Part IV: Across Borders
Total Air Supremacy
It is this fear of losing territory that has caused us to deploy forward and has caused conflicts between India and Pakistan to turn into slugging matches rather than wars of movement. In a short war what is required is ‘strike forces’ with enormous fire power and mobility so as to punch a hole in the enemy defences, penetrate deep into enemy territory while the formations following through will deal with pockets of resistance.1Lieutenant General K.P. Candeth, The Western Front: The India Pakistan War of 1971 (Dehradun: The English Book Depot, 1997), p. 173.
– LIEUTENANT GENERAL K.P. CANDETH
PAK REACTS PREDICTABLY
From October 1971 onwards, Candeth, the commander of the Western Army Command, was a restless and worried man after being literally forced to implement Manekshaw’s ‘holding strategy’ on the western front. A number of his formations were allocated to the eastern theatre, resulting in a situation of near parity with Pakistan as far as infantry, armour and artillery were concerned.2Ibid., p. 17. A seasoned gunner (artillery officer) with loads of operational experience in West Asia during WW II, in NWFP in the years before independence, in Kashmir during the 1947–48 conflict, and as the field commander during Operation Vijay (liberation of Goa in 1961), Candeth was also the Deputy Chief of Army Staff during the 1965 war. He had no more than approximately ten or eleven infantry divisions to defend his vast area that stretched across Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab and northern Rajasthan with his main offensive formations, 1 Corps and 1 Armoured Division, scattered in the hinterland. He shrewdly realized that unless his strike formations were mobilized and moved speedily to their operational locations, Pakistan’s slightly superior armoured formations could easily exploit his vulnerabilities and quickly make some inroads before parity was restored. Leveraging some scanty intelligence reports regarding the move of Pakistani armoured divisions into areas that could threaten Akhnur and Chhamb, Candeth mobilized 1 Corps in a swift operation that tested the efficiency of the Indian Railways and civil–military liaison networks. By 26 October, 1 Corps was occupying positions from where it could undertake both defensive and offensive operations – Pakistan had lost the initiative.
Preoccupied as he was with the spiralling insurgency in East Pakistan, and preventing a stubborn Mujib and an equally scheming Bhutto from plunging Pakistan into a crisis, Yahya Khan missed an opportunity to catch the Indians by surprise in the western theatre. Had he launched military operations in late September, or early October 1971, India may well have lost territory and yielded the initiative to Pakistan. Bangladesh, then, might never have been formed. Such are the ramifications of strategic decisions! Compared to the Indian Army, the Indian Air Force and Indian Navy were in a better position vis-à-vis their adversaries in the west. This was primarily due to the systematic build-up of airbases3Air Chief Marshal P.C. Lal, My Years with the IAF (New Delhi: Lancer, 1986), p. 239–55. and acquisition of reasonably potent strike aircraft, and the availability of fast- attack craft with the western naval fleet. More about their exploits later!
Since the entire western front had seen action in the 1965 war, and the ceasefire line between India and Pakistan was quite clearly defined after the Tashkent Agreement, heavily defended linear defences quickly sprang up on both sides, particularly along canals in the areas of Jammu, Punjab and Rajasthan.4Popularly called Ditch-cum-Bund or DCB, these came up along rivers and canals and proved to be significant obstacles during the ensuing conflict. This left little scope for any posturing or imaginative manoeuvring; both sides maintained an eyeball-to-eyeball contact along most of the international border and the ceasefire line. Frustrated by his inability to force the Americans to coerce India into withdrawing from an offensive posture in the eastern theatre, Yahya Khan did what any militarily powerful but smaller state would do against a larger adversary once it came to know that conflict was inevitable. On 3 December 1971, he opened the western front with widespread and simultaneous pre-emptive air strikes on IAF airfields. Inspired by the Israeli counter-campaign and blitzkrieg against Arab airfields in 1967, the PAF hoped to provide the necessary impetus to a quick ground offensive in limited sectors.
THE FIRST WEEK
The opening days of the war showed that India had learnt its lessons from 1965, both in the air and on the ground. While Candeth had all his formations in place, the wily Air Chief Marshal P.C. Lal had not only dispersed and camouflaged his aircraft well, but also positioned early-warning radars and mobile observation posts (MOFs) all along the border, which gave all his bases reasonably adequate warning of incoming air raids. The raids on IAF airfields and installations on the evening of 3 December and early in the morning of 4 December were spread across the western front. Srinagar and its satellite airbase of Avantipur in the J&K sector, Pathankot, Amritsar, Halwara, Ambala and Sirsa airfields in the Punjab sector, and Bikaner, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur and Uttarlai in the Rajasthan sector, were all attacked by fighter and bomber aircraft of the PAF.5Air Vice Marshal A.K. Tiwary, Indian Air Force in Wars (New Delhi: Lancer, 2012), p. 199–200. However, poor planning, inadequate force levels (barely 35–40 sorties were flown in the first strike), poor execution and robust IAF air defence6Air Vice Marshal A. K. Tiwary in his book describes very succinctly the layered air defence network put up by the IAF and its role in establishing a favourable air situation in the sector. See ibid., p. 197–98. resulted in a negligible impact on the operational potential of the IAF to respond, which it did with measured professionalism the next day. The existing IAF discourse does not give enough credit to the impact of the induction of the second lot of MiG-21s on the operational philosophy of the IAF. Returning to India from Lugovoy, Russia, in 1967 and introducing the second variant of the MiG-21 called the T-77, the training methodologies imparted by IAF fighter pilots like Pingale, Krishnaswamy, Rathore, Patney, Verma7From these distinguished fighter pilots of the IAF, Krishnaswamy went on to become the chief of air staff, while all others rose to the rank of air marshal. among others created a trickle-down effect of professionalism in the other fleets too. Many among this lot were to form the IAF’s Tactics and Combat Development Establishment (TACDE) that sought to streamline and standardize both ground attack and air defence tactics.8Conversation with Air Marshal Pingale on 4 January 2015. The MiG-21 proved to be a major intimidatory factor in 1971, much as the F-104 had proved in 1965.
Hoping to draw the IAF towards Sargodha in large retaliatory strikes, the PAF was surprised9S. Sajad Haider, The Flight of the Falcon: Demolishing Myths of the Indo-Pak Wars of 1965 and 1971 (Lahore: Vanguard Books, 2009). that the IAF chose to respond by carrying out limited strikes through the day with their all-weather day/night capable fighter bombers, the Sukhoi-7 and the dependable Hunters, with the Canberra bombers, Sukhoi-7s and MiG-21s, keeping up the pressure by night. The MiG-21s and Gnats provided effective top cover to ground attack missions and ensured that the IAF managed to keep attrition down on the first few days. Here too, having seen the debilitating impact of the opening days of the 1965 air war on IAF morale, Lal had realized that it was important to keep attrition down at commencement of hostilities.
A story worth telling is about the exploits of a bunch of ‘hot shot’ fighter jocks from the IAF’s Tactics and Combat Training Establishment (TACDE) who were asked by Lal to develop innovative tactics that would ‘disrupt and distract’ the enemy by night. Consequently, Sukhoi-7s and MiG-21s from TACDE trained for months before the war by practising single-aircraft low-level bombing missions in dim moonlight conditions and even pitch-dark night conditions to evolve procedures and sortie profiles that could result in accurate navigation to the target and weapon delivery with reasonable accuracy. Halwara and Hindon airfields were used to validate the concept in near blackout conditions and by the time the war began, Air Marshal Patney recounts that they were raring to hit PAF airfields.
Thirteen PAF airfields were attacked by day and night during the opening days of the war, some of them with as low a force as two aircraft, and it was quite clear that the IAF’s counter-response was low key, calibrated and yet effective as the number of sorties reduced from a maximum of 140 on 4 December to seventy the next day and finally to about less than 10–20 sorties after 10 December. Though these airfield raids were not massive ones, the PAF lost a few aircraft on ground at its airfields at Shorkot, Murid and Mauripur. Airfields like Sargodha and Chander were among those hit at night in dim moonlight conditions by TACDE during the first week of the conflict, and Patney is emphatic that these sorties achieved what they had set out to do: to disrupt and distract. An innovative element of these missions was the constant communication of these pilots with a ground control code named ‘Sparrow Control’, which had the PAF guessing that it could be a Soviet aircraft that was guiding these night missions.10Interview with Vinod Patney on 5 September 2015. Much like Mehar Singh and the modified Dakotas of the 12 Squadron in performing bombing missions around Poonch in 1947–48, the medium lift transport aircraft of the IAF in 1971, the An-12, was modified for the bombing role by night in a transformed IAF under Lal. Tons of bombs were rolled out from An-12s as Wing Commander Vashisht and his boys from 44 Squadron delivered telling blows on the night of 3 December and caused mayhem at a well-concealed armament and logistics depot at Changa Manga forest, about 80 km southwest of Lahore. The destruction severely affected the flow of ammunition both to the northern and southern sectors.
One of the two-aircraft day missions on 4 December was a Hunter mission from Pathankot led by Wing Commander (later Air Marshal) Cecil Parker, CO of 20 Squadron, IAF. Tasked to hit Peshawar airfield, almost 400 km away and on the extreme limits of the Hunter’s radius of action (ROA), the strike was more a demonstration of intent that the IAF had come a long way from 1965. Parker and his number two, Dhillon, strafed the airfield, possibly destroyed a Sabre on the ground and then made their getaway when they were pounced upon by two Sabres doing a combat air patrol over Peshawar. Both Hunters were shot at by the pursuing Sabres, but Parker gave battle while ordering his number two to ‘hit the deck’ and head east. An experienced fighter jock, Parker claims to have shot down one Sabre, a claim fiercely refuted by the PAF, and got back with empty tanks as his Hunter ‘flamed out’ after landing. Lady Luck, Father Fortune and a cat with nine lives – all seemed to have followed the two Hunters. Parker’s squadron, the Lightnings, would emerge as one of the workhorses of the IAF and represented the aggressive spirit of the IAF.
Admiral Arun Prakash, a former chief of naval staff and an erudite soldier scholar of high pedigree, was a young naval lieutenant on secondment to 20 Squadron (Lightnings) of the IAF for almost a year before the war broke out. Not only was Arun Prakash a naval aviator, he was also a ‘wanderer’ as he ventured out in mid-1971 for a long summer hitchhiking trip that saw him travel to Germany and France via Iran, Turkey, Greece and the Balkans.11Admiral Arun Prakash, ‘How I Crossed Swords with Chuck Yeager,’ Vayu Aerospace and Defence Review, Vol. 1/2007, from
Air Chief Marshal Lal in his book highlights that the IAF concentrated on many forward airfields like Chandler, Murid, Lahore and Chak Jhumra, and a few of the lightly defended airfields in depth like Rafiqy and Risalwala.15See Air Chief Marshal P.C. Lal, My Years with the IAF (New Delhi: Lancer, 1986), p. 255–60. Sargodha too was attacked on the evening of 4 December by four IAF Sukhois, with limited success. Lal’s strategy on the western front was clear – conserve fighter resources so that they remained available for air defence of the homeland, and support the land battle. Kaiser Tufail, an outstanding PAF fighter pilot, tries to downplay the negligible impact of PAF’s pre-emptive strike by writing: ‘PAF’s first dusk strikes were nothing more than the start of a disruptive counter-air campaign at best, aimed at overburdening the IAF in its flying effort generation capabilities.’16Kaiser Tufail, ‘PAF on the Offensive,’ at kaiser-aeronaut.blogspot.in/2011/08/paf-on-offensive-1971-war.html (accessed 5 July 2014).
He also suggests that some PAF planners claimed later that its pre-emptive strike was mainly aimed at provoking the IAF to retaliate impulsively as it did in 1965 by attacking well-defended airfield targets (implying Sargodha) in strength and face heavy casualties. If it was so, the strategy failed as even though the IAF retaliated, it did so in a measured manner so that its planned interdiction strategy did not suffer. The numbers too tell the story. Kaiser Tufail puts the total number of sorties flown by the PAF against IAF airfields and radar sites between the evenings of 3 and 4 December at around 150, a figure disputed as too high by the IAF, while P.V.S. Jagan Mohan puts the number of IAF’s retaliation strikes on 4 December at around seventy-eight.17Email exchange on 17 July 2014 with P.V.S. Jagan Mohan on the air effort dedicated by the IAF during the initial counter-campaign. If one includes another twenty-odd sorties as air defence and supporting missions, the figure still hovers around 100 sorties (Tiwary’s figures are higher). Clearly with almost 350 aircraft available in the west, the IAF clearly kept its effort in check. Lal had thought things out well.
As the air battle raged on the evening and night of 3 December, Lieutenant General K.K. Singh, the battle-hardened corps commander of 1 Corps who had recently moved on promotion from Army HQ, was waiting expectantly for his orders to launch an offensive into the Shakargarh bulge. As he gazed across the vast expanse of the Punjab plains, his thoughts inevitably went back to his baptism by fire as the brigade commander of 1 Armoured Brigade during the 1965 war as it attempted to make headway in the Sialkot sector against some determined resistance from Pakistani armour. As his forces moved into their launch pads by the night of 4 December and were ready to go across on the next morning, he wondered whether he was going to have a free run into Shakargarh. K.K. Singh had not forgotten his experiences of commanding an armoured brigade at Chawinda in 1965 and was prepared for a typical tank-vs-tank attrition battle. Having shed some of his offensive forces to bolster the defensive battle in Poonch, he turned cautious as he was apprehensive whether he would be able to decisively punch a hole in the opposing forces. Adding to his woes were the complete lack of intelligence about the location and movement of the enemy’s strategic reserves in the form of 6 Armoured Division and 17 Infantry Division.18Interview with Lieutenant General Pandit. Pandit recollects K.K. Singh as having personally shared with him his anguish at having to maintain a ‘defensive balance’ in the absence of any hard intelligence about the enemy’s armoured formations on 10 December.
In such circumstances it was Lieutenant General Sartaj Singh, the aggressive commander of 15 Corps with the largest area to worry about (Jammu and Kashmir), who would be the first to commit his formations into battle in the Chhamb and Poonch sectors. Hours after the first air raid sirens were sounded at most IAF airfields, Major General Iftikhar Janjua, the flamboyant commander of Pakistan Army’s 23 Division, opened his guns – all of nine regiments – along a 30–40 km front. Soon after, he launched a well-planned attack with sufficient armour on 191 Brigade, the only brigade from 10 Division defending the area west of the Munawar Tawi river.19Brian Cloughley, A History of the Pakistan Army (New Delhi: Lancer, 1999), p. 227–30. Positioned in hastily prepared defences and mentally unprepared to fight a defensive battle as the division was initially assigned an offensive role along with the division to the south (26 Division), Brigadier Jasbir Singh’s men from 191 Brigade fought valiantly to blunt the initial offensive. Particularly noteworthy in blunting the advance of Pakistan’s 23 Division in the critical northern part of the Chhamb–Jaurian sector was 5 Sikh Regiment under Lieutenant Colonel Prem Khanna.20The valour of 5 Sikh Regiment in the battle of Chhamb has been well chronicled by Major Raj Mehta. See Major General Raj Mehta, ‘Déjà vu at Chhamb,’ South Asia Defence and Strategic Review (1 January 2014) at [www.defstrat.com/exec/frmArticleDetails.aspx?DID=454](http://www.defstrat.com/exec/frmArticleDetails.aspx?DID=454) (accessed 26 November 2014). However, after two days of bitter fighting they were asked to withdraw east of the Munawar Tawi by none other than the corps commander, Lieutenant General Sartaj Singh, who had by then taken charge of the battle.21For a detailed review of Brigadier Jasbir Singh’s defensive battle, see Sukhwant Singh, India’s Wars since Independence (New Delhi: Lancer, 2009), p. 249–51.
Sartaj Singh was another no-nonsense and hard-driving general in the mould of Harbaksh Singh and had won a George medal during the British era for disarming an armed soldier who had run amok in his unit. He was also one of the brigade commanders during the last-ditch defence of Bomdila in 1962. Inexplicably and much like in 1965, Pakistani forces stopped to regroup before attempting to cross the Munawar Tawi. This allowed Sartaj Singh and Major General Jaswant Singh, the beleaguered divisional commander of 10 Division, to reorganize their forces; the IAF too was more effective this time around as there was a clearly demarcated forward line of troops (FLOT) in the form of the Munawar Tawi river. Sukhois from 26 Squadron and 101 Squadron based at Adampur were particularly effective during this period and managed to destroy a large number of tanks and blunted the offensive by 7 December. A total of seventy-eight sorties were flown by the IAF in support of the Chhamb operations, comprising both close air support missions in direct support of 191 Brigade, and interdiction missions by Hunters to prevent reinforcements from getting to Pakistan 23 Division.22Air Chief Marshal P.C. Lal, My Years with the IAF (New Delhi: Lancer, 1986), p. 229–31. The death of Iftikhar Janjua in a helicopter crash soon after took the wind out of this offensive, and though Pakistan managed to hold on to the west bank of the Munawar Tawi till the end of the war, some of their offensive resources were diverted south to the Shakargarh sector.
Unfolding a fairly predictable battle plan without the necessary numerical superiority, the battles in the Poonch sector turned out to be ones of attrition and did not result in any tangible gains for either side. To the credit of the Indians, two brigades, 93 Brigade and 33 Brigade, fought excellent defensive battles between 3 and 6 December, foiling all attempts by Major General Akbar Khan’s attempts with 12 Division to threaten Poonch23Brian Cloughley, A History of the Pakistan Army (New Delhi: Lancer, 1999), p. 227. For a detailed tactical-level appreciation of operations in the Poonch and Rajouri sectors, also see Lieutenant General K.P. Candeth, The Western Front: The India Pakistan War of 1971 (Dehradun: The English Book Depot, 1997), p. 63–71. at the same time as Iftikhar was attempting to threaten Akhnur and Chhamb. The IAF innovatively used the slow and lumbering Harvard trainer aircraft, which could take off and land from the small Rajouri airstrip to provide close air support and target enemy guns positions in vantage positions overlooking Poonch.24Ibid., p. 70. The obsolete but manoeuvrable Vampire jets of 121 Squadron from Srinagar supported the Uri and Poonch battle with telling strikes against enemy emplacements and gun positions on hilltops and slopes.25Telephonic conversation with Air Marshal Sekhon on 22 July 2014.
Flying Officer Anil Thapar, affectionately called ‘Tarzan’ by his friends, was posted to 20 Squadron and had just one sortie to go before he would have been declared ‘Fully Ops’ and fit to do battle when he met with a motorcycle accident that had him out of action for six months. So, off he went to do duty as a forward air controller with 161 Infantry Brigade in the Uri sector. Attached to an infantry battalion of the Rajputana Rifles (4 Rajputana Rifles), Tarzan has wonderful memories of the few months he spent with them. Not only did the strapping six-footer direct fire on Pakistani positions across the ceasefire line, he also accompanied the battalion on a number of offensive and defensive patrols. Thapar, who sought voluntary retirement as a group captain after commanding a MiG-27 squadron in the 1990s, recollects that among the innovative contraptions that the IAF put together to aid the foreword air controllers was something called a ‘Satpal Light’. Named after the IAF engineering officer who modified a MiG-21 landing light to act as a bright visual aid that would help aircraft spot a forward controller location and then pick up a target in relation to that position, it was equipped with wheels to provide it with mobility and was an object of much amusement in the field.26Telephonic interview with Group Captain Anil Thapar (retd) on 12 January 2015. It was also a reflection of an innovative and ‘can do’ spirit that had crept into the IAF led by P.C. Lal as war clouds loomed on the horizon.
The third battle that merits attention during the initial days of the war on the western front was the ‘wringing of the Chicken’s Neck’ by elements of 26 Division of the Indian Army, commanded by one of its most highly decorated officers, Major General Zorawar Chand Bakshi.27Major General V.K. Singh, Leadership in the Indian Army (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2005), p. 350–352. Major General Bakshi had won a Vir Chakra in the 1947–48 war with Pakistan; he was back in action in the 1965 war, winning a Maha Vir Chakra for his leadership of 68 Brigade in the capture of the Haji Pir Pass. Disappointed during the early days of the war that one of his brigades had been assigned a defensive role in another sector, Bakshi’s ambitious plan to race to Sialkot had to be tempered down to a limited offensive that would capture the ‘Chicken’s Neck’ area of some 170 sq. km. Known as the ‘Dagger’ before he took over command of 26 Division because the salient pointed like a dagger at India, the aggressive Bakshi called it the ‘Chicken’s Neck’ waiting to be snapped. Bakshi commenced his attack on 5 December night by infiltrating forces behind enemy lines and used commandos to disrupt communications and set up roadblocks. Having surprised the enemy he then moved in a regular brigade to complete a rout of the enemy by 7 December with minimum casualties to own troops.28Ibid. Sadly, Bakshi’s division was thereafter engaged only in defensive operations and flank protection as Candeth clearly lost out on exploiting a brilliant commander who had not lost a single inch of own territory in all his actions, be it in the 1947–48 or 1965 wars with Pakistan. One can only conjecture what might have happened had Zorawar Bakshi spearheaded the Chhamb operations. While Zorawar Bakshi’s biographer, Major General V.K. Singh, is scathing in his indictment of the rather passive role that Bakshi’s 26 Division performed for the rest of the war, Lieutenant General Pandit looked at it dispassionately nearly forty-three years later and said: ‘Zorawar had a task to perform – his formation had a defensive role and a significant one at that – so to say that he was under-exploited is merely a result of his tasking and not anything else.’29Interview with Lieutenant General B.T. Pandit.
OFFENSIVE ON KARACHI AND MORE: THE INDIAN NAVY COMES OF AGE
After nearly twenty-five years of Independence, the Indian Navy finally managed to take its rightful place alongside its sister services, the army and the air force, as equal stakeholders in national security. Nothing exemplifies this coming of age better than the daring strikes by Indian Navy missile boats on Pakistan Navy warships and shore-based installations at Karachi harbour on the nights of 4 and 8 December. Commander Kavina (retd) recollects that when war broke out on 3 December, two OSA boats (INS Nipat and INS Veer) along with the two Petya Class frigates (INS Kachal and INS Kiltan) were lying in wait around the island of Diu, while the other two missile boats were already off the Gujarat coast around Okha. Carrying out a rendezvous and a quick briefing on the high seas on the evening of 4 December, the first strike involved three missile boats of 25 Missile Squadron led by Commander Babru Yadav comprising INS Nipat, Veer and Nirghat. The briefing to them was precise – they were cleared to fire their missiles at any contact they made with targets that were in an arc of 100 nautical miles or less from Karachi. Commencing their attack from about 150 nautical miles south of Karachi at about 6 p.m., they made their first radar contact with PNS Khyber, a destroyer. INS Nirghat sank the Khyber with two direct hits. Emboldened with their first success, Kavina, who was captaining INS Nipat, was the next to let go of his missiles on another hapless target, which turned out to be the Venus Challenger, a Liberian merchant freighter laden with ammunition and armament for Pakistan.30S.N. Prasad and U.P. Thapliyal, ed., The India-Pakistan War of 1971 (Dehradun: Natraj Publishers, 2014), p. 252–54. Kavina recollects that the size of the radar contact initially led them to believe that it was the PNS Babar, the Pakistan Navy flagship. As they approached closer to Karachi, Veer joined the action by sinking a minesweeper (PNS Muhafiz) as it headed to pick up survivors from the Khyber.31Commander Kavina described the operation in great detail in an interview with the author on 5 December. As they approached within 25 nautical miles of Karachi, Kavina opened up his radar and picked up the echoes from the Kiamari oil refineries and let go of his third missile, and so did the Veer. The strike completely demoralized the Pakistan Navy surface fleet and the oil tanks were ablaze for days together.
Staying with naval operation on the western seaboard, Vice Admiral S.N. Kohli, the aggressive C-in-C of Western Naval Command, had planned another offensive strike on Karachi on 6 December along with sea control operations along the Makaran coast, to the west of Karachi. He even aggressively positioned one of his Foxtrot Class submarines around the approaches to the Karachi and Makaran coast, hoping to bring in synergy in its operations with any subsequent offensive surface operations. This was in response to reports from Naval Intelligence that a large portion of the Pakistani fleet was lying in wait there. However, the mission had to be called off at the last moment. Four days later, an IAF reconnaissance mission of the Gwadar area on the Makaran coast bordering Iran reported no Pakistan Navy ships in the area – it was just as well that Admiral Kohli’s ambitious sea control operation was called off.
Similar damage was inflicted on a Pakistan Navy tanker, the PNS Dacca, and the Kiamari oil installations by another audacious missile boat strike by INS Vinash on the night of 8 December. The simultaneous impact of IAF strikes on Karachi harbour by Hunters from Jamnagar led by Wing Commander Donald Conquest on the morning of 4 December,32Ibid. Details of the IAF strike are on p. 230. and by Canberra bombers in the wee hours of 9 December, proved to be decisive. Wing Commander Badhwar of 35 Squadron clearly remembers that he was leading a formation of eight Canberras on a strike to Masroor airfield and decided that four of these would also attack the oil storage tanks close to Karachi harbour.
It was a remarkable coincidence that the IAF and Indian Navy strikes took place within minutes of each other without any prior coordination at all. This only indicates the lack of synergy between the IAF and the Indian Navy during the Karachi operations, although excellent reconnaissance photographs of Karachi harbour were given to the Indian Navy on 4 December by 106 Squadron flying Canberra photo reconnaissance aircraft. Commander Kavina, who was awarded the Vir Chakra for the operation, dismisses the needless debate about who hit Karachi first and says that whoever did it, did it for the Indian flag, and rightly so it was. Commander Babru Yadav, the commander of the 25 Missile Squadron, and Commander Gopal Rao, who commanded the escort frigate INS Kiltan during the operation, deservedly won Maha Vir Chakras for the two attacks on Karachi, while Wing Commanders Badhwar and Conquest were awarded Vir Chakras for their attacks on Karachi.33For a detailed Indian Navy perspective of the missile boat attacks on Karachi, see Admiral S.N. Kohli, We Dared: Maritime Operations in the 1971 Indo-Pak War (New Delhi: Lancer, 1989), p. 45–67 and 88–93. P.C. Lal offers the IAF perspective on the bombing of the fuel storage tanks at Karachi harbour. See Air Chief Marshal P.C. Lal, My Years with the IAF (New Delhi: Lancer, 1986), p. 290.
An interesting vignette on the missile boat attack on Karachi comes from Admiral Nadkarni. Undergoing a course at the Naval War College in the US, the admiral recollects that the Pakistani officer doing the course with him was recalled when the war broke out and returned to complete the course on cessation of hostilities. When he returned, he told Nadkarni: ‘Not fair, the Russians were manning your boats during the attack on Karachi.’ Therein lay an interesting tale. All the crew of the missile boats had just returned from the Soviet Union after extensive training on the missile boats during the acquisition period. They were all fluent in Russian and Kavina confirms that they would break into Russian during the operation to confuse the Pakistanis.34Interview with Admiral Nadkarni. Also refer interview with Commander Kavina.
The sinking of the PNS Ghazi outside Vizag harbour had shaken the Pakistan Navy and its remainder Daphne Class submarines were out to avenge that loss on the western seaboard. INS Khukri and INS Kirpan, two of the Indian Navy’s relatively new anti-submarine-warfare (ASW) frigates, were on aggressive patrol around 35 nautical miles south-west of Diu on the night of 9/10 December when three successive torpedoes from PNS Hangor, a Daphne Class submarine, ripped into the Khukri. The crippled frigate sank within minutes taking down with her Captain Mahendra Nath Mulla, eighteen officers and over 170 men. For his bravery under fire, steadfast dedication to duty and refusal to abandon his command post on the bridge, Captain Mulla was awarded the Maha Vir Chakra. While the actual story of the loss of the Khukri is still shrouded in mystery and remains classified, an analysis of the encounter after much discussion and reading reveals that ships of the Khukri type had only forward-throwing depth charges that reached a maximum of 2 nautical miles and this was woefully inadequate against submarines of the Daphne Class that had torpedoes with ranges of around 10 nautical miles. This loss provoked Admiral Kohli immensely and for the next three days, he pressed in all his ASW resources to hunt down the ‘killer’ sub, but to no avail. Writing in his book Transition to Triumph, Vice Admiral Hiranandani, one of the Indian Navy’s most prolific contemporary historians, offers a balanced perspective of what could have gone wrong that night:
The tragic loss of the KHUKRI will remain a vexed issue. If at all, a two ship Search and Attack Unit (SAU) had to be sailed to take on a submarine whose capabilities were known to be superior to those of the ships of the SAU, then the SAU should have been closely supported by all available anti-submarine air effort – Seakings, Alizes and Super Connies. On the other hand, had KHUKRI been following well established torpedo counter measure procedures like high speed, zig-zags and weave, she would never have been such an easy target. The Captain of KHUKRI took the calculated risk of overcoming the limitations of his ship’s sonar by doing slow speed and using the BARC developed sonar modification to help increase his sonar’s detection range. Regrettably luck was not on Khukri’s side.35Vice Admiral G.M. Hiranandani, Transition to Triumph (New Delhi: Lancer, 2000). See Preface.
The overall naval effort, however, was commendable and reflected a refreshingly aggressive Indian Navy. The coercive effect of the repeated missile boat attacks on Karachi and prowling Indian Foxtrot Class submarines in the waters off the Makaran coast resulted in the Pakistani surface fleet rarely venturing out of Karachi, and it was left to the Daphne Class submarines to restore some fighting spirit within the Pakistan Navy. When asked about a relative comparison between the Indian Navy’s Foxtrot Class and the Pakistan Navy’s Daphne Class submarines, Admiral Nadkarni was candid enough to say that the Daphne was distinctly stealthier and more capable as it was a generation ahead of the Foxtrot, but for some reason the Pakistan Navy was not aggressive enough while employing it. When asked why the Pakistan Navy chose to send the WW II vintage Ghazi to the east coast instead of the Daphne Class, the admiral pointed at the larger range of the Ghazi as it was a WW II vintage submarine that had been designed not so much for stealth as for range and endurance so that it could operate for long periods in the Atlantic.
Any narrative on naval operations during the 1971 conflict would not be complete without an undersea tale from a submariner. One of the two Foxtrot Class submarines of the western fleet to have seen action for the entire duration of the conflict was INS Karanj, which replaced the INS Kursura, which had been on watch-and-patrol duties in the Arabian Sea since mid-November.36Ibid., p. 212. In the charge of Commander Shekhawat, who went on to be the first submariner to become chief of naval staff, it prowled off the Karachi coast in its patrol area for almost two weeks from 2 December seeking action. The extremely stringent rules of engagement and visual recognition criteria for offensive action, however, made it almost impossible for her to resort to any kind of offensive action.37For a detailed account of the induction and operations of the Foxtrot Class of submarines, see P.R. Franklin, Foxtrots of the Indian Navy (Mumbai: Frontier India Technology Press, 2015), p. 133–43.
It is also believed that Shekhawat’s submarine had an unverified encounter in the northern Arabian Sea with what the crew initially believed was a Russian nuclear submarine, which could have been on its way to the Bay of Bengal as a counter to the movement of the US Seventh Fleet into the region. However, the Soviets denied the presence of any of their submarines after the war, leading to speculation that it may well have been a US Navy nuclear submarine. The actual truth has still not been unravelled.
A poem written by a naval midshipman after the 1971 war, recollecting events as he embarked on board his first warship, the INS Tir, reveals the excitement and pride within the Indian Navy as the war at sea progressed. I have reproduced excerpts below.
I remember that day with the POP (Passing out Parade) scheduled for next day, we had gone for a movie at Eros at Churchgate, and had taken permission to stay out a little late, only to be greeted on return at the gangway that we would be sailing quickly at the dawn of day.
I remember that day with the boats in tow at short stay.
First to Okha we did sail and thence towards the enemy’s coast.
To show up his vain and empty boast.
Slipping the tow in the dark, we lay in wait, close enough to hark.
I remember that day reading only a single word I pray. All it said on the message was ‘Sansar’. A code word we knew which meant open war. No more fun and no more games. From now it was only fire and flames.
I remember the day when the Missile Boats came back, storming their way. We rushed to the top and lined up around the ship. With caps in hand, cheering from the heart and waving from the hip.
Karachi was on fire, we were told. It was one big advantage we were to hold.
I remember that day on a misty morning gray when lower decks were cleared and we assembled with eyes blurred with tears for the gallant Khukri crew. Her sinking, a gain to the enemy did accrue.
I remember that day when the Navy went on a foray. My heart swelled with pride on being part of that historic ride. Delivering a crushing blow from which the enemy couldn’t recover. Victory at sea was ours when we made him cower!38This is a poem written by Commodore S.P.R. Reddy (retd) and shared with us by Group Captain Unni Kartha (retd) on our school Yahoo group.