President Murmu to present ‘Standard and Colours’ to four IAF units on Friday

In August 1968, the squadron was one of the first to be re-equipped with the Su-7 supersonic attack fighter.

New Delhi: President Droupadi Murmu will present the Standard and Colours to four Indian Air Force units on Friday, the Rashtrapati Bhavan said.

It will be the first time in the history of the IAF that four units will be awarded President’s Standard and Colours together.

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Murmu will visit the Air Force Station Hindon in Uttar Pradesh on Friday where she will present the President’s Standard to the 45 Squadron and the 221 Squadron and the President’s Colours to the 11 Base Repair Depot and the 509 Signal Unit, the Rashtrapati Bhavan said in a brief statement on Thursday.

The President’s Standard and Colours is the highest military honour for any armed forces unit. The four units selected for the coveted awards have stellar contributions to the IAF’s history.

The 45 Squadron, also called the ‘Flying Daggers’, was raised in 1959. The squadron took part in ‘Operation Vijay’ for the liberation of Goa from Portuguese rule in 1960.

In the 1971 India-Pakistan war, the unit was responsible for the air defence in the Punjab and Rajasthan sectors, flying 258 missions that were instrumental in safeguarding the forward air bases against enemy air attacks.

The 221 squadron is known as the ‘Valiants’. It was raised on February 14, 1963, in Barrackpore equipped with Vampire aircraft. Barely two years after its formation, the squadron was pressed into action in the Eastern theatre during the 1965 Indo-Pak war, where it made commendable contributions.

In August 1968, the squadron was one of the first to be re-equipped with the Su-7 supersonic attack fighter.

During the 1971 Indo-Pak War, operating in the eastern theatre, the squadron undertook extensive counter-air, close air support and photo reconnaissance missions.

The 11 Base Repair Depot is a premier and only fighter aircraft base repair depot of the IAF that was established under Maintenance Command in April 1974 at Ojhar, Nashik.

Su-7 was the first aircraft to be overhauled by the depot. In the subsequent years, variants of MiG-21, MiG-23 and MiG-29 aircraft have been overhauled.

The 509 signal unit was established on March 1 1965 and is presently functioning as an Air Defence Direction Centre in Meghalaya. The watershed moments in the unit’s history date back to the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 wherein it emerged as the epicenter of all air defence activities over East Pakistan.

A defining moment came with the precision strike on the Governor’s House in Dhaka, orchestrated from the operations room of the unit.