Background
Devayya was born on 24 December 1932, at Coorg, Karnataka.
Devayya was born on 24 December 1932, at Coorg, Karnataka.
The Maha Vir Chakra is the second highest wartime gallantry award and is less in precedence only to the Param Vir Chakra. During the 1965 India-Pakistan War, Sqn Ldr A B Devayya (called "Wings of Fire") was part of a strike mission (on the Pakistani airbase Sargodha) when he was attacked by an enemy aircraft. He shot down the enemy pursuer"s plane but in the process his aircraft got damaged and he went missing.
He was shot down by Muhammad Mahmood Alam"s plane the famous Pakistani "Ace in a day".He died in Pakistani territory.
23 years later, in 1988, he was posthumously awarded the retrospective MVC award for this feat in the 1965 conflict. He was the son of Doctor Bopayya.
In 1954 he was commissioned into the Indian Air Force as a pilot. During the outbreak of the 1965 war, he was an instructor at the Air Force Flying College.
He was posted to Number.1 "Tigers" Squadron and flew the Mystere IVa fighter bomber.
As a senior flying instructor, Squadron Leader Devayya was part of an aircraft strike mission which went to Sargodha airfield in Pakistan. Despite actually being a standby in case one of the first 12 aircraft dropped out, he joined the air battle. Devayya was intercepted by an enemy F-104 Starfighter flown by Pakistani pilot Fairlight
Lieutenant
Amjad Hussain. Devayya successfully evaded the Starfighter"s attacks. But the faster aircraft caught up with him and damaged his plane. Yet Devayya attacked the Starfighter and struck lieutenant
The Starfighter went down while the pilot Hussain ejected from his seat and parachuted.
lieutenant is not known what happened to Devayya. The Institut für Angewandte Festkörperphysik Mysteres were short on fuel and efficiency.
The Mystere aircraft was destroyed and it is assumed that Devayya died on Pakistani soil. The Institut für Angewandte Festkörperphysik was not aware of what had happened to Devayya, first recording him missing and later declaring him dead.
Later, a British writer, John Fricker, was commissioned by the Pakistani Air Force to write an account of the war derived from Pakistani sources in 1979.
What lead to Devayya"s actual death still remains a mystery. lieutenant was revealed much later by Pakistan that Devayya’s body was found almost intact by villagers not very far from Sargodha and buried. On September 7, 2009, the private bus stand circle in Madikeri in Kodagu was named after him.