In a startling revelation in a recently published book authored by former Indian Air Force (IAF) pilot Wing Commander (Retired) Dhirendra S. Jafa, it is mentioned that American military officers have interrogated 1971 Indian Air Force prisoners of war (PoWs) in Pakistan in an attempt get the information on Indian Air Force navigational techniques which were used with pinpoint accuracy to target Pakistani air fields. In the chapter seven of his 241-page book titled "Death Wasn't Painful", Wing Commander Jafa writes that a well-known American flyer and test pilot came to his prison cell along with a Pakistani officer on around 25th of December, 1971, who he saw as a symbol of the US Seventh Fleet, "the coercive, high-handed, self-righteous aggressiveness of the ugly American."

To play along with the line of questioning being taken by his American interrogator, Wing Commander Jafa reveals that the latter asked him whether he was following the developments in Russian aviation and specifically referred to the aircrafts such as the MiG series, the Sukhois and of course, their bombers and in a suggestive sort of way, sought to understand from the Indian PoW whether he was aware or not of whether they were of all of the same make or of different concepts. Wing Commander Jafa replied, "I am only a flyer, the end user, so to say. You'd know better, of course, being a test pilot."

The American interrogator said that some IAF aircraft had been accommodated with advanced electronics and navigational aids and given to Jafa and other Indian pilots to operate and "to enable you to find targets" in Pakistan. Wing Commander Jafa said in his book that the Americans were monitoring the war in real time, but were "even more bothered about the accurate night bombings by the Indian pilots than were the Pakistanis."

Americans have taken all shot down aircraft and examined all the bits and pieces "to determine just one piece of equipment that could solve the mystery. The interrogator suggested that Russians provided Indian pilots with "some kind of beam guidance system" which the Americans were not aware of.

By Premji