Indian Air Losses of the 1971 War (Unofficial List)

The Indian Air Force fought on two fronts during the 1971 War. Employing nearly 600 Combat aircraft ranging from New MiG-21 and Sukhoi-7s to the Vintage Harvards and Vampires, the IAF flew nearly 7500 Sorties during the duration of the war. The Following is the list of Losses compiled by us through Various Sources published ever since. You will come up with some startling figures when you go through them, like finding out that 23 aircraft were lost in a matter of two days on both the fronts, or the High number of Hunter Losses.  A surprising trend is the increase in attrition of the Canberra .  The Losses are given first for the Eastern Sector and then for the Western Sector. Some of the Articles in the 71 War Section give details of the losses. The Figures given below were intially estimated as 61, However have been revised to 75 after the release of the Times of India’s Official History of the 1971 War. For the sake of completeness, I have included figures of Army and Naval Aircraft losses also.

A Typewise Breakup is given as follows:

Figures in parenthesis are operational accidents.

The Following Table gives us the causes to which the aircraft were lost. 50% can clearly be attributed to Ground Fire, in form of AAA Artillery and Small Arms fire. 30 % to Air Combat defences of the PAF. 2 % to PAF Air Raids and Accidents accounted for a massive 22%. 

DETAILS OF AIRCRAFT LOSSES IN THE EASTERN AND WESTERN SECTORS 1971.
Note: Rows in Grey background are Operational Accidents.

Legend:

Notes:

1. Entries marked with “?” in the remarks column are not confirmed by secondary sources.

Acknowledgements:

Special Thanks to  VP, Tomas Polak of Czechoslavakia , The officers of the College of Air Warfare, Secunderabad, Rupak Chattopadhyay, Phil Camp , Simon Watson, The Indian Air Force Museum , Times of India group and Mr. Pushpindar Singh Chopra.

Bibliography:

Government of India, Official History of the 1971 India-Pakistan War, Publications Division.
P C Lal, My Years with the IAF, Lancer Publications 1986.
K K Nayar, Amar Jawan, India Book House 1997.
Fricker John,Postmortem of an Air War, Air Enthusiast, May 1972.
Pushpindar Singh, Journal of an Air War, Air Enthusiast, Apr 1972.
Pushpindar Singh, The Battle Axes No 7 Sqn IAF, 1942-92, ??
No. 20 Sqn War Diary, Lightning Strikes , Unpublished.