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On December 13, 1971, Wing Commander Hersern Singh Gill, known to his colleagues as the “High Speed Gill”, had just returned from a strike mission at a Badin underground operating room and communications center in Pakistan’s Sindh province.
He immediately entered a strategy meeting with the commander of the Jamnagar air station in the Indian state of Gujarat, where he was working with his MiG fighter squadron.
India and Pakistan had been at war with each other for 10 days, part of the conflict that would gain independence from Bangladesh, three days later, on 16 December. Over the past two days, Gill has attacked several airstrikes against those who were heavily protected. It was complex, but the 57-mm rockets of the Indian military were unable to penetrate the huge concrete structure. At the meeting, it was decided to use more powerful S-24 rockets. But before the plane was loaded with new ammunition, the Western Air Command, which is in charge of conducting air operations with Pakistan on the western front, ordered another squadron to attack.
Thirty-eight-year-old Gill, commander of the 47th Squadron (Black Bows), was angry and frustrated with the idea of going on another mission with his old ammunition. His wing chief, Lieutenant IJS Boparai (later Air Commodore), recalled how “angry he was that he did not have time to arm himself with S-24 rockets, as the Badin bunkers were resistant to being heavily protected by ground embankments. your complex sign. ‘
It would be a four-mission mission, with two attack aircraft – one by Gill and the other by the squadron commander of Flight Commander Viney Kapila – and two escort aircraft, Lieutenant Boparaik and BB Soni.
As Kapila was arranging flight details, Gill placed his commander on the first attack aircraft and himself on the second. But Gill moved in with him. Flying friends were impressed with his remark: “Black Bows must always return with leaders.”
Some later suspected that Gill, who had become a legend in the Air Force circles for his skills and mistakes, might have thought he might not return.
Shortly after the bombs dropped, Sonic said he had little fuel, which was a sign that everyone was returning to base. But as the others drifted away, Gill made one last pass over the complex.
Realizing that he could no longer see Gill’s plane, Boparai returned to the target area. On the ground floor, he saw a trail of dust, about a mile and a half long. Gill’s crashed plane crashed into the ground before splitting into three parts, while the middle part holding the fuel tank caught fire. Boparai didn’t see a trace of a parachute, but he felt that Gill could get off the plane.
That afternoon, a Pakistani radio station in Hyderabad announced that an Indian Air Force (IAF) pilot had been shot down and captured in Badin. The pilot said he was at Hindon Air Force Base (during the peace of Gill’s squadron).
An announcement later that day, however, said Wing Commander Gill had been killed by the plane and could not be identified. A year later, while repatriating Indian war prisoners (POWs) captured on the western front, the Indian authorities asked their Pakistani members through the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) how they knew all the communications about the lost workers. the pilot was Gill when his remains could not be identified. There was no response and it is still missing at work.
According to Indian official records, Pakistan took 616 prisoners in the 14-day war, including 12 airborne officers and eight civilians. India received 92,753 Pakistani POWs.
All the prisoners on both sides finally returned home after three years of lengthy negotiations. Once this was completed, India began compiling a list of its still-extinct soldiers. He presented his first list to parliament in 1979. He had 40 names, including Gill’s wing commander.
Pakistan has consistently denied any detention in India after repatriation.
Remembering the happiest man in heaven
“High and cunning,” “hard worker,” and “terribly molded” are what Gill’s former colleagues have described as an avid fighter who specializes in unparalleled aerobatics.
Gurbir Singh Gill, who never stopped looking for his older brother, recalls “being glad to see the sun from his perch in the sky, in the cabin of a MiG or Hunter.”
Those who knew him well said that he who had such excellent skills as “who understood MiG’s body language too” could not die without a direct blow to the cabin.
N Krishnamurthy, now a retired team captain, was an air traffic control officer, assisted Gill several times and said in a tribute a few years ago: “Procedures have evolved: steep approaches and faster speeds to overcome inherent limitations. MiG . ”
A photograph from the book The Black History of the 47th Squadron of the IAF shows three officers named in the article. From left to right are Squadron Leader BB Soni, Aircraft Lieutenant (later Air Commodore) IJS Boparai and Wing Commander HS Gill. [Photo courtesy of Chander Suta Dogra]In 1972, Gill’s wife, Basanti, asked the Indian government to track down her missing husband. The IAF sent him information from the ICRC, which was helping to identify, locate and repatriate captured and displaced soldiers and civilians from three warring countries – India, Pakistan and Bangladesh: “The MiG-21 was an aircraft. He was shot dead on December 13, 1971. The pilot was not expelled. The plane crashed and caught fire. The body or other personal belongings could not be recovered, so the identity of the pilot could only be established through reports from Indians declaring him missing in the area. The radio report is incorrect. ”
But the IAF was not convinced by this explanation and expressed its reservations in a letter to Basanti. She said: “According to the report, the pilot’s identity could only be established through Indian reports, which would mean that his identity could be established before May 12, 1972. When we reported the date / area to the ICRC, your husband was missing. Pakistani Radio reported that he was captured on December 13, 1971. We have asked the Pakistani government for more information to reconcile this disagreement. “
Keeping hope alive
In the years that followed, Gill’s family never gave up hope that they could survive. Both accounts helped to spark that hope.
Basanti’s sister was an assistant aircraft carrier for British Overseas Airways Corporation and in the late seventies she often flew from India to the UK across Pakistan. She formed a friendship with a Pakistani airline, her fiancé was from Badin. A colleague mentioned Gill’s case to her fiancé’s family and told her a story about an Indian pilot who got off his plane and landed near his house during the war. The Indian pilot was captured. The family added one more detail: the captured pilot was bald.
Basanti called Boparai, and in 2019 she forwarded an interview to this writer before Boparai died, asking if Gill might have been, as she knew, because her husband was not bald. Gill told him he had cut his head off. “I reaffirmed that this was true and that the news conveyed by the Pakistani air services meant that we were all shaken,” he said.
Boparai reported that he had been working as a teacher in Baghdad from 1979 to 1981. It was a time of rebuilding Iraq after the Ba’athist revolution, and India sent major defense personnel to provide training at the country’s National Defense University. Among them was Boparai. Some of the cadets he was teaching had returned from a training camp in Italy, where soldiers from different countries were part of the United Nations. One of the cadets said he had an interview with a U.S. official in Italy, saying he had mentioned an IAF pilot to help the U.S. test MiG-21 aircraft after the 1971 war.
It was a distant story and could not be independently verified, but Boparai, who was the only MiG pilot to disappear from the war, said that Goparai was not ready to be completely ruled out.
Gurbir Singh Gill, the brother of Wing Commander Gill, opened a museum and HS Gill Motivation Hall in memory of the pilot on February 15, 2020, in celebration of the 47th Squadron (Black Bows) Diamond Jubilee. [Photo courtesy of Chander Suta Dogra]If he were still alive, Gill would be eighty years old now. His wife and son died a few years ago, but Gurbir’s 77-year-old brother has not lost hope. Even now he is in a hurry to check a piece of information that can help his brother find out what happened.
“He’s not just my older brother, he’s my role model and best friend. He loved me very much and despite my age, we shared a close bond, ”he said. “After so many years, a lot of people tell me I have to give up because maybe it’s not alive. It may be a futile endeavor, but my heart tells me it’s somewhere. ‘
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