Yeager Assigned as Air Attache in Pakistan

From 1971 to 1973, at the behest of Ambassador Joseph Farland, Yeager was assigned as the Air Attache in Pakistan to advise the Pakistan Air Force which was led by Abdur Rahim Khan (the first Pakistani to break the sound barrier). He arrived in Pakistan at a time when tensions with India were at a high level. One of Yeager's jobs during this time was to assist Pakistani technicians in installing AIM-9 Sidewinders on PAF's Shenyang F-6 fighters. He also had a keen interest in interacting with PAF personnel from various Pakistani Squadrons and helping them develop combat tactics. In one instance in 1972, while visiting the No. 15 Squadron 'Cobras' at Peshawar Airbase, the Squadron's OC Wing Commander Najeeb Khan escorted him to K2 in a pair of F-86Fs after Yeager requested a visit to the Pakistan and continued overseeing the PAF's operations. Yeager recalled 'the Pakistanis whipped the Indians' asses in the sky... the Pakistanis scored a three-to-one kill ratio, knocking out 102 Russian-made Indian jets and losing 34 airplanes of their own'. During the war, he flew around the western front in a helicopter documenting wreckages of Indian aircraft of Soviet origin which included Sukhoi Su-7s and MiG-21s. These aircraft were transported to the United States after the war for analysis. Yeager also flew around in his Beechcraft Queen Air, a small passenger aircraft that was assigned to him by the Pentagon, picking up shot-down Indian fighter pilots. The Beechcraft was later destroyed during an air raid by the IAF at a Pakistani airbase when Yeager was not present. Edward C. Ingraham, a U.S. diplomat who had served as political counselor to Ambassador Farland in Islamabad, recalled this incident in the Washington Monthly of October 1985: 'After Yeager's Beechcraft was destroyed during an Indian air raid, he raged to his cowering colleagues that the Indian pilot had been specifically instructed by Indira Gandhi to blast his plane. 'It was', he later wrote, 'the Indian way of giving Uncle Sam the finger'. Yeager was incensed over the incident and demanded U.S. retaliation.