The battle was raging non-stop. The gunfire and smoke from explosions were relentless. Just 1.5 km away west of the Nile River in Sudan lies the small dusty airstrip of Wadi Sayyidna, about 40 km north of the country’s capital at Khartoum.
The airstrip had a degraded surface. No facilities like navigational approach aids or refueling amenities or even landing lights that are critical to guide an aircraft landing at night were available.
It was here that a lone C-130J aircraft of the IAF flew in and landed in the airstrip in the dark of the night on Thursday.
On the ground, the Indian defence attaché in the embassy in Sudan was leading a convoy of vehicles that were carrying 121 petrified Indians, including people who were ill, a pregnant woman and many others who had no means to reach Port Sudan from where the evacuations were taking place.
This motley group of 121 had just one objective and a prayer: to somehow escape the brutal war that was fast sweeping across Sudan with the army fighting the paramilitary.
Their daring escape is the stuff movies are made of, once again underlining India’s tactical capability to achieve strategic objectives.
On board the C-130J, the aircrew used their Electro-Optical/Infra Red sensors to ensure that the runway was free from any obstructions and no inimical forces were in the vicinity. “Having made sure of the same, the aircrew carried out a tactical approach on Night Vision Goggles, on a practically dark night,” an IAF source said.
“Upon landing, the aircraft engines were kept running while eight IAF Garud commandos secured the passengers and their luggage into the aircraft. As with the landing, the take-off from the unlit runway was also carried out using NVGs,” the source said.
The approximately two-and-a-half-hour operation between Wadi Sayyidna and Jeddah will go down in the annals of IAF history for its sheer audacity and flawless execution.