This was told by a Pilot who flew F-6s in 1971 War
“Shenyang F6 was good fighter, but it had a major problems, lets say in close turns it use to loose speed sharply but the RD-9s(Chinese made engines) immidiate response in surge of thrust was slow, compare to Avon of Hunter, we once spared with british Hunters in Pakistan, one of my squadron mate made a mistake by getting into tight turning dogfight in which hunter nailed him good. other then that those who had good experience never made the same mistake with the hunter in 1971 War. in that war we met Su-7s & Hunters mostly except for a MiG-21 fight. Su-7 was as same as F-6 once we caught it it was no match i have seen Gun Camera Pic in which Atiq Sufi shot down a Su-7 at such close range that we could see holes made by 30mm guns, he was in my section when we were at the end of search & destroy mission we got the call from sakesar that su-7s are nearby my section leader disengaged as we were low on fuel, but atiq broke off and went hunting and caught 01 su-7, his one engine flamed out on Landing due to his kill he got saved from Court Marshall but he didn`t flew again whole of War. we also had some exceptional pilots(Hashmi & Hatmi) who knew how to master the F6 and they did, Hashmi took out a Su-7 over rafiqui AFB by AIM-9s but such was the ethnic strife within Pakistani community & forces (it still is!) that he was burshed up for downing his own wingman(claim that because the wingman was punjabi and he was Urdu speaking thats why he took him out) which was clearly not the case..the wingman was lost due to over eager AAA chaps(its true that su-7 & F6 in air seems to have quite the same), other one is Hatmi he engaged Hunters over sakersar with his wingman (Raza he had a big scar on his face quite nice young guy in many ways a good student of tactics he died at the last day of war while on CAS mission) they were based at murid or mianwali i dont remmeber engaged hunters where hatmi & raza both shot down hunters, hatmi use to tell me that the hunter chap was real good he fought like a cornered Tiger, scissors or barral roll you name it he did made only mistake which hatmi capitalised. it was all good when things work or F6 equippment worked, we had huge problems converting to F6s and flying it because it was chinese made, we lost many young pilots due to its engine quality it was so poor, we use to have turbine blade failure which use to cut F6 in two peices and it use to happen at odd places like while take off where we didn`t have the enough height or speed to eject or at landing, myself had one luckly it was partial failure i landed back. chinese did came and checked the engines and admitted the poor quality and replaced the engines with new ones and even offered to pay compansation to dead pilots families which was denied politely the problems were solved by 1976 and by 80s we actualy had completely diffrent F6s from the ones we first flew, much better is quality”
i just a had small chit chat with that guy! was fun! (except for the remark “the 1971 war was forced farce on PAF pilots”) 😀
Regards,
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