Part IV: Across Borders
Dark Clouds Gathering
India wants to avoid a war at all costs but it is not a one-sided affair, you cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.1Indira Gandhi’s press conference in New Delhi on 19 October 1971, quoted in Sydney H. Schanberg, ‘Indian and Pakistani Armies Confront Each Other along Borders,’ The New York Times, 20 October 1971, p. 6.
– INDIRA GANDHI
TURMOIL
War, it seemed, had taken its toll on both Indian and Pakistani leadership. The aftermath of the 1965 conflict saw two prominent casualties – the death of India’s prime minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, in early 1966, and the handing over of power by Field Marshal Ayub Khan as president of Pakistan in 1969 to his army chief, General Yahya Khan. The two events would have a significant impact on the manner in which the geopolitical landscape unfolded in the subcontinent as both India and Pakistan hurtled towards another war. Political power in India passed on to Indira Gandhi, the feisty daughter of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first elected prime minister. A sharp and ambitious lady tutored in history and statecraft by her illustrious father for over three decades in diverse environments, Indira Gandhi surprised her political opponents with her ability to manoeuvre in the minefield of post-Independence Indian politics. Installed as a ‘proxy’ PM after Shastri’s death by the ‘old guard’ of the Congress party, she started asserting herself over the party after a rather insipid performance by the Congress in the 1967 general elections. In a series of decisive moves she deftly outmanoeuvred all her opponents to establish a vice-like grip over the Congress party and the country by winning a landslide victory in the general elections of March 1971. To a large extent, this victory empowered Indira Gandhi to act decisively in the months ahead.
As Field Marshal Ayub Khan faded into the sunset of his career amidst widespread dissent and unrest, he appointed one of his cronies, General Yahya Khan, his undistinguished army chief, as his successor on 25 March 1969. Sensing the mood of the nation, Yahya Khan immediately declared martial law to restore law and order in both West and East Pakistan. Then in an attempt to gain political legitimacy and make the transition to democracy, and influenced in no small measure by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, his wily foreign minister, Yahya Khan surprisingly announced general elections in early 1970. He did so, convinced that Bhutto’s PPP (Pakistan People’s Party), the major political force in West Pakistan, would come to power. He had, however, not reckoned with the possibility of a political party from the more populous East Pakistan getting an absolute majority in the National Assembly.
East Pakistan had always been given stepmotherly treatment by the Punjabi-, Pathan- and Mohajir-dominated2Mohajirs are an ethnic group in modern Pakistan comprising mainly Muslims who migrated from India to Pakistan in the aftermath of Partition. They are concentrated around Karachi and the Sind province of Pakistan. For an interesting article on the Mohajirs, see Nadeem Paracha, ‘The Evolution of Mohajir Politics and Identity,’ Dawn, Karachi, 20 April 2014, available at
THE CRACKDOWN
A most recent and exceptionally well-researched book titled Blood Telegram: India’s Secret War in East Pakistan by Prof. Gary J. Bass, a professor from Princeton University, provides an updated and objective perspective of Operation Searchlight, as the crackdown by Yahya Khan came to be known. In a brave and desperate telegram to the White House on 6 April 1971, Archer Blood, the US consul general in Dacca, the capital of erstwhile East Pakistan, reported mass killings of the majority Bengali population that had been unleashed by General Yahya Khan on 26 March 1971. The telegram with the heading ‘Dissent from US policy towards East Pakistan’ said it all. Signed by twenty officials from the consulate and other US development agencies, the telegram highlighted ‘the suppression of democracy’, ‘bending over backwards to accommodate the West Pak dominated government’, and ‘our dissent with current policy and fervent hope that our true and lasting interests here can be defined and our policies redirected in order to salvage our nation’s position as a moral leader of the free world’.6Ibid., p. 77–78. Days before, a secret CIA memorandum downplayed the crackdown by calling it merely a ‘campaign’. The report also correctly assessed that the Pakistan Army had overestimated their ability to destroy the Awami League and disarm the over 13,000 strong East Bengal Rifles.7CIA report dated 12 April 1971 – declassified in June 2005 and available on the website of the Center for Indian Military History in the US State Department Documents pertaining to India and Pakistan 1971 – p. 25–26. Assembled by Ramesh Shanker at
A brave and committed diplomat with years of experience in the subcontinent, no Westerner had a better ringside view than Archer Blood of the traumatic events of 1971 that led to the birth of Bangladesh. Always at odds with the powerful and mercurial national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, and President Richard Nixon over the indifference of the US towards human rights violations in East Pakistan, Blood and his team at the US consulate displayed rare courage and empathy in pressing for US intervention before the situation got out of hand.
In a scathing indictment of the opportunistic appeasement of the military regime of Yahya Khan in the early 1970s by Nixon, Gary J. Bass dismantles the smug aura of success that has generally been attached to the Kissinger–Nixon era of US foreign policy. Digging deep into recently declassified official documents and oral transcripts from Delhi, Dacca and Washington, Bass is unsparing of the apathy of the White House towards the unfolding brutality unleashed on millions of Bengalis by Major General Tikka Khan, later known as the Butcher of Bangladesh.
The prime driver of US policy towards East Pakistan and the main reason for ignoring the horrors of the widespread killings was Nixon’s obsession with creating history by restoring languishing ties with China. Pakistan was an important pawn in this endeavour as Kissinger used Yahya Khan and Bhutto as key interlocutors with the Chinese for what ultimately turned out to be a path-breaking visit by Nixon to China in 1972. As the crisis spiralled out of control, the decisive humanitarian and military intervention by India in December 1971 did not change the duo’s approach towards India. They consistently refused to recognize India’s predominant status in the region despite advice from stalwarts such as Kenneth Keating, the US ambassador in Delhi, and Edward Kennedy, the influential Democrat from Massachusetts. Instead, Kissinger and Nixon attempted all along to crudely convince the Indians not to intervene through back-channel meetings and enticements of increased aid.8Arjun Subramaniam, ‘Brave Diplomacy amidst Genocide,’ The Hindu, 3 December 2013,
Beginning with the massacre of Bengali intellectuals and academics at the University of Dacca on 26 March 1971, Blood looked on helplessly as US equipment including Chaffee tanks and Sabre jets were used against civilians. The most he could do along with his staff was to shield many Bengali families for days together from marauding Pakistani troops and Razakar mobs. Bass writes objectively on India’s growing concern over the influx of millions of refugees into north-east India and the nationwide outcry of public and political opinion against the atrocities committed by the Pakistan Army. He too suggests that India could have militarily intervened in East Pakistan as early as April–May 1971. Seeing an opportunity to cut Pakistan to size and genuinely concerned with the plight of the oppressed Bengali population of East Pakistan, Indira Gandhi was keen to launch a military action into East Pakistan immediately. However, a cautious and conservative Indian Army chief, General Manekshaw, was not comfortable with sustaining a two-front operation during the summer and monsoon months, rightly preferring a campaign in the cooler winter months. It was this decision that led to the growth of the Mukti Bahini as a potent guerrilla force and the face of Bengali resistance till India finally intervened with its lightning campaign to liberate East Pakistan in December 1971.9Ibid.
In the midst of the carnage, however, there were examples of compassion and courage among a few Pakistani officers who had the courage to question Yahya Khan’s crackdown. Air Commodore Zafar Masud, a distinguished PAF fighter pilot and commander of the Sargodha fighter base in 1965, was one of them. The senior-most PAF officer in East Pakistan from April 1970 onwards, Masud appealed to Yahya Khan in a briefing to desist from embarking on what he called was a ‘mismatched war’ with India and refused to endorse the use of Sabre jets against civilian population in Dacca when the crackdown was ordered.10‘Mitty Masud Folds His Wings,’ an obituary in the Dawn newspaper of 13 October 2003, at
INDIA PREPARES, PAKISTAN STUMBLES
Offering a macro perspective of the various regional, situational and structural factors of the time, most of which directly or indirectly led to the conflict, Sumit Ganguly highlights some very important issues for the military historian to take note of. These are the unresolved historical legacies of Partition; ideological and religious schisms, particularly over Kashmir, exacerbated by the situational instability caused by the refugee crisis; and finally triggered by an increasingly assertive India.11Sumit Ganguly, The Origins of War in South Asia: Indo-Pakistan Conflicts since 1947 (New Delhi: Vision Books, 1999), p. 84–85. Ganguly also highlights the sophistication with which India orchestrated the final lap of diplomacy – aligning it along the way with the more hawkish pronouncements emanating from India’s fledgling strategic community led by K. Subrahmanyam. Subrahmanyam would emerge as India’s foremost strategic thinker in the decades that followed the 1971 war.12Ibid., p. 102–03. K. Subrahmanyam, an IAS officer with a remarkable feel for ‘matters strategic’, was then director of IDSA, a fledgling strategic think tank nurtured by him with adequate support from the Government of India.
A key departure from earlier times was the clarity with which Mrs Gandhi made up her mind to use force to further India’s strategic objectives. This resulted in even the normally accurate and conservative CIA to overestimate her war objectives. In a secret memo issued on 7 December 1971 it listed out her war objectives as ‘liberation of Bangladesh, the incorporation into India of the southern area of Azad (Pakistan-held) Kashmir and the destruction of Pakistan’s armoured and air force strength so that Pakistan can never again threaten India’.13‘CIA Memorandum,’ 7 December 1971, declassified June 2005, US State Department Documents pertaining to India and Pakistan 1971, p. 219. Assembled by Ramesh Shanker at
The lessons of 1962 and 1965 loomed on the horizon as Manekshaw wanted to have his forces better trained, better equipped and ready for battle. Lieutenant General B.T. Pandit, now an alert and articulate octogenarian, and among the few officers from the Corps of Engineers to have commanded a front-line corps after Independence, recounts his experience at the Military Operations (MO) Directorate in early 1971 as a major:
Early in March, I was called to the ops room and found General Manekshaw, the vice chief of army staff, the director of military intelligence and my boss, the director of military operations, engaged in animated discussion. My boss, who was at the lectern, told me as soon as I came in: ‘Tell the Chief.’ Manekshaw cryptically asked, ‘KK tells me that it will take three months to do the logistic stocking; are you sure?’ I said ‘Yes Sir.’ ‘Have you consulted Eastern Command and spoken to Sethna? (Sethna was the brigadier general staff at HQ, Eastern Command). I said ‘Yes, sir.’ The chief probed further, ‘Have you spoken to Jakes (Lt General Jacob was the chief of staff of Eastern Command, and a trusted lieutenant of Manekshaw)? I said, ‘No, sir, but I would assume that he would have been told.’ Manekshaw was relentless and probed, ‘Is that the best you can do?’ I stuck to my guns. ‘That bloody takes me to the middle of the monsoon. What if I want to cut it short to a month?’ I said ‘Sir, you will be able to go in only from Calcutta.’ I was clear that we would not be able to envelope East Pakistan from all directions, as Manekshaw had planned.15Interview with Lieutenant General Pandit at Pune on 19 September 2014. The general was remarkably modest and has excellent recollections of the 1971 war in which he played an active part, first as part of Military Operations (MO) Directorate and then as CO of 9 Engineer Regiment in the battle of Basantar.
Supporting Manekshaw in a remarkable show of solidarity, Admiral Nanda, the naval chief, and Air Chief Marshal Lal, the air chief, went about readying their forces for battle with remarkable vigour and professionalism. Some military analysts and historians feel that Manekshaw was excessively cautious and influenced heavily by the fear of failure.16Amongst those who felt that Manekshaw was excessively cautious is Air Marshal Vinod Patney, the IAF’s most decorated officer and veteran of both the 1965 and 1971 wars. He felt that the three months from April to the onset of monsoon in early June would have been adequate to secure victory even if India had to go in through only one or two fronts in the east. More importantly, he asserts, had that been agreed to, India’s demographic disaster may well have been averted. Srinath Raghavan, a promising army officer turned military historian/strategic commentator, concurs with that assessment in his book 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh. As a result, they say, India missed a golden opportunity to stop the un-calibrated massacres in East Pakistan, as also stem the flow of refugees into India. Others like John Gill, a South Asia expert at the National Defense University, Washington, and the author of a definitive monograph on the war, add that Manekshaw was waiting for the winter so that any kind of Chinese intervention could be ruled out.17John. H. Gill, An Atlas of the 1971 India-Pakistan War: The Creation of Bangladesh (Washington: NDU Press, 2003), p. 13. His scepticism of the Chinese was understandable for he had been given the unenviable responsibility of commanding the Indian Army’s Eastern Army Command in the years following the 1962 debacle. He had done a great deal to restore the fighting spirit and elan of the units in his command and had no intention of frittering away those gains.
In Pakistan, however, the politico-military establishment was in a mess. While its armed forces were at the peak of their professional competence around the 1965 war, buoyed as they were then by an exposure to the latest US military hardware, training and tactics, the post-1965 era saw a gradual increase in the involvement of the military in political affairs. This gradual peripheral distraction gathered momentum around the time when General Yahya Khan replaced Field Marshal Ayub Khan as president and promptly declared martial law. Adding to their woes was the defiance from East Pakistan and the rise of the ambitious Bhutto, who was scheming to exploit the precipitous situation. In the absence of a stable politico-diplomatic-military interface, there was no way in which Pakistan could extricate itself from the quagmire it had created for itself in Bangladesh.
From July to November 1971, Indira Gandhi and her foreign minister, Sardar Swaran Singh, assisted by a few other astute negotiators, globetrotted across the Western world, attempting to build a consensus to force a UN resolution condemning the Pakistani atrocities in Bangladesh. Realizing that Nixon’s planned historic visit to China in 1972 would have a negative impact on Indo-US relations despite Kissinger’s assertions to the contrary,18Sumit Ganguly, The Origins of War in South Asia: Indo-Pakistan Conflicts since 1947 (New Delhi: Vision Books, 1999), p. 104, referring to the memoirs of T.N. Kaul, India’s foreign secretary at the time. India wasted no time in sealing their own Friendship Treaty with the Soviet Union in August 1971. Prof. Arun Mohanty at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University succinctly sums up the essence of the treaty as ‘to neutralize the emerging Washington-Beijing-Islamabad axis and defend their geopolitical interests’.19For an excellent commentary on the treaty four decades after it was signed, see Arun Mohanty, ‘Toasting the Legacy of 1971 Indo-Soviet friendship Treaty,’ 9 August 2011,
BUILDING ASYMMETRY: THE MILITARY BALANCE
In 1965, an overconfident Pakistan was rudely surprised by India’s response despite seizing the initial advantage. The chastening experience of the strategic defeat and the ignominy of the loss of large swathes of territory to India highlighted the inherent advantage of geographical size, strategic depth and quantitative edge that India would always have. Having already displayed tremendous resilience and fighting spirit in 1947–48, the Indian soldiers and airmen proved beyond doubt in 1965 that man-to-man they were as good as, if not better, than the more ‘martial’ Pakistani Pathan or Punjabi.
India’s military force structure strategy vis-à-vis Pakistan prior to the 1971 war was simple: build asymmetry by widening the quantitative gap and narrowing the technical gap between the two armed forces. This it did by adopting a four-pronged strategy involving upgrading existing platforms like the Hunter and MiG-21 fighter aircraft; complementing old but reliable platforms like the Centurion tanks with the T-55 and Vijayanta tanks; acquiring new systems like the 130 mm artillery guns, Sukhoi-7 fighter-bomber aircraft, Foxtrot class submarines and OSA fast attack craft from the Soviet Union; and lastly, galvanizing the indigenous military industrial complex to support capability building. Organizations like Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), heavy vehicle factory and the ordnance factories pitched in to accelerate India’s defence preparedness. Aiding this indigenous drive was the growing Indo-Soviet strategic bonhomie, which resulted in an accelerated weapons and technology transfer programme. This was further cemented by the Indo-Soviet Friendship Treaty of September 1971.
One story, though, merits attention. Though the MiG-21 was inducted into the IAF before the 1965 war, its main shortcoming was the poor performance of the K-13 air-to-air missile in comparison with the Sidewinder missiles possessed by the PAF. The absence of an internal gun to aid in close combat made matters worse and something had to be done before the war to exploit the large numbers of MiG-21s that formed the backbone of the IAF’s air defence fleet. When HAL expressed its inability to fit external guns at short notice, Air Marshal Malse, the air officer maintenance, took on this task and had a fair number of aircraft from the MiG-21 fleet, mainly from the squadrons in the western sector, fitted with the external Gondola Pack (GP) with the 23 mm Gasha gun that had a rate of fire of over 3,000 rounds per minute. The fitment was done at the IAF’s Kanpur Base Repair Depot in a record time of three months. Lal had chosen his key advisors well!
What of Pakistan’s attempts to keep pace with its larger neighbour who was making sure that the uncertainty of 1965 would never be repeated? In many ways the period from 1966 and 1971 was strategically ‘too hot’ for its military establishment to handle. Softened by the trappings of power and led by a ‘fading’ strongman, there were too many political distractions for Ayub Khan to monitor the military closely and ensure that the professionalism that he had infused in the military in the previous decade was sustained into the 1970s. Aggravating the situation was the slowdown in the US Military Assistance Programme, absence of an indigenous defence industry, and the requirement to cater for increased military presence in East Pakistan owing to the resurgent Bengali nationalism. Recognizing that he needed to convince the Americans to refurbish his ageing military equipment, Yahya threatened to go to the Russians in mid-1970. Much to the consternation of the Indians, Kissinger convinced President Nixon to release some symbolic aid in the form of B-57 bombers and M-48 Patton tanks to keep Pakistan in the US fold.21Declassified US State Department documents pertaining to India and Pakistan 1971, p. 10–12. Assembled by Ramesh Shanker at
In more specific terms, the Indian Army realized that its main deficiencies in the 1965 war were quality of armoured fighting vehicles, lack of long-range artillery vectors and inadequate mobility. In 1969 some of the oldest battalions from various infantry regiments were equipped with Czech armoured personnel carriers (APCs) called Topaz and attached to the armoured division and the independent armoured brigades. This provided much needed mobility and safety that allowed the infantryman to keep pace with his own tanks as against the earlier concept of ‘lorried brigades’. Unfortunately, 1 Armoured Division, India’s only armoured division, was not used in the conflict at all, and the decision not to equip the armoured brigades that were integral to the divisions which were earmarked for the initial offensives with the Topaz was highly questionable. As it turned out, the battle of Shakargarh saw little employment of the Topaz by India in what turned out to be the only major tank-versus-tank battle of the 1971 war.
Much has been written over the years about the overwhelming advantage enjoyed by the Indian Army in the eastern theatre. A closer look at numbers reveals that the asymmetry conformed to more or less a ratio of 3:1, which was generally a globally accepted norm for victory during offensive operations in the plains. The Indian Army’s Eastern Command under Lieutenant General J.S. Aurora deployed a little over three corps around East Pakistan comprising around nine infantry/mountain divisions and three regiments of armour. Added to this were approximately two divisions of ‘fighting fit’ Mukti Bahini regulars at dispersed locations, both within Bangladesh and on the borders. Ranged against this force were a little over three and a half divisions and almost two regiments of armour of the Pakistan Army, albeit hastily organized and reinforced from the West.22For an Indian perspective of the force levels in the east, see Major K.C. Praval, Indian Army after Independence (New Delhi: Lancer, 1988), p. 401–11. If there was a significant advantage enjoyed by the Indians, it was in the area of covert and guerrilla operations with the strength of the Mukti Bahini being significantly higher than the 35,000 Razakar and Mujahid force organized by Lieutenant General Niazi, the overall commander of Pak forces in the east.23The most objective comparison of forces, both in the eastern and western theatres, is provided by John H. Gill, a faculty member at the National Defense University, Washington. See John. H. Gill, An Atlas of the 1971 India-Pakistan War: The Creation of Bangladesh (Washington: NDU Press, 2003), p. 69–90. Complementing the Mukti Bahini in covert operations was the Special Frontier Force, which caused much havoc behind enemy lines in the Chittagong sector.
As expected, there was near parity in the western theatre, and though India enjoyed a nominal advantage in terms of infantry divisions, it must be borne in mind that three of India’s eleven divisions were deployed in a defensive posture in J&K against only seven POK brigades (equivalent of about one and a half divisions) of the Pakistan Army. This left Western Command of the Indian Army under Lieutenant General K.P. Candeth with not much to play around in the area extending southwards from Chhamb to Anupgarh, a distance of about 600 km.
South of Anupgarh and extending through the desert sector of Rajasthan to Kutch was a large expanse of almost 1,800 km of desert and semi-desert terrain, an area which had tactically and operationally not gained much importance since the 1965 war. It was, however, defended by a little over two infantry divisions with just one armoured regiment to provide any kind of punch. India’s Southern Army Command under Lieutenant General G.G. Bewoor was entrusted with operations in this area. Facing it was one division of the Pakistan Army with approximately two regiments of armour, and another division waiting in depth as part of an Army HQ reserve, parts of which were used when the situation turned grave.24Ibid., p. 57.
Pakistan continued to have a quantitative edge in terms of armour, with two armoured divisions and two independent armoured brigades against India’s one armoured division and three independent armoured brigades. The qualitative edge which Pak armour had enjoyed in 1965, though, had disappeared with India having inducted the Soviet T-55 and the indigenous Vijayanta tanks with better firepower. Just as it did in 1965 in the battle of Assal Uttar, the robust and reliable British Centurion tank would outgun the Patton tank even in 1971. What was it that allowed the older Centurion to match the technologically more advanced Patton?
Two issues caught my attention while browsing through an unpublished monograph written by Brigadier R.R. Palsokar (retd) on the exploits of 16 Independent Armoured Brigade, the brigade that would go on to cover itself with glory in the battle of Basantar. The primary reason was the superior training and fierce competitiveness among the Centurion crews during the build-up to the war. Their approach to ranging techniques and field firing allowed them to operate inside the decision cycle of the Pattons. At a distance of 1,000–1,200 yards, a well-trained Centurion crew would take about 30–40 seconds from target identification to destruction.25Brigadier R.R. Palsokar, ‘A History of the Black Arrow Brigade,’ (unpublished monograph – cited with permission from the author). The Patton crews, on the other hand, struggled to master the sophisticated technology at their disposal, particularly the ranging and targeting systems. The second reason for the superiority of the Centurions was their complete integration with artillery crews and the engineer regiments that allowed them to breach minefields and operate with close fire support.26Ibid.
Most successful attacks by Pakistan in the 1965 conflict were preceded by withering artillery bombardment, the Chhamb offensive being a classic case. The decisive edge that Pak artillery enjoyed in that conflict was due to a significant superiority in medium-range artillery. While this edge continued in 1971, the Indian Army raised a number of medium regiments to bridge the gap. These were to play a significant role, both in the eastern and the western theatres.27S.N. Prasad and U.P. Thapliyal, ed., The India-Pakistan War of 1971 (Dehradun: Natraj Publishers, 2014), p. 102.
The relentless build-up of India’s military capability was also reflected in the skewed force structure comparison between the two navies prior to the outbreak of the war. Though India flexed its naval muscle with a fully serviceable aircraft carrier with its full complement of combat aircraft and helicopters, a cruiser, seven modern frigates, four operational submarines and eight recently acquired OSA missile boats as its main offensive ships, all was not hunky-dory. Vice Admiral Pasricha recollects that INS Vikrant was not in the best of shape and could barely reach speeds of 18–21 knots as against its maximum speed of 24.5 knots, the optimum speed required to facilitate air operations of the Sea Hawks and Alizes, the main strike force on board. At these speeds it would have been vulnerable to submarine attacks and hence was shifted from the Western Fleet to the safer waters of the Bay of Bengal where it lay in wait in the Andamans before being unleashed against Chittagong and Cox’s Bazaar.28Interview with Vice Admiral Pasricha, who was a young Sea Hawk pilot on board the Vikrant in 1971.
The story of the acquisition of the OSA class missile boats is interesting, particularly when it comes from the youngest of the 25 Squadron’s commanding officers of the time, thirty-five-year-old Lieutenant Commander Bahadur Kavina.29Interview with Commander Bahadur Kavina (retd) on 5 December 2014. Though the interview was not planned so, it happened to be on the same day, thirty-three years ago in 1971, when 25 Squadron triumphantly returned after carrying out their famous strikes on Karachi harbour that left the Pakistan Navy reeling. Kavina remembers clearly that after initially procrastinating over the purchase of these boats, the successful sinking of the Eliat, an Israeli destroyer, by Egyptian missile boats of the Komar class (inferior to the OSA class, but armed with the same missiles) in 1967 convinced the Indian Navy to go back to the Russians and accept their offer for eight boats. With their onboard surface-to-surface radar with a range of almost 40 km, and deadly Styx surface-to-surface missile with an effective range of just over 20 nautical miles, the boats packed a deadly punch. The crew of the OSA boats trained in complete secrecy till September 1971, surprising even the aggressive commander of the Western Fleet, Rear Admiral Kuruvilla, when Kavina claimed during a fleet briefing that they were capable of picking up targets at 40 nautical miles against the existing maximum pick-up ranges of 20 nautical miles that any of the larger ships in the fleet could provide.30Kavina recollects that he was hauled up for revealing the ranges at the briefing but asserts that it was time for the Indian Navy to realize the potential of the boats. The Indian Navy now knew it had a formidable weapon and factored it into their operational plans.
Complementing the offensive element was a large depot ship, three old frigates, four old destroyers, two Soviet Petya class anti-submarine frigates, three landing ships and four patrol craft – a sizable force as compared to 1965, but by no means sufficient to defend India’s vast coastline and island territories.31S.N. Prasad and U.P. Thapliyal, ed., The India-Pakistan War of 1971 (Dehradun: Natraj Publishers, 2014), p. 372–75. Ranged against this force was the Pakistan Navy, which was struggling to modernize in the face of a predominantly land-centric military leadership. Its complement of an old cruiser, four obsolete destroyers and two vintage frigates was no match for India’s superiority on the surface. Where the Pakistan Navy matched its Indian counterpart was in the sub-surface domain, where deterrent capability was provided by their four submarines, three of which (French Daphne class) were deployed in the Bay of Bengal and one (American Tench class) in the Arabian Sea.
Naval aviation emerged as a significant force multiplier in the 1971 war. As promised earlier in the book, this potent and proud arm of the Indian Navy has not been forgotten. Even though the Royal Navy operated Catalina flying boats from Cochin, on the west coast of India, during WW II, Lieutenant Y.N. Singh was the first Indian naval aviator in the true sense as he flew Wildcats on Royal Navy escort carriers during the closing stages of WW II and even engaged in a dogfight with Japanese Kamikaze fighters in the waters around the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.32‘Commander Y.N. Singh, the Pioneer Naval Aviator,’ at
Naval Aviators are considered, even within the Navy, to be strange and unusual creatures – half airmen and half sailors! In the outside world, some people truly believe they are slightly crazy in trying to land on a 300-feet [sic] deck, which is not only moving at 20 knots but bouncing up and down even in a relatively calm sea.34Vice Admiral Mihir Roy, War in the Indian Ocean (New Delhi: Lancer Publishers, 1995), p. 95. For a detailed review of the growth of naval aviation in India see Chapter 17 (The Naval Air Arm) of G.M. Hiranandani, Transition to Triumph: History of the Indian Navy, 1965–1975 (New Delhi: Lancer, 2000), p. 262–79.
With the INS Vikrant inexplicably in the dry dock at the outbreak of the 1965 war, its complement of a flight of Sea Hawks was positioned at Jamnagar, the IAF airfield in the Kathiawar region of Gujarat. The pre-emptive strike on Jamnagar by PAF Canberras prompted the Indian Navy to withdraw its main strike aircraft to Bombay instead of launching the much prepared retaliatory strikes against Karachi, much to the dismay of its pilots.35Interview with Vice Admiral Pasricha (retd). The Indian Navy had thus lost a chance to showcase its prowess in the 1965 war because of poor planning, poor inter-service coordination and cautious leadership. In 1971, though, the naval chief, Admiral Nanda, had no such defensive plans. Despite INS Vikrant facing serious boiler problems in one of its four boilers that severely restricted its speed to 14 knots, Nanda searched for solutions to ensure that the other three boilers were checked out thoroughly and not only was INS Vikrant up and steaming at over 20 knots by June 1971,36G.M. Hiranandani, Transition to Triumph: History of the Indian Navy, 1965–1975 (New Delhi: Lancer, 2000), p. 120–21. its entire complement of eighteen Sea Hawk and five Alize turboprop fighters with anti-submarine capability were raring to get into action.37While Indian Naval Air Squadron (INAS 300) was equipped with the British Sea Hawks, INAS 310 was equipped with the French-built Alize anti-submarine warfare aircraft. Also see G.M. Hiranandani, Transition to Triumph: History of the Indian Navy, 1965–1975 (New Delhi: Lancer, 2000), p. 266–70.
Submarines gained their reputation as ‘killers in the deep’ during World War II as German U-boats stalked Allied naval warships and merchant vessels in the icy cold waters of the Atlantic. The years after WW II saw the battle between submarines on one side and a combination of surface ships and aircraft on the other seesaw back and forth. The tag of ‘the silent service’ attached to the Indian Navy owes its origin to the expansion of its submarine fleet in the late 1960s with the induction of four Foxtrot class submarines in 1968.38Vice Admiral Mihir Roy, War in the Indian Ocean (New Delhi: Lancer Publishers, 1995), p. 112. For a detailed history of the submarine arm of the Indian Navy, see G.M. Hiranandani, Transition to Triumph: History of the Indian Navy, 1965–1975 (New Delhi: Lancer, 2000), p. 254–56. INS Virbahu at Visakhapatnam was the first home for the submarines, supposedly at the behest of the Soviets, who wanted them to be kept away from the prying eyes of the West. This was almost five years after the hectic negotiations between India and Great Britain over the sale of modern submarines had failed to reach any meaningful conclusion. Unreasonable restrictions articulated by Britain on various aspects and the growing asymmetry in the submarine force levels vis-à-vis the Pakistan Navy forced India to look to the Soviet Union to narrow the operational gap. The price of the submarines was pegged at Rs 3 crore each with credits spread over ten years.39Admiral S.N. Kohli, We Dared: Maritime Operations in the 1971 Indo-Pak War (Lancer: New Delhi, 1989), p. 116–19. The Soviet-made submarines made up the 8th Submarine Squadron and ensured that the sub-surface advantage enjoyed by the Pakistan Navy in 1965 was effectively neutralized by the time the two countries went to war in 1971. Despite the loss of one of their US-built submarines, PNS Ghazi, the Pakistan Navy would go on to more than match the Indian Navy when it came to exploiting these silent killers.40For a detailed overview of the evolution of the Indian Navy’s submarine arm, also see
After a ‘learning’ performance in the 1965 war that saw it grow in confidence about its ability to influence the course of subcontinental conflicts, the IAF also forged ahead in terms of plugging gaps and building operational capabilities. Both the eastern and western theatres saw significant upgradation of airfields that could facilitate fighter operations. While the eastern theatre had nine operational airfields including Dum Dum at Calcutta, the airfields at Jaisalmer, Utterlai (Barmer) and Nal (Bikaner) in the desert sector were upgraded to support fighter operations south of Fazilka and Anupgarh. The greatest asymmetry was in the east where one squadron of sixteen upgraded PAF F-86 Sabre jets was pitted against almost twelve squadrons of IAF fighters and bombers with an available strength of about 160 aircraft excluding Canberra bombers, which were based in the Central Air Command base of Gorakhpur.41For an exact inventory of IAF aircraft, see P.V.S. Jagan Mohan and Samir Chopra, Eagles over Bangladesh (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2013), Appendix A, p. 379. Included among these squadrons were three MiG-21 FL squadrons with ground-attack capability.
On the western borders the IAF had almost 350 fighters and bombers available for full-fledged operations considering that all squadrons had been asked to ensure a serviceability of 75 per cent at the very minimum. A distinguished fighter pilot and scholar, Air Vice Marshal A.K. Tiwary, though, puts the figure at 419.42For an Indian perspective on the comparative force ratio in the west, see Air Vice Marshal A.K. Tiwary, Indian Air Force in Wars (New Delhi: Lancer, 2012), p. 197. These included over four squadrons of MiG-21s with the innovatively added external gun pack, upgraded Hunters, Gnats, the recently acquired Soviet Sukhoi-7s, HAL-built HF-24s, Mysteres, Canberra bombers and the obsolescent Vampire jets, which would go on to play a decisive role in the J&K sector. Facing them were 260–280 PAF fighters and bombers including a squadron of twenty-four newly acquired Mirage-IIIs from France. A squadron of ageing F-104 Starfighters was reinforced by an additional ten from the Royal Jordanian Air Force, while around seven squadrons of the battle-hardened Sabre jets including ninety upgraded Sabres from the German Air Force43For a Pakistani perspective of force levels see, S. Sajad Haider, The Flight of the Falcon: Demolishing Myths of the Indo-Pak Wars of 1965 and 1971 (Lahore: Vanguard Books, 2009), p. 227–28. made up the main strike element. Completing the force was one squadron of B-57 bombers; and five squadrons of the Chinese variant of the MiG-19, the F-6, gifted to Pakistan by China in 1966.44A reasonably comprehensive orbit of both air forces is available at ‘India Sub-Continent Database,’
What was significant in the steady build-up of IAF capability was the fact that its chief, P.C. Lal, had a ringside view of all the mistakes made during the 1965 war – he was the vice chief during the period. In his quiet and unassuming way, Pratap Chunder Lal went about addressing the major deficiencies using a systems approach. Building of blast pens to disperse and protect aircraft; procurement of and locating air defence radars and modern communication systems to prop up the air defence network; locating mobile observation posts (MOPs) along the border to provide early warning to airfields of incoming air strikes through radio communication; and ensuring adequate armament stocks and moving squadrons from their peacetime locations to the forward locations were among the measures initiated to ensure that the IAF was ready in all respects to fight a two-front war.47Air Chief Marshal Lal’s comparative analysis of all the measures initiated to strengthen the IAF are succinctly described in a narrative form in his book. See Air Chief Marshal P.C. Lal, My Years with the IAF (New Delhi: Lancer, 1986), p. 187–89 and p. 223. Though Lal argues that the combat strength of both the air forces in the western sector was almost similar, an objective analysis indicates that this was not so with the IAF having at least twenty-five frontline fighter squadrons as against about 18–19 with the PAF. Prasad and Thapliyal have indicated in their book, which is more or less the official history of the war from an Indian perspective, that the IAF had more than twenty-five squadrons of deployable fighters and bombers if one considered two squadrons that were withdrawn from the eastern sector after the first week of the war. Adding to the IAF strength were a few training flights with Vampire jets and MiG-21s. S.N. Prasad and U.P. Thapliyal, ed., The India-Pakistan War of 1971 (Dehradun: Natraj Publishers, 2014), p. 206–09. As against a PAF air defence network which comprised one high-level radar in the east and five radars in the west with two high-level and three low-level radars,48S. Sajad Haider, The Flight of the Falcon: Demolishing Myths of the Indo-Pak Wars of 1965 and 1971 (Lahore: Vanguard Books, 2009), p. 227. the IAF had a better organized radar network.49S.N. Prasad and U.P. Thapliyal, ed., The India-Pakistan War of 1971 (Dehradun: Natraj Publishers, 2014), p. 210. This would play a critical role in improving the interception rates of incoming strikes. Overall, except for a near parity on ground in the western sector, there was significant asymmetry on the high seas and in the air.