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From: sburney@oracle.uucp (Shehryar Burney)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: The fighter X vs Y debate
Message-ID: <1991Feb4.045300.10832@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 4 Feb 91 04:53:00 GMT
References: <1991Jan28.035710.8230@cbnews.att.com>
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From: sburney@oracle.uucp (Shehryar Burney)

In article Message-ID: <1991Jan28.035710.8230@cbnews.att.com>
moudgill@cs.cornell.edu (Mayan Moudgill) writes:

> I have $0.02 to contribute.
> During the 71 India-Pakistan war, the Pakistanis were using Starfighters
> (F104-Gs??) and the Indians were using Gnats (subsonic and as close to a
> Kleenex jet fighter as you can get-- no missiles, a couple of cannon).
> I don't know the exact casualty ratios but they were something like a
> 4-5 Starfighters per Gnat in air-to-air combat. Sucks, doesn't it?

Pakistan took delivary of only 10 single-seat and 2 twin-seat F-104s.
I don't know how many were operational in 1971, but at least 2 were
lost in the 1965 India-Pakistan war.  Therefore, the 4-5 F104/1 Gnat
ratio is not very plausible.  Pakistan's front-line fighters
in that war were the Mirage III/Mirage V.  India's mainstay
was the Mig-21, which had actually been inducted in the Indian
Air Force as early as 1965, along with some Su-? attack aircraft.  

India had more effective aircraft than the Gnat (Mig 21 and 
Hawker Hunter) but tended to overemphasize the role of the Gnat
in press releases since it had been locally modified and was 
built in India.

Due to propaganda by both sides, it is impossible to know exact
losses, but see Chuck Yeager's autobiography "Yeager" for 
a completely different impression of the war than the above
figures would imply.  Yeager was the American air attache in
Pakistan during the 1971 war.

Shehryar Burney                    Oracle Consulting - Manhattan
sburney@us.oracle.com              (212) 303-3962              
  
All opinions expressed are solely my own.