The aircraft that never came back from Kashmir.

Jammu and Kashmir is more a land of dead aircraft than of preserved Warbirds. It is common knowledge that over the decades many transport aircraft of the IAF had crashed in the mountainous terrain and some have never been found at all.

The first recorded incident was on 31st October 1947, a Dakota from No.12 Sqn , [S.No MI-965] piloted by Flt Lt C J Mendoza took off from Ambala for Srinagar. The aircraft went missing somewhere over the Banihal pass and was never found for years. The aircraft wreckage was found only in June 80 in the Pahalgam area. An expedition to the site recovered only skeletons of the crew and the dead. A joint funeral for the 25 dead was organised on 11th June 1981, nearly 33 years after the incident.

The oncoming years saw aircraft being lost at regular intervals. More often than not, the Dakota were not able to cope up with the strain of flying over 15000 feet high mountains and operating from 10000 feet altitude airfields. Most of the aircraft wreckages were left where they were as it was humanly impossible to recover or retrieve something for which no purpose was there. The terrain itself made it impossible in many cases. For Example, A Dakota crashed in May 1961 in a 17000 feet high mountain at Rhimkhim.

An Antonov-12 [S.No BL-534] of No.25 Sqn flown by Sqn Ldr Malhotra took off from Leh to Chandigarh on 7th February 1968. It went missing near the Rohtang pass . Neither the aircraft nor the 98 personnel onboard were ever found. The Mystery came to an end 33 years later in July 2003 when the remains of the aircraft and its passengers were recovered from the Dakka Glacier south of Baralach La pass. [More]

Leh continued to extract its toll. Another An-12 crashed while approaching to land in 1977 and killed more than 70 personnel. Today a lone An-12's rudder and vertical fin pays homage in a makeshift memorial to those killed in that crash. Even as recently as in 1985, A newly acquired Antonov-32 went missing near Kargil in March, and was not found till two months later.

Besides aircraft, dozens of helicopters crashed and went missing in the state. Every year an average of 1-2 helicopters are lost in operations across J and K. The torturous mountains of the Siachen Glacier themselves have numerous Helicopter carcases lying buried under the snow. Thier retrieval made impossible by the climatic conditions. One report suggested that the Air Force and Army lost around 18 Cheetahs in the period of 1982-92.

The state of Jammu and Kashmir is to India what the "Hump" was to the United states pilots during the Second World War. Numerous aircraft were lost and have been missing. No one knows where they have ended up or when the lost flyers will find thier peace.