Some new pics of Indian Air Force aircraft in the 60's

As some will know I have a large collection of aircraft pics from my teenage years at Changi in the early 60’s, which I am now able to scan. I was therefore pleased to find a couple of articles on the Indian Air Force website that related to planes I had photos of.
Jagan Pillarsetti, who runs the site has now uploaded these pics and related them to the articles. This is the link:
http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/IAF/Galleries/History/1960s/Changi/
The most interesting are the 8 Vampire T55’s and the accompanying Dakotas that past through in March 1963 on a ferry flight from Indonesia.
Here’s my ‘wide shot’ of the pan at Changi on the day in question to wet your appetites, close ups are on the Bharat Rakshak site.

The article by the flight leader Air Cmdr Bouche is at
http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/IAF/History/1960s/DavidBouche.html
and the Dakota pilot at:
http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/IAF/History/1960s/Kondath.html

I also saw two ex-RAF Vampire T11’s XE957 and WZ467, which departed Changi and asked Jagan if he knew what they were in Indian service. He replied:
Your question about the two Vampires is an interesting one. After the Indonesian Vampires, as you said a batch of ex-RAF T-11s were ferried to India. Some of them have Indian serial matched to the RAF but the two serials you give do not have corresponding IAF serials in my notes. Nevertheless, I can take some educated guesses as to what these ac were. In the BY series, after the Indonesian examples, the only others recorded are

BY-925
BY-996
BY-997
BY-998
BY-1005 ex-RAF XE983
BY-1006 ex-RAF WZ498
BY-1007 ex-RAF XD532
BY-1008 ex-RAF XE945
BY-1009 ex-RAF WZ471

The last five are supposed to have been delivered in July 63, I would assume the first four were also from the same batch or whereabouts – and perhaps the two aircraft you mention can be matched up to one of the first four.

Anyways, Vampires served with regular IAF squadrons till about 1967 after which, almost all of them ended up with the Fighter Training Wing at Hakimpet near Hyderabad in the Advanced Jet Training role. They continued to fly with Hakimpet till early 75 when they were retired. (most of them scrapped).

One interesting interlude to their Hakimpet days was that when war broke out with Pakistan in Dec 1971, an ad-hoc Squadron was formed with instructors and Vampires from Hakimpet and this Squadron was sent north to take part in operations (Which they did – mostly night operations and mountainous warfare operations). Three of the aircraft relevant to our conversation – BY608, BY925 and BY996 formed part of the force and took part in night interdiction missions from Halwara and Srinagar. BY925 was destroyed in a PAF raid on Srinagar on Dec 15, 1971. the others returned to Hakimpet and presumably were scrapped years later. Anyways at this point all I can say with conviction is that one of the Indonesian Examples 608 took part in train interdiction missions in the 1971 War. I happned to interview the units commanding officer a few years back and got the serials of his logbook.

I find it interesting that the IAF was still sending Vampires into action in 1971.

Also the first Indian built Avro 748 ‘Subroto’ is shown. This aircraft undertook a demonstration tour around the area that is mentioned in the article by the pilot Gp Cpt Bhargava
http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/IAF/History/1960s/Kapil-Avro.html .
Finally there are some of an IAF C-119 Packet and the IAF S-55 Whirlwind that the Air Force loaned to the Navy for use on their first carrier ‘Vikrant’.
David Taylor.