Didier Chaudet quoted by Praveen Swami for The Print.
It would come to be called ‘Pink’s War’ – a name redolent of cocktails at the Bristol Hotel in Karachi and the scent of frangipani. Three weeks after the regime of Emir Amanullah Khan declared jihad against the British in the summer of 1919, hoping to regain his independence, a Handley Page V/1500 four-engine bomber—designed to attack Berlin, but then given over for joyrides to the Bombay elite—lumbered over the Khyber Pass. Four 112-pound bombs and 16 20-pound bombs were dropped on the royal palace in Kabul.
Air warfare had arrived in the region, and Wing Commander RCM Pink proved its foremost practitioner and theorist. For 54 days in 1925, Pink’s fleet of Bristol F.2B and De Havilland DH.9A fighters savaged Mahsud rebels in southern Waziristan. Two British personnel and one aircraft were lost; there are no records of Mahsud deaths.
