From 1971 to 1973, at the behest of Ambassador Joseph Farland, Yeager was assigned to Pakistan to advise the Pakistan Air Force. A small passenger aircraft that was assigned by the Pentagon to Yeager was damaged during an air raid by the Indian Air Force at a Pakistani airbase during the 1971 war between India and Pakistan. Edward C. Ingraham, a U.S. diplomat who had served as political counselor to Ambassador Farland in Islamabad, recalled this incident in the "Washington Monthly" of October 1985: "After Yeager's Beechcraft was destroyed during an Indian air raid, he raged to his cowering colleagues that the Indian pilot had been specifically instructed by Indira Gandhi to blast his plane. "It was", he later wrote, "the Indian way of giving Uncle Sam the finger". Yeager was incensed over the incident and demanded U.S. retaliation.