Bharat Rakshak

Does anybody know why we did took hardly any POWs in the Kargil fighting? When the occupied positions were recaptured, you would think that there would be some wounded or surrendering Pak soldiers there, no? This has mystified me since '99.

The Bulls Ass error is really freshman-level plagiarism! The plagiarist should know better, considering that "Kalaikundi" AFS was attacked very effectively by the PAF in '65... Poor ********. Forgetting apna glorious history etc.

PLAAF had nearly 200 Mig-19s at that time, plus over 1300 Mig15/17, according to an earlier post, which sounds about right. So IAF Hunters (six squadrons) would have been heavily outnumbered. Hunters and even Mysteres could have handled the IL-28s without too many problems if they attacked Indian ci...

The numbers for Vampire and Ouragan squadrons look dubious: there's no way you can pack 200+ Vamps into one squadron, or even 100+ Ouragans into two squadrons! Does anybody else have any thoughts on Kavic's book? I think the Vampire and Ouragan squadron info in Tim's source is from the early 1950s, ...

Well, you have to remember the circumstances under which Gyanendra became king: he basically organized the massacre of King Birendra (his uncle) and his whole family. Mughal style! Birendra was on very good terms with India, so Gyanendra saw India as hostile. And India (understandably) did not welco...

Anoop, I don't think Bhutan is too vulnerable, because the government is solidly aligned with India. But the Nepal situation is very interesting. The Chinese just sent the Nepalis 18 truck-loads of arms. (Ironically, to fight the Maoists!) We know that the Gyanendra regime is somewhat unfriendly to ...

600 IL-28s is a lot of Beagles! The Beagle was inferior to the Canberra in most respects (including range and payload), but 50 Canberras seem quite insignificant compared to the 600 bombers on the other side. Our limited Canberra numbers means that the Hunters and Mysteres would have been flying a l...

Shankar, thanks for those numbers. 140 Hunters is more than I thought we had in '62 - very interesting. Re some of the other posts, it would be a good idea to remember that Chinese goals in the 62 war were very limited. They had some territorial ambitions in Aksai Chin (primarily because of their ne...

Singha - No, I wasn't involved, but I've always been fascinated by it. One of the great "what if" situations of Indian history! Several years ago, I actually telephoned Galbraith in his office at Harvard, and asked him some questions, including why he had told Nehru to keep the IAF grounde...

Some thoughts about the air war in 1962, or the lack thereof. The reasons why Nehru did not commit the IAF is pretty clear: Galbraith basically told him that it would escalate the war, that it would lead to Chinese bombing of Indian cities, and that the US would not back up the Indians in that event...