the mourning circle of villagers was still intact, with more than thirty days and nights still to go. I got out of the car and told Susie to go over to Mrs. Mumtaz's house. In well-to-do families, the woman had her own house and her own women servants, while the men had their own houses and male servants. I didn't want Susie to be exposed to the tribesmen because they had never seen a Western girl before. However Mumtaz came down the steps and took her and said, "No, Susie come with me."

He led her up on the platform of the village square where the two hundred men all sat visiting and drinking tea, and when they saw Susie, they all stood up and bowed to her. Then each of them came up and shook her hand. Through me, they had heard a lot about her and knew she loved to ride. She had on jeans, boots, and a blouse and scarf because she had planned to ride her mare, but Mumtaz led her to the head chair and sat her down on his right. One of the men brought her some tea and they all stood there, gazing at her for five minutes. They couldn't take their eves off her. It was very unusual for the tribe to see a girl without a veil over her face, especially a Western girl dressed as she was.

Finally I told Mumtaz I thought it best for Susie to go over to Mrs. Mumtaz's house because then I could visit with him and the rest of my friends in the village. He agreed. When it came time to leave we sent for Susie. She got in the car, and on the way home she chuckled about the scene at Mrs. Mumtaz's house. About fifty women were sitting around drinking tea and socializing while a couple of professional mourners wailed loud and long. She said it just about drove her nuts listening to these pro mourners screeching and wailing. The rest of the women, including Mrs. Mumtaz, just ignored them. In Susie's opinion, the men in the village had the better deal. They prayed for ten seconds every few minutes, but they didn't have to listen to all that wailing.

Malik Atta sent a stableboy to fetch Susie's mare, and he rode her back to the village, a distance of fifty miles.