Comments on: F-6s at War

By: waqar

waqar — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 14:35:21 +0000

long live pakistan air force …….

By: Salman Masum

Salman Masum — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 19:01:08 +0000

I stand with you in your honouring all our brave fighter pilots.. and especially on the F-6.

By: Irfan Masum

Irfan Masum — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 10:48:52 +0000

Wonderful narrative of the F-6, my favourite fighter in the PAF. Having flown the F-6 for over 1200 hours I can safely say that while it was a difficult aircraft to master, it was the most enjoyable to fly.
In an attempt to master the ‘pack of roaring power’ – as it was described in the PAF Ads, I spun twice as a Flg Off and somehow recovered to tell the story. In those days the anti spin procedure was with the opposite rudder. However, much to the credit of PAF, the anti spin procedure was changed to applying in-spin aileron for recovery. The Dash-1s and check lists were updated to reflect this change which was also conveyed to the Chinese.
In my later years of flying the F-6, I was able to fly even outside the flight envelope without spinning. The realization that this aircraft could be mastered by pilots prompted the PAF to introduce “Advanced Handling” training phase during the conversion courses. I was fortunate to be one of the first ones, in 14 OCU Mainwali to lay down the syllabus for this phase and train the other instructors. I would like to think that we, the instructors of the then 14 OCU (1981 to 1983) made a difference whereby the operations pilots that we graduated were better trained. In this advanced handling phase, among other exercises, students were demonstrated (and they would practice in subsequent sorties) flying the aircraft down to 300 Kph and executing reversals akin to combat scissoring with no danger of adverse yawing or spinning. The idea to get across the students was that spin is encountered when you stall and yaw the aircraft at the same time. Therefore, if you purely stalled the aircraft and prevented any yaw – the aircraft would not enter a spin. Similarly, if you yawed the aircraft and prevented it from stalling – the aircraft would not enter a spin. Once this simple rule of aerodynamics was demonstrated, it became easy to master the F-6.
This work horse of the PAF deserves to be honoured in the PAF history books. And I salute all the fighter pilots who have flown it, in peace and war, without fear.

By: sts

sts — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:02:22 +0000

Great info, thanks for useful article. I’m waiting for more

By: Taimur

Taimur — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 03:49:06 +0000

Very informative article on the F-6 To this day, I think the F-6 is the best looking aircraft in the world. As a kid somehow I was able to get most of the model kits of planes I looked for except the F-6, so my opinion on this being the best looking airplane ever may be a bit of model envy and biased. I noticed reading it that the distances are all in miles and feet but the airspeeds are in metric. In addition to the missile integration, PAF was the only AF to install western ejection seats on the F6.

Final observation: the F-6 went through more color scheme/camo changes than any other plane in PAF history: silver, green, green camouflage, and finally settled on the silver/white look.

By: Imran

Imran — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 01:16:52 +0000

There is a good write up on the final salute to F-6 written by Air Commodore Qadeer Ahmad Hashmi at

http://www.defencejournal.com/2002/may/salute.htm

Given the F-6 kill ratio and the performance of pilots in East Pakistan, I think the course of 1971 war would have been quite different had their been a squadron of F-6s and a radar there. Though the eventual political settlement would not have been that much different.