Air Force Day: Bollywood Films That Depicted Valour Of Indian Air Force

The Air Force Day was officially celebrated by the Indian Air Force for the first time on October 8, 1932. Since then, every year on October 8, the Air Force Day is celebrated to honour the dedication and courage of India's space hawks. Since its inception, the Indian Air Force has been involved in four wars with Pakistan and one with China. It has also provided its services in United Nations peacekeeping missions

Time and again, Bollywood has spun stories around the Indian Air Force and its pilots. For a country which does not have much access to knowledge of goes on within the Air Force, one can refer to the following films and get some knowledge about the Indian Air Force's internal mechanisms.

On Air Force Day, here are five Bollywood films that depict the valour of the Indian Air Force with utmost detail and dexterity.

1.Vijeta (1982): Perhaps, the most ambitious film in the list with regard to showing the inner workings of the Indian Air Force and the life of an Indian Air Force pilot. The film is noted for some rare aerial photography featuring combat fighter aircraft that was then available with the IAF (in 1980s). The film's protagonist Angad (Kunal Kapoor) is showing flying a MiG-21 in the India-Pakistan war of 1971.

2. Rang De Basanti (2005): The seminal Aamir Khan film shows another side of the Indian Air Force. While the Mirzya director's film shows the pilot - flight lieutenant Ajay Singh Rathod (R Madhavan) as a valiant armyman, who risks his life to protect hundreds of lives, the Defence Minister is shown to be a corrupt individual who acquired cheap, illegal MiG-21 aircraft for his own profi

3. Agnipankh (2004): Agnipankh is a standard romantic-film-in-the-midst-of-war affair that we have seen earlier with films like Pearl Harbour. The film has some scenes of aerial warfare but the CGI (Computer-generated imagery) is too poor to take the film seriously.

4. Hindustan Ki Kasam (1973): Hindustan Ki Kasam, directed by one of India's greatest filmmakers Chetan Anand (his debut film Neecha Nagar won the Palme d'Or Award at 1946 Cannes Film Festival) shows the Indian Air Force in action in documentary-like detail. The film vividly describes the crucial role the IAF played in the 1971 India-Paskistan war. The critically acclaimed film is known today as one of the best Indian war films ever made

5. Mausam (2011): Although Mausam is in itself a romantic film, the depiction of the Indian Air Force in this Shahid Kapoor-starrer is of impeccable accuracy and the visual brilliance of the aerial warfare scenes are at par with the best of Hollywood