The Canberra shootdown incident occurred on 10 April 1959, when an English Electric Canberra B(I)58 of the Indian Air Force was shot down by an F-86F Sabre of the Pakistan Air Force over Rawat, near Rawalpindi while performing a aerial reconnaissance mission. This incident is regarded as the first aerial kill of the Pakistan Air Force.[1][2]
Incident
It was Eid al-Fitr and most PAF personnel had been given the day off, with a skeleton crew, mostly comprising unmarried officers and airmen, on duty. The Indian Canberra entered Pakistani airspace while on a aerial reconnaissance mission. Pakistani radar had detected that an intruder had flown in from Indian airspace, heading towards Gujrat, Pakistan. Repeated warnings were issued to the intruder to land at Gujrat, where it was spotted.[1] Two F-86F Sabres flown by Flt. Lt. M. N. Butt and Flt. Lt. M. Yunis were scrambled from PAF Base Peshawar to intercept it. Flt. Lt. M. N. Butt attempted to bring down the Canberra by firing his Sabre's machine guns, but the Canberra was flying at an altitude of more than 50,000 feet—beyond the operational ceiling of the F-86F. When Yunis took over, the Canberra suddenly lost height while executing a turn over Rawalpindi. Yunis fired a burst from his F-86 machine guns that struck the Canberra at an altitude of 47,500 feet and brought it down over Rawat. Both crew members of the IAF Canberra Sqn Ldr J.C. Sengupta, and Flt Lt S.N. Rampal ejected and were captured by Pakistani authorities. They were subsequently released and repatriated a day later after remaining in detention for some time.[3]
Claims
Pakistan claims that the mission of the Canberra was to take aerial photographs of strategic installations between Lahore and Rawalpindi. And that the Canberra had been warned both by hand-signals and warning shots in front of the plane. The Foreign Office of Pakistan published a press note allegedly with a written statement of Sqn. Ldr. J.C. Sengupta, which revealed the hostile nature of his mission to graph certain military targets in Pakistan. The press note emphasized the fact that the incident took place on the Eid when the Indian Air Force expected that the Pakistani defence personnel, like the rest of the nation, would be celebrating Eid and it would consequently make their espionage mission less risky and more promising on that day.[1]
Indian Defence Minister, V. K. Krishna Menon and Indian Ambassador to the U.S. M. C. Chagla, claim that the Canberra was on a routine operational flight to photograph Indian territory in Himachal Pradesh and Kashmir and that it must have strayed over to Pakistan due to a navigational error, which was easy to do at a height of fifty thousand feet. The claim also alleges that no warning was given before the Canberra was shot down.[1][4]
Indian Air Force
Pakistan Air Force