Purchase and
maintenance of a helicopter-heavy aviation fleet is
certainly an expensive proposition. Brig (Retd) Sher
Khan, who disagrees with me and says that this expense
is not really required, belongs to a select group
of army aviation engineers with good flying experience,
most of it test-flying the fixed wing tail-wheel two-seater
L-19 (or 0-1 in Army nomenclature). He has also commanded
an aviation base repair workshop. In the 1960s and
1970s the sturdy L-19s formed the core of the Army
Aviation fleet, doing duties of command and control,
reconnaissance, observation, artillery fire control,
communications, liaison, medical evacuation etc. It
was also the basic trainer aircraft. When US Military
Aid-to-Pakistan (MAP) stopped during the September
1965 war, Pakistan Army’s “Aviation Engineering”
utilised stocks of spares in the Ordinance Depots
to “build” new aircraft....more
