1971 Bangla air force docu to release in troubled times
Times of India | 12 January 2026
Kolkata: Against the backdrop of cross-border India-Bangladesh tension, an Indian film-maker has made a documentary to trace how "Bangladesh learnt to fly but India provided the wings". The documentary, ‘Wings of Defiance', revisited Operation Kilo Flight, which marked the birth of the Bangladesh Air Force from an abandoned airstrip in Dimapur in 1971.
Kilo Flight was the code name for the Mukti Bahini combat aviation formation. This was the second in the series of documentaries Abhijit Dasgupta has made on the 1971 Bangladesh war. "This documentary series is an act of resistance against any encouragement of deliberate amnesia. But when history is erased, the young are left defenceless. It is already too late when the youth realise that questions ought to have been asked. The idea behind making this series is to stop this obliteration of history," Dasgupta said.
‘Wings of Defiance', which will have its premiere screening at SRFTI on Jan 15, picked up the thread of Dasgupta's earlier work on Operation Jackpot. "For the first time, the veil lifts on the clandestine strike that transformed huge Pakistani oil depots into an inferno and crippled Pakistan's war machine overnight. It was only on successful completion of this operation that a phone call went to Delhi and the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's broadcast of war was aired," Dasgupta said.
The director spent time on research to unfold history, trying to capture the very "pulse of a covert mission" and revisit the time of "whispered planning and the perilous execution of the mission". "In the brutal aftermath of Operation Searchlight, Bengali defector pilots from the Pakistan Air Force and Pakistan International Airlines, and Indian Air Force officers, forged a clandestine air mission in Dimapur. A modest single-engine Otter aircraft and a Chetak helicopter were converted into strike machines. They were armed with improvised rockets, guns, and handmade sights. It was wartime jugaad at its most fearless. Training was survival itself, with low-level night flying beneath enemy radar, runways lit by Petromax lamps, and jungle trials where a mistake meant death. We were able to secure rare interviews with Captain Shahabuddin Ahmed, Captain Alamgir Sattar, Captain Akram Ahmed, and Flight Lt Samsul Alam, who were part of Operation Kilo Flight. We also interviewed Squadron Leader S C Ghoshal, who trained these warriors," Dasgupta said.
The documentary revisited Boyra's historic dogfight and the audacious Kilo Flight raids on the Narayanganj and Chittagong oil depots in Dec 1971. "Flying long missions with minimal instruments and maximum risk, these airmen relied on little more than courage, compass, and conviction. This is history that never made the headlines. This is memory that refuses to stay buried," Dasgupta said.