PN Atlantic crew why are they hero’s of Pakistan!

[Khan vilatey]

It has been 21 years and I wanted to set the record state.



the Atlantic incident was a result of cowardice of the IAF, amazing bravery of the PN naval aviators and A fault due to integration of various system European and American.



most of Pakistan’s Air defence maps are based on American NAD 83coordinates system.



A quick word on Datums and coordinate systems . The earth is not round.....no i am not a flat earthier....lol... it’s sperichal I.e. like an egg. What is more complicated, that it’s not a perfect egg but rather a weird dented egg. To create a coordinate system one has to draw a circle or an ellipse around the earth that best fits the egg. The problem is that this ellipse does not fit in every place correctly which is called the datum error.



https://gisgeography.com/geodetic-datums-nad27-nad83-wgs84/





The French or Europeans Atlantic natively uses a European datum. So when you feed this system American maps the system generates an error. If one has experience flying in the PN Atlantic you hear the aircrew resenting the maps continually to remove this error.



On the fateful day, I believe the aircraft was on routine training exercise! the exit from PNS Meehan takes the plane near the Indian border to the Arabian Sea. I believe this to be training as the aircraft was not armed to such an extent that it was not even carrying chaffs and flares.



There are some mauvours done to fly the plane at a certain height to hide the aircraft from ships due to water vapors. This was practiced and due to the error in the map the aircraft veered into Indian territory of about 3 kms which is around the error generated. They did not know this and were veering in and out of Indian territory. At this point Pakistani ground radar ordered the aircraft to change direction. the message did not get thorough. A PAF aircraft also tried to contact the PN aircraft but to no avail. I assume that The Pakistani forces did not use guard as they did not want to warn the Indians. Back then the datalaink link17 did not exists to send a encrypted text message. The aircrew still did not corrected their trajectory and were flying towards the Arabian Sea near or slightly inside the Indian border when two IAF MIG 21s were scrambled along with a SAR helicopter of the Indian navy. The aircraft quickly got to the Atlantic and ordered it to turn towards India. At this point the Atlantic crew realized what happened!
India and Pakistan have a treaty which says that unarmed military aircraft flying up to 10kms in each other’s borders will not be attacked. An example of this is an Indian chopper landing in Pakistan when they ran out of fuel and were returned



www.ndtv.com/india-news/anatomy-of-a-goof-up-how-an-indian-army-chopper-landed-in-pakistan-491592%3famp=1&akamai-rum=off

This is the point my friends where the difference comes between the brave and meek. Where the sacrifice and discipline, the tradition of the Pakistani soldier comes to light.
Knowing that they can not outrun the Mig, knowing that they did not even have chaff and flares these hero’s turned their aircraft towards and slowed down. A last effort to out maneuver the enemy. The Atlantic is a turbo prop slower aircraft. It can reduce its speed to forces fighter jets to fly over as jets can not fly at slow speeds. The Indians who wanted to take a war trophy decided to fire on this unarmed aircraft, the pilots onboard must have know this and knew that this tactics will either help them to return home or die trying. Either way they will not let their Aircraft be taken by the enemy. These soldiers committed to their duty and aviated till the last minute. They then become Shaeeds, writing their names in the history books to be remembered for all time to come!

The error in our maps was corrected by some patriots, although their efforts pale in comparison to our brave sailors who decided to take Shadat 20,000 feet above the sea. These efforts will inshallah ensure this never happens again.

 

[Khan vilatey]

I feel this aircrew did not receive the homer they should, I feel they’ deserve the Nishan-e-Haider. They were Not at fault for intruding, yet they fought with what they had till the very end. There case is similar to Rashid Minhas

K

 

[Baz2020]

My uncle (father's younger brother) was an atlantique pilot in Pakistan Navy. In fact he was amongst the first ones who went to France to take delivery of these planes and fly them to Karachi, I think it was early 1980s. He used to tell us they did 10 hours of surrvellience over the Arabian sea at a stretch. Even at that time blaady Americans were present in Arabian sea. Once an American navy ship contacted them and turned on secondary radar and said PN atlantique steer straight.

Is there an atlanqiue pilot on here?

 

[Khan vilatey]

My uncle (father's younger brother) was an atlantique pilot in Pakistan Navy. In fact he was amongst the first ones who went to France to take delivery of these planes and fly them to Karachi, I think it was early 1980s. He used to tell us they did 10 hours of surrvellience over the Arabian sea at a stretch. Even at that time blaady Americans were present in Arabian sea. Once an American navy ship contacted them and turned on secondary radar and said PN atlantique steer straight.

Is there an atlanqiue pilot on here?

was he the pilot who flew over the Indian carrier ? Yes friends while General Zia was watching cricket our Atlantic overflew the Indian carrier with harriers, if it were war India would have been down one carrier. It was the time of brass tacks

K

 

[SecularNationalist]

@5:40 that was air cmd(r) kaisar tufail
The indians were clearly butthurt after the kargil war so they violated the treaty in frustration.
I remember this incident as a little kid.

 

[IceCold]

Whenever i recall this incident i always think it was a mistake to let Indian sub go. I understand its easy said than done and a lot of things have repercussions that ordinary people like me sitting behind my keyboard may not fully understand but one thing is for certain Indians dont understand any other language. These men deserved better and their blood should not have gone wasted without being avenged.

 

[Khan vilatey]

I wanted to bring this up on the list on the 22nd anniversary of this atrocity of the IAF and the heroism of the PN crew who preferred to go down with their ship but to surrender to the enemy!

from a proud navy and a grateful nation , my martyrs fly high as we keep the memories of your sacrifice fresh.


k

 

[Reichmarshal]

A training sortie when the waring parties are seeing eye ball to eye ball was nothing short of criminal negligence.

 

[Khan vilatey]

A training sortie when the waring parties are seeing eye ball to eye ball was nothing short of criminal negligence.

they were training for war, since Pakistan has limited depth the Pak navy fly closer to the Indian border to get to the sea. An alternate story I have heard from The Indians is that the aircraft was conducting sigint and survalence on indian assets, but that is besides the point . If you read my post you will see what happened And the heroism when it mattered most, these Pakistani sailors went down with their ship, they did not surrender to the enemy and died serving their country 20000 feet above the sea


k

 

[MIRauf]

they were training for war, since Pakistan has limited depth the Pak navy fly closer to the Indian border to get to the sea. An alternate story I have heard from The Indians is that the aircraft was conducting sigint and survalence on indian assets, but that is besides the point . If you read my post you will see what happened And the heroism when it mattered most, these Pakistani sailors went down with their ship, they did not surrender to the enemy and died serving their country 20000 feet above the sea


k

They could have easily flown 10/15KM inside Pak aerospace to perform the same task, didn't have to be right on top of the IB line or extremely close to it. Everyone knows that in case of two adjacent countries there usually is unspoken no go 5 KM rule for military planes to avoid any misunderstanding.

PS: Anyway, respect to all that perished in this accident // shoot down.

PS: Why would a PN MPA first fly towards Runn of Kutch and then go out to the sea ? becuase lack of depth ? last I remember, Mahran base is right next to the Arabian Sea.

 

[Black Tornado]

Did the ICJ ruled the judgement in favour of Pakistan relating to the incident?

 

[Khan vilatey]

Did the ICJ ruled the judgement in favour of Pakistan relating to the incident?

The ice said this was not in its jurisdiction……
k

 

[Deltadart]

A training sortie when the waring parties are seeing eye ball to eye ball was nothing short of criminal negligence.

Putting aside the criminal and cowardly indian act. There was negligence on the part of higher ups in the PN who authorized this training sortie so close to the border. Heads should have roled and people punished, but nothing of the sort happened.
We never avenged our brave sailors/ aviators. Still not too late...

 

[GriffinsRule]

This is all my speculation. They were flying over Raan of Kutch, most certainly mapping different water ways as the open marshland there changes depending on rainfall etc. They were most likely not on a training mission but carrying out the exercise to ensure they had up to date information on the topography in order to plan for the defense in case hostilities escalated.
In those days PN or the PAF did not have the ISR capabilities it does today and they were flying an antiquated aircraft without proper cover from PAF. (Long duration of missions might have meant rotating CAPs).
We also don't know if there were indeed PAF caps there or not and perhaps IAF took advantage of the situation when the aircraft was alone and shot it down.
Cowardly or not, they clearly controlled the escalation ladder there and Pakistan did nothing in response. Bitter lesson learned

 

[Khan vilatey]

This is all my speculation. They were flying over Raan of Kutch, most certainly mapping different water ways as the open marshland there changes depending on rainfall etc. They were most likely not on a training mission but carrying out the exercise to ensure they had up to date information on the topography in order to plan for the defense in case hostilities escalated.
In those days PN or the PAF did not have the ISR capabilities it does today and they were flying an antiquated aircraft without proper cover from PAF. (Long duration of missions might have meant rotating CAPs).
We also don't know if there were indeed PAF caps there or not and perhaps IAF took advantage of the situation when the aircraft was alone and shot it down.
Cowardly or not, they clearly controlled the escalation ladder there and Pakistan did nothing in response. Bitter lesson learned

with due respect, I have first hand knowledge here from senior officers of Pakistani naval aviation, they were training, that is the rout for years taken by PN aircraft. This time there was an error in navigation. I go to great lengths to explain the error as well. I also mentioned the maneuver undertaken near the water vapor / due point.

The problem was with our juggar which was fixed. The real hero’s were the crew who made a simple training mistake but India broke the bilateral agreement and tried to take on these hero’s who died defending their nation without any wepons with just their lives 20000 feet above the sea

k