IAF’s sole PVC recipient

On December 14, 1971, the heroics of a young IAF fighter pilot, Flying Officer Nirmal Jit Singh Sekhon, set ablaze the skies over Srinagar, which led to him being decorated posthumously with the Param Vir Chakra. In the IAF's 92-year history, he remains the sole recipient of the nation’s highest award for gallantry.

Sekhon, then 26, is remembered for his lone defence of the Srinagar airbase against a Pakistan air force raid during the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971, when he took on six enemy Sabre aircraft in aerial combat, shooting down two. Commissioned as a Pilot Officer in 1967, he was serving as a Gnat pilot with No.18 Squadron, the unit which now flies the indigenously built Tejas fight out of Naliya airbase, during the war.

On December 14, the Srinagar airfield was attacked by six Pakistani jets. As soon as the first aircraft attacked, Sekhon rolled for take-off as No.2 in a two-aircraft formation, with Flight Lieutenant BS Ghumman in lead, just as the first bombs hit the runway.