The morning of September 7, 1965, brought one of the more remarkable air battles of the war to the skies over Kalaikunda, and at its heart was Flight Lieutenant Alfred Cooke, whose outnumbered Hunter took on four Pakistani Sabres and lived to tell an extraordinary tale. It came just hours after Kalaikunda had already been mauled once that morning, when five Sabres led by Squadron Leader Shabbir Syed struck the airbase, catching it completely off guard and destroying two Canberra bombers along with four Vampires on the ground.Buoyed by that success of this air raid, the Pakistan Air Force made the same mistake the IAF had made earlier over Sargodha, sending in a second raid against a target that was now fully alert. At around 10:30 am, radar officer Squadron Leader “Mama” Sahni picked up a fleeting blip near Port Canning and immediately alerted Kalaikunda air base. Two Hunters flying Combat Air Patrol some 60 miles north of the base, piloted by Flight Lieutenant Alfred Cooke and Flying Officer SC Mamgain, both of 14 Squadron (which now flies Jaguars), were asked to return to defend the base and arrived over Kalaikunda at 4,000 feet, at the altitude needed to intercept the four incoming low flying Sabres led by Flight Lieutenant Haleem of the 14 Squadron of the PAF.What followed was a chaotic, low-level dogfight witnessed by cheering students of IIT Kharagpur watching from their rooftops. On spotting the Hunters, the Sabres split, two engaging Cooke head-on while the other pair peeled off toward the airfield. Cooke later admitted he remembered little beyond Sabres seemingly everywhere, but his gun camera film tells a remarkable story, he fired on four different Sabres and hit three of them. The first broke up in mid-air, killing Flight Lieutenant Afzal Khan. Cooke damaged a second and third Sabre, then latched onto a fourth, chasing it relentlessly through low-level breaks and turns until he ran out of ammunition, yet stayed on its tail anyway, rattling the Pakistani pilot enough to force him off his attack run and all the way back to the border.Those watching from the ground, reported seeing two Sabres go down, a claim partly corroborated by police reports of a smoking jet and a pilot ejecting near the border. Pakistan admitted losing one Sabre, flown by Flight Lieutenant Tariq Habib, that limped back too damaged to salvage, matching the aircraft visible in Cooke’s own gun camera footage. Despite the PAF’s gamble to press its advantage, Kalaikunda stayed operational for the rest of the war.
