India, Sept. 20 -- At about 10.30am on September 7, 1965, Flight Lieutenant Alfred Tyrone Cooke was at 20,000 feet over Bengal, on his third sortie of the day, when the controller asked whether he had the fuel to get back to Kalaikunda. His own airfield was under attack.

Flt Lt Cooke had just enough fuel. He turned his Hunter round and went back to fight for his own airfield, and what he did over Kalaikunda in the next few minutes won him the Vir Chakra and is remembered by the Indian Air Force as a masterclass in aggressive air combat. Flt Lt Cooke died on Friday at the Base Hospital in New Delhi at the age of 87. He had flown in from Australia, where he had lived since 1969, for an event his old squadron was holding at Ambala the next ...