The Bombing of Waziristan

Posted by admin in PAKISTAN'S HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES on September 4th, 2013

Vintage Photos: 1939, The Bombing of Waziristan

I am reminded of a fact. In about 1932,

a village by the Swat riverside was bombed.

Killing one woman, 2 donkeys and a few

chicks. My grandfather the then Wali asked

The Govt for reasons of this action. He was

told that it was a mistake and that the

damage would be compensated. The owner

of the 2 donkeys was given Rs 100 for each

donkey. The woman’s relatives were given

Rs 50 only.

Some years later some officers from the

Air Base were our guests at Swat. My

Father asked them about that incident.

They laughed and said that it was an

operation in support of troops in the

Mohmand area on a cloudy day. The three

Fighters lost their way and came over

Swat. The front leader did not want to

return to Base with the load of bombs that

were to be manually thrown on the enemy

targets. So he threw them in the Swat river.

With no radio communication in those days,

the following two fighter pilots thought the

Leader had missed the target, so they

threw their bombs on the village. Back at

the Base they told a lie that they had

bombed the target.

Aurangzeb.

The Bombing of Waziristan

In this rugged hiding place, outlaws like Talibans are rarely run to ground. The British learned that lesson in 1939.

From this fort at Miram Shah in what is Pakistan today, Royal Air Force squadrons policed the unruly border between British India and Afghanistan.

A formation of Westland Wapitis flies over the mountainous landscape of the North-West Frontier Province. In 1933, a Wapiti became the first airplane to fly over Mt. Everest.

The Waziristan that the world knows today as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan was in the early 20th century the site of warfare between British forces and local tribes.

At Miram Shah, prop wash stirs dust around the tail skids of 39 Squadron’s Hawker Harts, which pilots flew in the 1930s on air policing missions.

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A Bristol Fighter is readied for a policing mission in the 1920s.

Pilots of 5 Squadron set out from Miram Shah in a Westland Wapiti. Between 1937 and 1939, pilots in Wapitis and Hawker Harts bombed villages as reprisals for tribal ambushes.

Harts stood ready for action at the North-West Frontier base at Risalpur in 1932. Today the city is the home of the Pakistan Air Force Academy.

Mirza Ali Khan led a series of uprisings against British garrisons in the North-West Frontier and Waziristan in the 1930s.

By 1939, 39 Squadron, then flying Bristol Blenheims, had moved on from Waziristan to Singapore.