Wings of Duty — Page 11
11 ultimately cancelled, and I returned to Begumpet after basic training in Bombay (Mumbai). In 1944 I was commissioned in Ambala. In March 1945, immediately after completing my training in Peshawar, I was sent with the No. 8 Fighter Squadron to the Burma (Myanmar) front. Our squadron was based northeast of Calcutta (Kolkata) at the Baigachi Air Force base in what is now Bangladesh and our job was to protect Calcutta from Japanese air raids. We flew the British Spitfire Model 9 aircraft. The threat of attack never materialised, so to maintain our sharpness, we had mock dog fights almost every day with the Lightning P-38 fighter planes from a nearby US Air Force base. We nearly always won because in those days the British system of flight training was better than the American one. This is no longer the case and the Americans now lead the way. The advance of the Japanese from the north into Burma had been halted and Allied forces were beginning to make gains. The Burmese front line was slowly shifting to the south. We had been at Baigachi for only a few months when we received orders to proceed to Mingaladon Air Force base near the Burmese capital Rangoon (Yangon). Since the journey from Calcutta to