It is very rare to find Indian Post releasing stamps comemorating one squadorns of the airforce. There have been many stamps of different Batallions of the Army, but rarely a seperate stamp on a squadorn of the Airforce. As a result I was pleasently surprised to find a stamp released on the 50 years of the 16th Squadron.
I went scouring the dependable bharat rakshak website for any information on the 16 Sqn, but there did not seem to be much of that around. The 16 Sqn is called the "Black Cobra's" and their sqn motto in "Praharodata". After that much information, it seems to get a bit lost. It claims the raising date of the sqn as 1951 and the first plane in the 16 Sqn as Spitfires. In the above stamp, each of this does not seem tobe the case. The unit must have clearly been raised in 1955 & the bottommost plane is the Librator.
On going on to the website of the indian air force, I didn't find much more about it other then the fact that its crest was the one on the left.
The planes featured in the stamps are as follows from the bottom:
- Liberator
- Canberra
- Jaguar
The FDC for the occasion is a stunner. I am not a fan of the Jaguar. It might be a damn good plan, but it just doesn't llok that great in the air. But look at the snap of this one on the ground. I think this is one of the rare occasion when a plane looks better on the ground then it does in Air.
I am not sure what armaments the jaguar is carrying, but it I think I can spot drop-tanks below the fusilage. These tanks carry additional fuel so as to increase the range of the aircraft. These tanks are called so because they are supposed to be dropped off the plane once they are empty so that flight charecteristics are improved. But in these days of cost cutting, I very much doubt if these are ever dropped. :)
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