Re: Combat Aircraft of the Indian Air Force Quote:
Originally Posted by srishiva Pakistan is known not to accept their soldier's bodies in previous instances too. |
Yes, that is true. All Pakistan has to do to show supposedly KIA - Wg. Cdr Shahaz ud-din's status(if such a pilot exists) would be to just parade him in front of the media and that would be the end of it. Even that has not been done, adding to the mystery.
Normally and as history has proven, the Pakistanis do all they can rebuff Indian claims, at times going overboard. But in the case of the claimed F-16 downing and an F-16 pilot KIA, there is deafening silence from their side.
To make my final post on this topic and taking a completely dispassionate and neutral stance based on the evidences available openly, it is possible that the MiG-21 Bison managed to shoot down a Pakistani F-16 that day. It is also possible that the MiG-21 Bison was knocked out of the sky before Wg Cdr Abhinandan did a thing. Without evidence we are left without much more than a few unsubstantiated claims.
If the IAF did not shoot the F-16 down in return, then Pakistan managed to embarrass the IAF not because of the MiG-21 loss, because as per the Pakistanis, IAF would have made a false kill claim on a PAF F-16.
At the same time, Pakistan will never openly admit the loss of their F-16 because they have lot of pride & ego associated with their F-16 fleet. For e.g when Pakistani F-16s & Soviet MiG-23s clashed near the Afghan-Pak border in the late 80s, it resulted in the loss of a PAF F-16A. Pakistani and Western sources consider it a friendly fire incident where an AIM-9L hit the PAF F-16. But the Soviet-backed Afghan government of the time claimed that a Soviet MiG-23MLD downed the Pakistani F-16A that day.
Pakistan has a motivation to deny and hide the use of the F-16s that day, even if one didn't get shot down (the discovery of the AIM-120 wreckage in India clearly proves that PAF's claims of non-deployment of F-16s that day are false). Deploying F-16s to take revenge on behalf of terrorists would be shocking and beyond belief for rest of the world, but not India!!! The US will eventually discover if Pakistan is short of an F-16. If they are, an F-16 may crash in early April taking the pilot with it who shares the same surname.
May be India will provide evidence to back their claim, or maybe nothing will happen because there may be nothing to be found.
EDIT: this article probably puts an end to all speculation about a PAF F-16 pilot called Wg Cdr Shahaz ud Din, as such a pilot does not exist.!!!!: Why claims about the PAF pilot’s lynching don’t add up
Last edited by skanchan95 : 5th March 2019 at 12:22.
Reason: Added Link to an article
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