February 13, 1959
Approaching Biak at 30,000 feet
Newly promoted Major Saleh Basarah scanned the skies around him with nervous eyes. They should be well within the detection range of the Dutch radars by now. And unless their operators were asleep, something he was fervently praying for, they had to have sounded the alarm. So where were the Dutch fighters? Unlike some of his comrades who scorned the Dutch as cowards, he was expecting them to come up and fight. And while his machine was far and away the better fighter, a good pilot could still give him hell in even a piston engined aircraft. That was a lesson that had been hammered home to him recently.
A month earlier, he had been tasked to perform a training mission to intercept a low flying infiltrator. That infiltrator turned out to be a P-51 Mustang. He had grinned at how easy it was going to be to "shoot down" the target. How wrong he had been! The ancient aircraft had slammed in and out of turns before he could react and would constantly cut and open up its throttle. The first time it had done so, he'd been caught flat footed and shot right past, only to hear a voice over the radio telling him he was dead. The shame of a near twenty year old castoff killing him had set his ears burning. He would not underestimate an enemy again.
So where were the fighters? His commanding officer in 12 Squadron seemed to think that the Dutch would come straight at them from their airfield and had argued that they should fly ahead of the strike to try and clear the path. But Colonel Noerjadin disagreed. He thought the Dutch would circle wide to try and dive on them from out of the sun. Saleh agreed with the Colonel. Which is why he understood what they were doing now.
While 11 Squadron had moved ahead of the formation, the planes of 12 Squadron had stayed mixed in with the bombers, flying close escort. The Dutch would almost certainly ignore the obvious fighter sweep and try to target the bombers following behind. But he and his comrades would be waiting for them, the wolves among the lambs.
