It had been vital to be the PAF’s operational plans to carry out sustained attacks against IAF airfields and radar in support of the Pakistan Army’s offensive, starting some time before H-hour and continuing as long as necessary. While the radars were distinctive targets and posed no problem of weapons selection, the IAF airfields offered several options: parked aircraft, ground support equipment, communications installations, bomb dumps, fuel storage and runway/taxyways. A careful analysis of each target system, its dimensions, protective devices, detectability and its vulnerability to the available weapons, led to the final selection of runways and taxyways as the most lucrative. The PAF did not posses any of the special hard-nosed bombs ideal for such targets. (In fact such a bomb would later be designed and supplied by a French company at the PAF’s initiative and cost seven years after this war.) But the bombs it did have were confirmed to be suitable for attacking concrete pavements with proper fusing which was available and used. The dive profiles of the attacking aircraft were so prescribed as to provide at least the minimum bomb impact angle that would produce a crater. Live bombing trials before the war showed that even near misses threw up sufficient debris on to the runway to render it unusable for reasonably long periods.

The earlier part of this chapter has shown that the chosen target system was the best one and consistent with the air staff’s vulnerability assessments before the war. There is little doubt that airfield strikes will remain an irresistible option to both air forces in the future as well, although for meeting objectives which may be quite dissimilar. By the early 1980s, the iron bombs and rudimentary aiming devices of 1971 had been replaced with ‘hard target munitions’, ‘suppression weapons’ and deadly accurate fire control systems. These two would tend to support the choice of airfields as prime targets.

The PAF’s night bombing campaign was continued with good effect throughout the war (unlike that of the IAF), and reflected great credit upon the courage and perseverance of the B-57 crews, 6 of whom were killed over enemy airfields. Equally gallant were the pilots of the slow, fuel and bombs laden F-86s which carried our almost daily attacks against Srinagar and Awantipura airfields and on one occasion, shot down a ´Sabre Slayer´ - a ludicrous Indian nickname for the Gnat. None of the F-86s or Mirages were lost during these airfield strikes although two F-104s fell to enemy guns and missiles. Only the first phase of the PAF’s day night counter air campaign had been implemented when the cease-fire came into effect. Had the proposed army offensive into India materialised, the second, more decisive phase waited to be launched. But that was not to be.