1965 Indo-Pak War: News & Discussion

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Deans
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by Deans »

Quite often, success in battle is a matter of which side makes fewer mistakes - rather than successful execution of a grand operational plan.
The tank battles of 1965 are a case in point (Chawinda and Khem Karan). I believe there is more to be learnt from mistakes than from success.

Our mistakes:
- We did not realise that Pakistan had 2 armored divisions (we assumed they had one, as we did). When the its second armored division turned up at Khem Karan (we expected at most a armored brigade, which is why we had one) we did panic and only the cool head of Gen Harbaksh Singh prevented a retreat East of the Beas, which would have lost us prime territory in Punjab.
Ironically, the very slow advance of 4th Mountain Div (albeit with only 2 brigades) into Pakistan, prevented it from being completely outflanked by Pakistan's 1st armored division.
-Our own 1st armored division had just 1 tank brigade, the 2nd was little more than a lorried infantry brigade. They had to advance towards Sialkot with inferior tanks and a 1:2 numerical disadvantage in tanks.
- Close air support by the IAF was largely absent (particularly when Pak tanks were stuck in the mud at Assal Uttar).

Pak mistakes (Khem Karan):
- Advancing with no reece, on the assumption that the Hindoos will just flee when they hear a tank.
- Tanks not advancing with infantry support.
- The advantage of the Patton was negated by fighting in sugarcane fields with low visibility and its weight was a liability, when the ground was
flooded.
- Pak armor was over ambitious at Khem Karan and not bold enough at Chawinda.
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by Ravi Karumanchiri »

Dear Pakistanis, this Defence Day, please stop celebrating hate

The Pakistani military has propagated a false narrative about the 1965 war with justifies its oversized role in society.
by Taha Siddiqui
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by anupmisra »

Musharraf buys all copies of sensitive ‘65 war book
Old article when mushy was in power.
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Army general headquarters has purchased all 22,000 copies of a sensitive book by a former Inter Services Intelligence(ISI) chief on the myth of the victory claimed by the Pakistan Army in the 1965 war against India.
The army felt The Myth of 1965 Victory by Lieutenant General Mahmood Ahmed would malign the armed forces’ image.
The sources said Mahmood had submitted the manuscript to the GHQ as per rules. However, after going through the manuscript, the GHQ referred it to Musharraf, who noted on the file that Mahmood should review sensitive parts of the book and the title, especially the use of the word ‘myth’ in relation to the 1965 war.
Mahmood refused to make suggested major deletions, claiming the book was in print.
The sources said Mahmood joined the Tableeghi Jamaat after being relieved of his post-retirement assignment to head the Fauji Fertilizer Corporation.
He is one of seven generals who carried out the coup against Nawaz Sharif in 1999. He was Corps Commander, Rawalpindi, at that time, but was rewarded for his loyalty to Musharraf and made director general, ISI.
https://www.dnaindia.com/world/report-m ... ok-1056075
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by wig »

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/sunda ... 53654.html

16 Squadron & Badin radar raid
excerpts
No. 16 Squadron of the IAF entered the war on September 7, 1965, which marked the beginning of a new phase of war with Pakistan. As I joined the squadron on June 30, 1966, in Gorakhpur, I heard many stories of its successes, experiences and travails. The Badin raid has remained with me since then.

The Western Air Command was aware that the PAF had received sophisticated radars from the US. One of these radars was located at Badin near Karachi. This radar, apart from assisting PAF fighters in intercepting intruders, was also tending towards strategic interference in the Indian air space. With a view to neutralise it, a Canberra on photo recce photographed this target on September 18, 1965.

The decision to disable the Badin radar was hastened when a PAF Sabre jet on September 19, 1965, shot down an aircraft well within the Indian air space and killed the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, his wife, three members of his staff, a journalist and two crews. Clearly, the directions had come from the radar controller at Badin.
the mission
The mission to hit the Badin radar was assigned to 16 Squadron CO Wing Commander Peter Wilson (Pete), who wanted a surprise raid by four Canberra bombers on the target between 7.45 am and 8 am when staff changed shifts at the radar station. A fifth Canberra interdictor was to act as a decoy and make an overt approach at about 20,000 ft and invite attention. It was also to act as an alternate to the main and sixth Canberra interdictor to be flown by Wilson with Sqn Ldr O Shankaran as the navigator. This main interdictor was to approach the target last to strike at the domes. They were separated by about 120 yards.

The mission team arrived in Agra, the launching base, on September 20, 1965. On September 21, the first bomber crew comprised Sqn Ldr HB Singh and Flt-Lt GN Bhaskar. Their aircraft was armed with two 4,000 lbs bombs each. The second bomber crew was Sqn Ldr PPS Madan with Flt-Lt S Karkare and their aircraft was also armed like the first one. The third was Sqn Ldr RS Rajput (Kaddu) and Flt-Lt BV Pathak with six 1,000 lbs bombs and the fourth was Flt Lt RG Khot with Flt-Lt GS Negi with a bomber armed like the third. They were to take off in this order with a two to three minutes separation and proceed about 20,000 ft initially and then pull up to the bombing height of 10,000 ft above ground and release bombs. The fifth aircraft was flown by Sqn Ldr SP Khanna with Fg Offr KM Joy who was to act as decoy. Flt-Lt Ashok Bakshi (Joe) and Fg Offr BS Sidhu were on stand by.
The anatomy of the raid, however, differed in its occurrence. While the first two groups dropped their bombs as per plan, the third bomber went on to release bombs later. The third crew had forgotten to increase their bomber's speed and as a result they not only saw the fourth one overtaking but also could not see the targets. Kaddu then manoeuvred the aircraft and dropped the bombs from 7,500 ft as it passed between the two domes. It was at that time he noticed Pete and Shankaran’s Canberra turning right. Pete delivered the crucial rocket “coup de grace”. As per Shankaran’s own clarification to me, in the middle of their planned turn from the IP towards their targets, Pete levelled out early, noticing smoke in the distance, and thus arrived at 30 feet above the ground with the targets on the right and was, therefore, able to hit only one dome successfully. This first-hand admission from Shankaran, on logical reconstruction, negates several hearsay statements being ascribed to Pete, before he passed away, of having missed the targets on their first run. Also, the other rocket pod did not fire.
aftermath
Revelations of the Badin success kept emerging as the times passed. A PAF report went on to report the fatality of one of their men. We later learnt that not only the radar had to be replaced and relocated but the domes were also gone.
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by ramana »

There was a session on IAF lessons learned in 1965 war at the Military fest in Chandigarh.
If there are any reports please post here.
ramana
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by ramana »

In the Badin raid the 4000 lbs bombs dropped by first aircraft turned to be duds based on Wilson's writeup.

I am interested in the causes of such high dud rate for the 4000 lbs bombs used in 1965 war.

IAF had two types of bombs: 1000 lbs MC and 4000 lbs MC . Both had ~50% filling of RDX/TNT.

Normally it's the fuzes that are suspect as many things can go wrong with mechanical devices.

However we note both bombs had the same set of fuzes for nose and tail fuze:
NP27/42 or NP 44 and TP 28/30 or 37.


First three type are contact or instantaneous. The last is time delay based on chemical action. Only for very long delay. So not used.

And we know the 1000 lbs ones usually worked.

So less probability of faulty fuzes.

Then attention goes to the explosive filling. RDX/TNT is stable with long life.
OFB certifies them up-to 30 years age.
Also storage temperature has bad effect of reducing the effective life of chemicals.
Arrhenius law.
So most likely these 4K bombs were WWII stock sold off by UK.
Then add storage temperature.
Both effects could have led to the high dud rate.
I wish they had tried them in flight demos or Pokhran firepower demos to see if the worked.
Also could they have used both nose and tail fuzes to ensure redundancy?
ramana
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by ramana »

Dont know if this was already posted

Link: http://sainiksamachar.nic.in/englisharc ... -15/h4.htm

Golden Jubilee of 1965 War
The Battle of Barki
By September 1, 1965, Pakistan plans under 'Operation Gibralter' laid in tatters. Most infiltrators were killed or driven out from Kashmir and Haji Pir Pas fell to determined Indian attacks. 'Operation Grand Slam' was launched by Pakistan in Chamb Sector to severe Indian lines of communication to Jammu & Kashmir. Such move was anticipated, and on September 3, 1965, Army Headquarters gave the 'Go Ahead' to put our offensive plans into effect in Punjab Sector, with the primary objective of threatening Lahore.
Barki
The road from Harike (Punjab, India) to Lahore passed through Barki, which was located astride Ichhogil Canal (9.5 km from the International Border and 24 km from Lahore). The Upper Bhuchar Distributary and Hudiara Drain were obstacles enroute to Barki. The buildup areas of Hudiara, Nurpur, Barka Kalan and Barka Khurd lay on approaches to Barki, were well defended and had to be cleared. The defences of Barki were formidable; concrete pill boxes, extensive tunneling and adequate artillery support had converted it into a virtual fortress. The enemy had deployed one company in Barki village, two companies on the East Bank of the Ichhogil Canal and a company of the Reconnaissance and Support Battalion ahead of defences. Barki could challenge the best in any unit.
11 Corps Plan (Operation Riddle)
The Corps was to launch three simultaneous thrusts along the Axes GT Road, Bhikkiwind-Barki and, Bhikkiwind-Khem Karan-Kasur with the aim of securing the East Bank of Ichhogil Canal. 4 Mountain Division, 7 & 15 Infantry Division were orbatted to the Corps. 7 Infantry division was tasked to capture Barki and mop up enemy on east bank of Ichhogil Canal. 48 & 65 Infantry Brigades and Central India Horse (CIH) were allocated for the task at hand.
Advance to Hudiara
Preliminary operations commenced at 0445 hrs on September 6, 1965 and posts held by Satlej Rangers were captured by own troops. By 0700 hrs, 48 Infantry Brigade had contacted enemy defences at Hudiara, and came under effective fire. By 1030 hrs, 6/8 Gorkha Rifles had secured Hudiara Village, but could not progress operations further onto Hudiara Drain due to enemy fire. Meanwhile 5 GUARDS attacked Nurpur by an outflanking maneauver, forcing enemy to withdraw from Hudiara Drain but not before they blew up the bridge spanning 140 feet. The bridge was reconstructed by own engineers by 1545 hrs on September 7.
General Officer Commanding 7 Infantry Division, appreciating that 48 Infantry Brigade had suffered fairly heavy casualties in the battle for Hudiara Drain, switched 65 Infantry Brigade Group into the lead with the task of securing the Ichhogil Canal at Barki.
The Battle of Barki
65 Infantry Brigade Group resumed its advance on to Barki, with 9 MADRAS and a squadron of CIH. 9 MADRAS captured Barka Kalan towards the evening of September 7, 1965. On September 9, 16 PUNJAB captured Barka Khurd and with that the inner defence ring of Barki was laid bare for the main assault. 65 Infantry Brigade planned to carry out attack in two phases:-
 Phase 1.4 SIKH to capture Barki Village.
 Phase 2.16 PUNJAB to capture East Bank of Ichhogil Canal and destroy the Barki Bridge.
4 SIKH, post detailed appreciation decided to take the frontal approach and H Hour was fixed at 2000 hrs on September 10, 1965. When assaulting companies commenced move from FUP, enemy opened up with its mortars, artillery and automatics from the village. Enemy fire was coming from the entire front of the village and also from the Ichhogil Canal Bank. The assaulting companies continued to inch forward towards their objectives through sheer grit and determination. The Sikhs pressed on regardless, systematically silencing one pill box after another. CIH less two squadrons provided aggressive fire support to assaulting troops. By 2110 hours on September 10, the village of Barki was wrested from the enemy.
4 SIKH suffered three JCOs and 20 ORs killed and two officers, one JCO and 93 ORs wounded. Sub Ajit Singh was awarded MVC, posthumously. The battalion was conferred with the Battle Honour 'Barki' and Theatre Honour 'Punjab' for its gallant actions.
While 4 SIKH were battling their way through the village of Barki, 16 PUNJAB were pushing up to the East bank of the Ichhogil Canal in the second phase of the brigade attack. As the battalion reached the outskirts of Barki, it ran into intense enemy shelling and very heavy small arms and automatic fire from concrete pill-boxes. Meanwhile, the tanks of CIH came up and started shooting at the enemy defences. The intensity of the attack forced many of the enemy to jump into the canal, leaving their weapons behind. By 2340 hours on September 10, the unit was in undisputed possession of their objective. The enemy however, managed, to demolish the bridge over the canal before retreating. Lt Col SC Joshi, Commanding Officer of CIH was killed while negotiating an enemy minefield. 16 PUNJAB suffered 21 killed and 50 wounded during the attack. The battalion was awarded the Battle Honour of 'Barki'.
After retreating across the Ichhogil Canal, the Pakistanis, retaliated with a heavy artillery concentration – approximately 2000 rounds on Barki and the canal. Own troops held on. Own artillery was also staged forward and a few shells landed on Lahore, triggering panic and exodus of civilians from Lahore.
Maj Gen HK Sibal, GOC 7 Infantry Division had this to say about the operations (Extracted from Sainik Samachar of January 15, 1966):-
"The enemy resistance was very stiff and the troops did an excellent job of winkling the enemy out of their emplacements and bunkers by lobbing grenades into them and this took quite some doing. The grit and determination displayed by the crew of CIH, was something fantastic. In spite of tanks being crippled in the minefield, they still kept on firing at the enemy and just refused to let him put his head up".
Summing Up
By September 10, 7 Infantry Division of 11 Corps had made a rapier like thrust and created a wedge in enemy territory, with capture of Barki. In addition, own 1 Corps offensive was launched into Sialkot Sector and Shakargarh Bulge, creating multiple vulnerabilities into the heart land of Pakistan Punjab. However, Pakistani offensive by its coveted 1 Armoured Division towards Khem Karan was threatening to outflank own 11 Corps. In days to come, history was to be written in Phillora (Pakistan) and Asal Uttar (India). These battle accounts would be told in subsequent editions of 'Sanik Samachar'.
- Col Rohan Anand
Nice pictures in the link posted above....
ramana
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by ramana »

Excerpt from Air Cdre (R) Jasjit Singh's book

https://www.tribuneindia.com/2007/20070 ... /main1.htm

Posting in full as he provides proper perspective on IAF in 1965 war.
he 1965 India-Pakistan War
IAF’s ground reality

In more ways than one, the 1965 India-Pakistan War was a watershed for the Indian Air Force. Air Commodore Jasjit Singh (retd) looks at the many dimensions of this conflict. Exclusive extracts from his new book

The Indo-Pakistan War of 1965 was the first time in the history of Independent India when our military power was confronted by a hostile air force at a time when Pakistan had launched a surprise invasion into India and, hence, also achieved substantive strategic and tactical surprise.

And, for the first time in its history, the Indian Air Force (IAF) had to contest command of the air against a highly trained Pakistan Air Force (PAF) equipped with aircraft and weapons systems technologically far superior to those of the IAF, courtesy the United States.

The war also created perceptions and misunderstandings about what was done, not done, and should have been done. In particular, it vitiated the relations between the army and the air force well beyond the traditional professional and not-so professional differences that have been experienced among armies and air forces across the world for a century.



Four decades after the war, what we need to address is a couple of critical issues which provide us both an insight into the mythologies built up about the 1965 War as well as some of the major misreading and/or misunderstandings of the type that led a former air chief to come out with his memories of what he believed was the failure of the IAF.

First is the issue of the performance of the IAF in the air war with the PAF. Most of the generous interpretations have been to view the war as a draw – an absence of decisive outcome. For example, the official history of the war produced by the History Division of the Ministry of Defence, Government of India, also concluded, "Taking an overall view of the air war, it appears clear that neither side won any decisive victory. The IAF and PAF mauled each other, but could not kill."

There are three aspects of the performance of the IAF that we need to note. The first is that of air-to-air combat and warfare; the second relates to the air-to- ground mission and its effects; and the third is the issue of whether the IAF had a clear doctrine and strategy for the war, whether this was coherent, and whether it achieved the desired results.

Three important and often ignored contextual facts need to be noted in any analysis of the 1965 War. First, the Indian Air Force was restrained by the government from retaliating to the PAF attacks in the eastern sector while a substantive part of its combat force was deployed there and could not be transferred to the western sector. Second, international (UN) stipulations and norms did not permit military force to be introduced into the Indian state of J&K beyond what was agreed during the 1949 ceasefire. But was the greatest handicap that the IAF faced was the government’s decision to stop all operations against East Pakistan after Pakistan hit our airfields in the eastern sector and destroyed a significant number of aircraft after the war had broken out in the west.

Air warfare

One of the major reasons that have led to the belief that Pakistan "won" the air war is that people have focussed almost exclusively on the aircraft lost. And we lost an inordinately large number of aircraft on the ground to PAF. Attrition is a good indicator of relative success; but the inexcusable error that almost everyone made, and has continued to make – including our official historians (in spite of having senior officers of the IAF available to advise them on technical/professional issues) – follows the Pakistani emphasis on number crunching which tended to show them in better light, especially in view of the significant number of aircraft we lost on the ground. In air warfare, attrition must be measured in relation to the air effort and not just to the number of aircraft held in the inventory.

Pakistan doing so is understandable since the larger number of Indian losses conveys an impression that the Indian Air Force lost out to their air force. Unfortunately, the official history produced by the Indian Ministry of Defence also does exactly that: relying heavily on Pakistani literature, especially John Fricker, and less on our own.

If we take the best data available from all possible known sources, we find that the PAF flew a total 2,364 sorties, according to its official history during the 1965 War.21 Indian official estimates place the total aircraft losses of the PAF at 43 aircraft. This would amount to the PAF having suffered an attrition rate of 1.8189 aircraft lost per hundred sorties flown during the war, that is, an attrition rate of 1.82 per cent.

The IAF, on the other hand, flew 3,937 sorties in the western sector alone and lost a total of 59 aircraft both in the air and on the ground during the war, in the western and eastern sectors combined.22 Its attrition rate works out to 1.4986 aircraft lost for 100 sorties flown. In other words, the Indian Air Force suffered an attrition rate of 1.50 per cent compared to Pakistan’s 1. 82 per cent.

One can hypothesise that the difference is not so marked that we can draw an unambiguous conclusion about the winner and the loser. But considering that the IAF was clearly the bigger air force, though not possessing a 4:1 ratio, as the Pakistanis make it out to be, the PAF experiencing a 21.3 per cent higher attrition rate than that of the IAF clearly makes a mockery of any claims of the PAF having achieved air superiority or of having defeated the IAF.

If we set aside aircraft lost on the ground due to enemy action, we find that India lost a total of 24 aircraft to air action and ground fire. Measured against the 3,937 sorties flown in the western sector, this amounts to a loss rate of 0.6096 aircraft per hundred sorties flown in the war.

Compared to this, the Pakistan Air Force lost 43 aircraft. It admitted to the loss of only one F-86 on the ground to IAF action (at Sargodha). Taking this at face value, against a total of 2,364 sorties flown in the war, the Pakistan Air Force loss rate in air warfare would amount to 1.7766 aircraft for every hundred sorties flown. In other words, the PAF was losing aircraft at nearly three times the rate of the IAF during the war. Other estimates conclude that Pakistan lost close to half a dozen aircraft on the ground on account of IAF air action. In this case, the loss of 37 aircraft in air warfare would amount to a loss rate of 1.5651 aircraft for every hundred sorties flown in the war.

In other words, taking the lower figure for PAF losses in the air, Pakistan was losing 1.57 aircraft for very hundred sorties flown, compared to the IAF losing 0.61 aircraft. Given its overall smaller size, the PAF would have ceased to act as an operational force if the war had gone on for another two weeks or so.

Support to the Army

No other single issue has vitiated the atmosphere of army-air force relations more than the perceived conduct of the 1965 War. It is curious indeed that there was virtually no criticism about the absence of combat air force in the 1962 Sino-Indian War which was not even permitted by the political leadership, especially by the defence minister.

Unfortunately, no data on the air effort devoted to the Chhamb-Jaurian sector in particular and J&K in general, was kept. In fact, the official history does not clearly tell us the quantum of close air support and interdiction carried out by the IAF. But more specifically, the Pakistan Army was virtually stopped in its tracks and "the IAF prevented a major Pakistani breakthrough."

The only explanation that fits the facts is that the IAF had imposed a heavy attrition on Pakistani armour even against the setting sun, and it would have been suicidal for it to proceed further. Akhnur was saved and so was a crucial military-logistics key point on the lines of communications into J&K. This is borne out by circumstantial evidence. But what became the real source of lament about air support was the Indian counter-offensive on September 6, 1965, into Pakistan.

The Indian Army’s 15 Division was launched on the offensive at daylight, along a major highway, without informing the air force! The army commander has been scathing in his criticism of the divisional commander on this count and for not providing the command leadership required. Our division exposed itself to enemy air strikes while the IAF practically knew nothing of the advance and continued carrying out extensive close air support and battlefield interdiction on the other axis of advance to the north and south of the 15 Division thrust.

{The 15th Division commander was Maj.Gen Niranjan Prasad who was himself a former pilot!!!}

Given the doctrinal tensions in the IAF from the time of its creation, it is interesting to look closely at how air operations were actually carried out during the 1965 War.

The first set of questions that arises is: did the air force play a strategic role? And what was the extent of its tactical role and its effects? To the extent that there is sufficient evidence that Pakistan virtually abandoned Grand Slam and its objective of capturing Akhnur due, in a large measure, to the late evening air strikes of September 1, 1965, or at least slowed it down sufficiently to allow adequate defences to be created by otherwise outnumbered forces who fought so gallantly, the Indian Air Force achieved a strategic impact on the course of the war.

The IAF concentrated substantively on interdiction during the war. This has been viewed by many as doctrinally incoherent. Historically, interdiction is of two types: supply interdiction and mobility interdiction. And interdiction provides the greatest payoffs when the two combine. The Indian Army’s strategy forced it to move troops to the Sialkot and Kasur sectors. The toll of its rolling stock taken by the IAF, especially the dramatic strike on the train carrying ammunition, added to the supply woes of Pakistan. In fact, shortage of ammunition was one of the over-riding factors that led to Ayub’s decision to accept a ceasefire. Our intelligence failed to make a correct assessment of Pakistan’s capability to continue the war and avoid a total collapse which actually was imminent.

If we set aside the fiction and myths that have grown, flowing from ill-informed self-criticism, on one side, and the high profile Pakistani self-promotion as the winner of 1965 (on the ground and in the air), on the other, the reality is that the IAF acquitted itself extremely well in spite of local mistakes. Where we failed the most, however, was in not having sorted out our doctrinal contradictions, our organisation for close air support (especially the communications) and infirmities of higher defence organisational deficiencies which had not been fully rectified even after 1962.

Excerpted with permission from
Defence From the Skies: Indian Air Force through 75 years
by Air Commodore Jasjit Singh (retd).
Published by Knowledge World in association with Centre for Air Power Studies.
Pages 280. Rs 2300
These were rectified by 1971 and led to the contribution to the final outcome of liberating Bangladesh.
ramana
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by ramana »

Also after the 4 Vampires were shot down, the Ourugans were also grounded. Which effectively reduced the effective strength.
abhik
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by abhik »

Couple of new videos from the official IAF YouTube channel (don't know if they are from a previous documentary or new): -

vsunder
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by vsunder »

September 7th, coming soon: Day IAF swung into action with bombing raids.

September 13: The famous raid on Peshawar by the Tuskers.

How time has flown, I was all of 10 and located in a city with a major IAF base that also did maintenance with an IAF hospital where casualties both IA and IAF were evacuated. Kids of aircrew flying ops were my classmates. One such classmate later became CO of 106 squadron and was mentioned in dispatches Kargil 1999. His dad was a squadron leader in 1965. My classmate R. S. "Chow" Chaudhry:

http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/IAF/Database/13769

https://www.bharat-rakshak.com/IAF/Gall ... 5.jpg.html

Chow's younger brother also flew helicopters for a HU unit of the IAF. Chow seems to be in good company, previous CO's were W/C Sakharam Benegal, Jagmohan "Jaggi" Nath. The Canberra hit by a Stinger in Kargil 1999 was from this squadron when Chow was in command.

Jaggi Nath got a bar to his MVC in 1971. In 1965 he got a MVC for his recco of the Badin SU radar which later got pasted by Pete Wilson. Jaggi Nath once remarked

"106 squadron is not just an IAF asset but a national asset".
ramana
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by ramana »

ArjunPandit
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by ArjunPandit »

you 'infatuation' if i may say so with 1965 is amazing.. i too didnt realize the full import of this until i started going through this thread..dandwat pranam to you GD
kancha
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by kancha »

Posted a short summary of the 1965 war on Twitter and Wordpress.
May have a look
Blog Link
Twitter Link
ramana
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by ramana »

kancha,
Please read this long pdf with particular attention to the last chapter.

And lets analyze 1965 war using the rules/axioms given in that work. I think it will give new insight to understand Assal Uttar and Chawinda.


LINK
ramana wrote:
ramana wrote:In the 1990s Col Trevor Dupuy had written good books on war and scenarios for civilians to understand flashpoints.

One book by Col Trevor Dupuy


http://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a278728.pdf

Read Chapter 7 to get the over all conclusions.
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by ramana »

In 1965 war was mainly a war in Punjab though it started in Jammu and Kashmir.



Campaign of Lahore Front

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahore_Front

India won because it won three and drew on battle.

The four main battles:


1) Battle of Assal Uttar in India:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Asal_Uttar

Indian Tank and Infantry vs Pakistan Tank and Mechanized Infantry

India won

2) Battle of Burki in Pakistan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Burki

Indian infantry vs Pak infantry in pillboxes and tanks

India won


3) Battle of Phillora in Pakistan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Phillora

Indian tanks vs Pak Tanks

India won

4) Battle of Chawinda Pakistan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chawinda

Indian tanks vs Pak tanks

Inconclusive draw
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by sajaym »

I wonder if there is any software program where in you can take any of the previous wars, add-in current force levels & capabilities and see how the war would play out in the current scenario. BTW, I think BRF should arrange annual 'RED FLAG' conferences/Skype chats where-in we can have a 'Red Force' and a 'Blue Force' engage each other in any of the previous Indo-Pak wars campaigns using current weapons and force levels. We can also simulate some future war scenarios like the ones written by members like Vivek Baweja. Man! I used to love Vivek's scenarios.

Heck, we should even invite some of our paki counterparts so that arm chair generals from both sides can tear each other apart and let off some steam! :D
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by ramana »

Trevor Dupuy was working on such software.
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by Deans »

sajaym wrote:I wonder if there is any software program where in you can take any of the previous wars, add-in current force levels & capabilities and see how the war would play out in the current scenario. BTW, I think BRF should arrange annual 'RED FLAG' conferences/Skype chats where-in we can have a 'Red Force' and a 'Blue Force' engage each other in any of the previous Indo-Pak wars campaigns using current weapons and force levels. We can also simulate some future war scenarios like the ones written by members like Vivek Baweja. Man! I used to love Vivek's scenarios.

Heck, we should even invite some of our paki counterparts so that arm chair generals from both sides can tear each other apart and let off some steam! :D
I've looked for this too when researching for my book `2022, India's 2 front war'. There is none available. Dupuy is a good reference when the two sides have roughly the same capability (like India vs. Pak) but his predictions were way off in Gulf war 1.
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by Deans »

Ramana ji, I look at the 1965 battles slightly differently, though my conclusions are the same. In my opinion the key engagements (series of battles) were:
1. Pre Sept 65 - dealing with Pak infiltrators and capture of Haji pir : Victory for India.
2. Pak attack in Chhamb towards Akhnoor - Draw. Pak gained ground but did not take their objective.
3. Indian offensive towards Sialkot - Victory. We gained ground and defeated their armor with an inferior force.
4. Indian offensive toward Lahore: Victory. Took vital ground, defeated a counter thrust towards Assal Uttar.
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by vsunder »

Deans wrote:Ramana ji, I look at the 1965 battles slightly differently, though my conclusions are the same. In my opinion the key engagements (series of battles) were:
1. Pre Sept 65 - dealing with Pak infiltrators and capture of Haji pir : Victory for India.
2. Pak attack in Chhamb towards Akhnoor - Draw. Pak gained ground but did not take their objective.
3. Indian offensive towards Sialkot - Victory. We gained ground and defeated their armor with an inferior force.
4. Indian offensive toward Lahore: Victory. Took vital ground, defeated a counter thrust towards Assal Uttar.
The Sialkot thrust took place beginning the night of 7/8 September. It was undertaken by 1 Corps under Lt-Gen P.O. Dunn. It was a 4 pronged attack if I recall correctly. Major-Gens Rajinder Singh Sparrow, S. K. Korla, Ranjit Singh and M. L. Thapan were the leaders of the 4 prongs. Thapan achieved the most success by cutting off the Suchetgarh-Sialkot road and thereby relieving some pressure on Chamb. Chamb was touch and go, Akhnoor was the major goal with its iron bridge. But the Pak offensive stalled and then never was pursued with any vigor after that.

1 Corps itself was a newly raised force. It was raised just months before the war: May 1, 1965 at Varanasi and P. O. Dunn MC was its first commander.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajinder_Singh_Sparrow

C-130's dropped Pak commandos around the Pathankot, Adampur and Halwara airfields. But they never linked up. Most of them were captured, either hiding in the sugarcane fields and some dropped into the main area of the Halwara base where they were rounded up. Farmers rounded up many and handed them over to the authorities. A few from the drop at Pathankot escaped to Pakistan. Other than a nuisance value, nothing was accomplished by these commando teams.
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by vsunder »

A good account of these battles is here

https://archive.org/stream/TheSagaOfGri ... e_djvu.txt

S. K. Korla was a DSO, Sparrow a MVC for the Jhangar operations of 1947-1948 (Ops Bison) and Bar for the 1965 ops, Thapan rose to be VCOAS. Dunn had a Military Cross.

Indian 1 Corps constituted 1 Armoured Division (I Armoured and 43 Lorried
Brigades); 6 Mountain Division (69 and 99 Mountain Brigades); 14 Infantry Division
(35, 58 and 116 Infantry Brigades), and 26 Infantry Division (19, 162 and 168 Infantry
Brigades) later beefed up by 52 Mountain Brigade. On induction 35 Infantry Brigade was
part of 14 Infantry Division only for defence of Madhopur Bridge Thereafter it was
placed under command 6 Mountain Division along with 166 Field Regiment and three
tentacles.

1 Armoured Division was Sparrow's outfit. Aha the Lorried Brigades, like the Italian Campaign of the Indian Army in WW2, Ops Diadem in the Liri valley.
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by Aditya_V »

But it shows how naive our leadership was for the first 2 decades of Independence was. Frontline airbases near the Punjab border having no radar coverage that C130 could come in happily.
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by Deans »

Aditya_V wrote:But it shows how naive our leadership was for the first 2 decades of Independence was. Frontline airbases near the Punjab border having no radar coverage that C130 could come in happily.
Yes, that is also why we lost a lot of aircraft on the ground at Pathankot air base. We did have an ineffective (as per Pak accounts) radar at Amritsar.
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by Deans »

vsunder wrote: The Sialkot thrust took place beginning the night of 7/8 September. It was undertaken by 1 Corps under Lt-Gen P.O. Dunn. It was a 4 pronged attack if I recall correctly. Major-Gens Rajinder Singh Sparrow, S. K. Korla, Ranjit Singh and M. L. Thapan were the leaders of the 4 prongs. Thapan achieved the most success by cutting off the Suchetgarh-Sialkot road and thereby relieving some pressure on Chamb. Chamb was touch and go, Akhnoor was the major goal with its iron bridge. But the Pak offensive stalled and then never was pursued with any vigor after that.

1 Corps itself was a newly raised force. It was raised just months before the war: May 1, 1965 at Varanasi and P. O. Dunn MC was its first commander.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajinder_Singh_Sparrow
I think the Sialkot thrust was more like a single pronged attack (as in, north of Sialkot, though the individual divisions moved on separate axis)
with 3 divisions - 1st Armored, 6th mountain and 14th infantry) which took on Pak's 6th armoured and 15th infantry div. The 15th ID had 4 brigades and 4 tank regiments. As our 1st armoured div had fewer tanks than Pak's 6th armoured, or even 15th ID, Pak significantly outnumbered us in tanks in this sector.
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by vsunder »

The Pak codename for the Amritsar radar was "Fish Oil". It was a P-30(M) Soviet vintage radar with W/C Dandapani in charge of the 230 Signals unit. Pak AF attacked it many times including a napalm attack on Sept 9 whose sole damage was a burnt tent as AD unit opened up as the bombing run started and disrupted it. The last serious raid was on Sept 12. after which there was no serious threat to the radar by PAF. If it was not important why did the PAF mount so many raids against it? In all PAF carried out 29 raids against this radar. They also lost an F86 when AD scored a direct hit and it blew up in a fireball killing the pilot. They even sent a ELINT B-57 against it to vector F-86's, the B-57 had its engine hit and was out for the duration of the war. B-57 ELINT was a US Navy aircraft that PAF operated surreptitiously and under false pretence. Another story here. Havaldar Jesudasan of the AD platoon was awarded a Vir Chakra in defending the radar.

There was no Air Chief. The highest ranking Air Force official was Air Marshal Arjan Singh. The post of ACM was created after the war. There was no BSF, border security and intelligence gathering was a State responsibility and so intelligence if gathered if any was funneled via the state police forces, so the nature of infiltration could not be collated and understood properly. The BSF was only raised in Dec 1965 by K. Rustamji as its first commandant who served for 9 years 1965-1974.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khusro_Faramurz_Rustamji

Rustomji also had a hand in setting up the maritime equivalent of the BSF, The Coast Guards which did not exist till after 1965. Again states were responsible for patrolling their part of the coast and no coherent intelligence could be gathered or collated till after 1965. In effect the Indian Coast Guards only came into being in 1978. Many of the recommendations of the Rustamji committee of 1974 on the formation of Coast Guards were implemented.

The second commandant was Aswini Kumar who at independence had achieved a degree of fame in apprehending a bandit Bhupat who would use Pakistan as a safe haven crossing back to India to create mayhem in Saurashtra and Kutch, whom Aswini Kumar successfully liquidated in 1951. Aswini Kumar was commandant for 4 years 1974-1978. These two had the longest tenure for any BSF commandant. Aswini Kumar headed the IOA (Indian Olympic Association) and after the Munich Olympic Games massacre was asked by the International Olympic committee to also advise security for the Olympic Games which he continued to do. He passed away in 2015 after a brief illness. On a personal note I would say I have never met anyone besides Aswini Kumar whose personal library has impressed me so much. He was also a lover of music and one wall of his library had records of very rare performances of Hindustani music. He could be autocratic.

It is OK to sit in 2019 and carp, but people like me who went through the 1961(Goa Liberation), 1962, and 1965 and saw the India of those days think that with the resources available those days what else could one do. It is simply amazing to read how poorly educated young forumites are with regard to LBS etc. Yes LBS did have no cereal days and I esp. remember a long railway trip May 1966 after LBS died, Kanpur to Mangalore when no rice, chapatti was served on the train or for that matter in any railway station. LBS took a firm decision of attacking the international border. LBS earlier as Railway minister in the JLN cabinet took the blame for a horrific accident which had 140+ fatalities in Ariyalur, TN in 1956 and resigned on moral grounds. Later Nitish Kumar did so. It might be symbolic but in a newly independent India such gestures reinforced a person's image and integrity. To date these are the only two railway ministers' who have resigned and taken blame. These actions lead the nation to think of LBS as a man of unimpeachable integrity and served him well when he was made the PM.

They are other facts about radar and night fighting equipment, things like radar equipment was lying in crates in the Bombay docks waiting to be installed etc etc hang them useless buggers, dereliction of duty, night fighting equipment on many Hunters not used and so not working etc etc what ho, old chap and all. Ordnance factories making pressure cookers those days. We could have kissed a** and joined Warsaw Pact, ABCDTO and we could have gotten everything too.

I also remember a scouting trip in 1962, I went to Lucknow and we all stayed in a large room in Old man Keelor's school. This is the father of Denzil and Trevor who ran a small school in Lucknow. One of the nights we had to all sing a special song serenading Mr. Keelor. Trevor was a nasty piece of business in the old days I am told, kicking and being really rough in rugby and a formidable opponent in boxing. Later in NCC days, in the only IIT that had NCC, my senior under officer was M.K. Badhwar, who went on to head Naval Warship design and retired as Vice-Admiral M. K. Badhwar, AVSM, VM
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by vsunder »

^^^ Above I mentioned a B-57 ELINT aircraft used by PAF to locate the Amritsar radar and vector in F-86's. The history as I learned is as follows: The precise technical designation of these aircraft is RB-57B. The US operated U-2 high altitude flights out of Peshawar to spy on the Soviet Union and when the Gary Powers shoot down took place, his U2 had taken off from Peshawar. The Powers shootdown created a gap in the flow of intelligence. The US Navy also operated aircraft out of Peshawar to monitor Russian missile tests. This too was curtailed as there were several incidents of these aircraft straying into Afghanistan and India and Pakistan then denied permission of the use of the Peshawar base to the USN. So the gap in intelligence gathering had reached a serious level. In 1962 USAF approached General Dynamics to configure B-57's for very high altitude intelligence gathering. The reason this aircraft was selected is that PAF agreed to resume intelligence gathering for the US of Russian missile tests and nuclear tests, provided that PAF crew manned this aircraft(you can see how they arm twist) and secondly the aircraft should be similar to one in the PAF inventory. To this the US agreed as it wished to re-start the flow of intelligence. Two such ELINT RB-57B were given to the PAF and I think assigned to 24 squadron PAF based in Peshawar.

One of these RB-57B got a hit in the engine by AD (guarding Fish Oil) on its mission to locate the Amritsar radar and was out for the war. The second RB-57B was operational but suffered from poor readiness levels. One of the first sorties of the PAF against the radar by the PAF had to turn back due to malfunctioning gear in the ELINT aircraft. The second one was used and soon enough hit by AD.
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by Aditya_V »

Sar my comment was not on LBS, but the fact that from 1947-65 we had not set up a proper Radar network on Punjab Border with Pakistan to detect even C-130 size aircraft and even worse 0 Aircraft with radar to intercept it. It was not LBS fault who was hardly 6 months in the job but folks like Krishna Menon and his boss.

Shows how they exposed the country was. Everyone was looking at us to take parts away, in fact even Indonesia expected as to loose and take away Andaman and Nicobar islands based on the 1962 story. Kind of Poland going up with Hungary and Nazi Germany to swallow Czechoslovakia. When a country is weak and has something of value everyone out to get you, a concept which Indian students are deliberately shielded from.

Even in the 2004-14 period we had weakened ourselves so much that the Chinese again started walking over the Border and Pakistan was carrying brazen attacks without reprisal from 2006 on wards.

The lesson in all this we cannot be at peace unless we are strong and break up the country in the West North West to more manage units too small too threaten us.
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by chetak »

vsunder wrote:^^^ Above I mentioned a B-57 ELINT aircraft used by PAF to locate the Amritsar radar and vector in F-86's. The history as I learned is as follows: The precise technical designation of these aircraft is RB-57B. The US operated U-2 high altitude flights out of Peshawar to spy on the Soviet Union and when the Gary Powers shoot down took place, his U2 had taken off from Peshawar. The Powers shootdown created a gap in the flow of intelligence. The US Navy also operated aircraft out of Peshawar to monitor Russian missile tests. This too was curtailed as there were several incidents of these aircraft straying into Afghanistan and India and Pakistan then denied permission of the use of the Peshawar base to the USN. So the gap in intelligence gathering had reached a serious level. In 1962 USAF approached General Dynamics to configure B-57's for very high altitude intelligence gathering. The reason this aircraft was selected is that PAF agreed to resume intelligence gathering for the US of Russian missile tests and nuclear tests, provided that PAF crew manned this aircraft(you can see how they arm twist) and secondly the aircraft should be similar to one in the PAF inventory. To this the US agreed as it wished to re-start the flow of intelligence. Two such ELINT RB-57B were given to the PAF and I think assigned to 24 squadron PAF based in Peshawar.

One of these RB-57B got a hit in the engine by AD (guarding Fish Oil) on its mission to locate the Amritsar radar and was out for the war. The second RB-57B was operational but suffered from poor readiness levels. One of the first sorties of the PAF against the radar by the PAF had to turn back due to malfunctioning gear in the ELINT aircraft. The second one was used and soon enough hit by AD.
the RB-57 was a locally manufactured version of the britshit canberra which India had. The ameriki version was license produced by martin. It also had Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire engines capable of producing 7,200 lbf (32 kN) of thrust, which were license-built in the United States as the Wright J65. Our Canberra had the RR Avon engines.

Image
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by dinesh_kimar »

I don't think we could afford many radars then, when our people were skipping meals on certain days.

Our armoured brigade was equipped with lorries instead of tanks.

The economy was in crisis as agriculture output was flat from 1961-1964, but heavy spending on industry had weakened our finances. The 1962 war has doubled defence expenditure to 4% of GDP, further weakening the balance of payments.

LBS tried some countermeasures, such as green revolution, focus on agriculture, " jai Jawan jai Kisan".

But 2 back to back droughts in 1965-66 did not help matters.

Lesson learnt: first make sure you have enough to eat, before diverting resources for economic growth.

LBS and Indira Gandhi steadily brought us out of the crisis, with focus on agriculture.

Nehru apparently discouraged farmers making profits in agriculture, and thrust towards heavy industry nearly did us in.

The same mould of whiz kids who in 1961 advocated discarding outdated agro economy for heavy industry are similar to guys telling us now abt IOT and AI, and how we must critically jump on the bandwagon.
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by rohitvats »

Vsunder Sir, thank you for excellent posts. Regards.
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by ramana »

Aditya_V, After 1962 debacle, both USAF and RAF held a joint exercise called Operation Shikshak that showed the gaps in radar coverage and that led to the establishment of ADGES (Air Defence Ground Environment System) aka radar and controls system. However this was only partially installed as US pulled out on some pretext.

In hind sight everything is clear.

Vsunder thanks the insights as usual.

Deans If you read the fine print in vsunder second post, 1 Corps was quite under manned.
Indian 1 Corps constituted 1 Armoured Division (I Armoured and 43 Lorried
Brigades); 6 Mountain Division (69 and 99 Mountain Brigades); 14 Infantry Division
(35, 58 and 116 Infantry Brigades), and 26 Infantry Division (19, 162 and 168 Infantry
Brigades) later beefed up by 52 Mountain Brigade. On induction 35 Infantry Brigade was
part of 14 Infantry Division only for defence of Madhopur Bridge Thereafter it was
placed under command 6 Mountain Division along with 166 Field Regiment and three
tentacles.
Basically it 'has 1 Armd with 1 armoured brigade, 1 motorized infantry brigade,
6 Mtn Division with 2 mtn brigades
14 Inf Div with 3 Inf brigades and one was switched to 6th Mtn
26th Inf Division with 3 inf brigades plus 1 Mtn brigade.

So total 1 Armored Brigade plus 9 brigades Plus 1 later.

Facing them were two Pak heavy divisions with 4 brigades each and 6h Armored Division

This was the first time we have an attackers with less than 3:1 and even 2:1.
And worse the defence is more well armed and higher manpower.

The only hope was surprise as Napoleon says Surprise and Morale are an added force multiplier.
But then 1 Armored advance in 20 km decided to settle down for the night and lost the momentum.

Its a tribute to the courage and fortitude that Indian forces won three of the battles and inconclusive at Chawinda.


I keep plugging of this war to be studied in more detail as we learn a lot of lessons.

If you read the historic battles data base book by Dupuy, India would never have won the Punjab campaign.
But all results show it did.
The question is why?
We are at that stage.

Why was the force structure so bad?
Why were there no follow on forces to reinforce the campaign?
Now we understand why RAW was formed as intelligence was faulty and led to bad planning.


Capt. Amarinder Singh and Lt. Gen. TS Gill wrote Monsoon War and it shows how the troops were deployed.
Each formation commander did not believe they would get reinforcements and attacked with the thinnest forces. So instead of a broad spear front it was a thin arrow.
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by vsunder »

Thanks Ramana. 1965 it seemed to me then that the Pakis would be in Delhi soon dictating terms. There used to be all sorts of rumors of agent provocateurs being dropped to poison the water supply and stuff like that during the course of the 1965 war. I remember one night seeing a light slowly moving across the sky and thinking it was a parachutist, of course it was a satellite a new phenomenon in 1965.

Regarding Shiksha, there is a write up by Don Michael on BR who participated in the Western component of Shiksha with the US. The Eastern component over the Bay of Bengal was with the RAF. It was supposed to be a show of strength after the China mess in 1962. Another outcome of the 1962 war was the acquisition of the C-119, the Fairchild Packet to beef up transport. I still remember the characteristic loud drone of the Packet engines interrupting a boring English class. There is an example in the IAF museum at Palam. I think ADGES in its rudimentary form was up and running only in the late 1960's. I found the BR article:


https://www.bharat-rakshak.com/IAF/hist ... sha01.html
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by ramana »

vsunder, Since your a math guru, my plan is to read up Dupuy's book linked above and apply his force ratios and wisdom to the Punjab campaign and see what turns up.
Please read that pdf if you can by month end.
Thanks.
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by vsunder »

Ramana: I am extremely familiar will all this. In fact the very first time I posted on BRF in 1999 was exactly on this topic as applied to Kargil which was raging. I will elaborate on this when I find time. To model these situations it is easier if it is a siege like situation, then the ODE involved(ordinary differential equations) turn out to be simpler. Then one considers the phase plane and sees the disposition of the forces as the battle goes on. I doubt one can get exact solutions to all this, but it is simple to have models with some degree of complication and use MAPLE 18 as on my laptop to draw the phase plane and see. The first person who did all this was a person called Lanchester, and he used an elementary model, simply because that model is exactly integrable and gives rise to the famous Lanchester square Law. This model was used even in the Battle of Britain. It is very simplistic and for example does not allow for the effect of reinforcements.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanchester%27s_laws

When reinforcements are allowed there are discontinuous functions in the ODE system as re-inforcements do not happen continuously. At Iwo Jima, 54,000 on day 1, 6000 on day 3 and 13,000 on day 5. More on this below.
A Russian called Osipov is also credited with analysing this particular system of ODE that Lanchester studied. Lanchester's paper is

F. W. Lanchester, Aircraft in Warfare, the Dawn of the fourth Arm, Tiptree, Constable and Co. Ltd. London 1916.

Another important paper is by D. R. Howes and R. M. Thrall, A theory of ideal linear weights for heterogeneous Combat Forces, Naval Research Logistics Quarterly, vol 20, 1973, pp 645-659

and J, H. Engel, A verification of Lanchester's square Law, Operations Research, vol 2, 1954, pp. 163-171.

Guerilla and conventional force encounters forces serious modification in the Lanchester equations. The orbits of the Lanchester equation in the phase plane are hyperbolas and when they hit one of the axes, that force is wiped out. The key in all this modeling is that there are arbitrary constants in the ODE and its their choice that determines the outcome. In principle one uses different choices of the constants and sees what one gets. I very much doubt Dupuy or anyone else would use anything more sophisticated than this. Trivial stuff really at a conceptual level.

Coming back to Iwo Jima, the ODE you get at least for the American forces has discontinuous terms due to reinforcements coming in on different days. Surprisingly one can still find an exact solution by hand using Laplace transforms and the outcome of the model is very close to what happened in Iwo Jima.

So the question is where can one find all this? There is a beautiful book for very good honors students of mathematics in ODE by Martin Braun and one can find all this is section 4.5 Mathematical Theories of War
where he talks of Lanchester and Richardson and works out Iwo Jima in great detail using Laplace transforms and using USMC data. Last Spring I was given carte blanche to pick any textbook and any syllabus to teach ODE theory to a bunch of 20 undergraduate sophomores, extremely bright. So I used Martin Braun as the textbook and did work out the Iwo Jima example in class.


https://www.amazon.com/Differential-Equ ... 0387978941

As I said these models are simplistic and I do not know what the effect of air action is on the models. Secondly the parameters in principle should not be taken as constants, stopping for the night etc and not pressing the advantage and so on would mean that in reality the parameters are to be also taken not as constants but as time dependent. I will just say a line about the original Lanchester model as it is elementary.
If x(t) is the enemy force at time t, y(t) the friendly force at time t, Lanchester postulated that the ODE connecting them in a simple model is

x'(t)=-A y(t)

y'(t)=-B x(t).

So he says the enemy force is getting depleted at a rate given by the number A times the friendly force and ditto for the friendly force. Such a simple ODE system has the easily given solution(left as an exercise to the reader)
Ay^2(t)-Bx^2(t)=constant
These are hyperbolas and the squares in this relation gives rise to the terminology square law. You start at time t=0 with the initial disposition of forces ( that is at the start of the battle you know x had 40,000 and y had 10,000 and this allows one to compute the constant and then we now can follow the solution curve above as time evolves) that gives the constant and follow the orbit of the hyperbolas till it crosses either the x-axis( y force is annihilated), or y-axis ( x force is annihilated) and that's it. There is no reason A and B should be constants. They could be functions of time, bahut josh agaya to A can increase(A represents the killing efficiency of the friendly force and why should it remain constant, as they get more experienced it will become larger and morale improving will also make it larger, but then if A(t) you will have problems finding exact solutions and that is the rub, and so we can use MAPLE v18.0 for example and get numerical solutions), like morale improving and more Old Monk for example, Adi Kollu. But then if you do not know A(t) you wont know the phase plane picture and will not be able to use MAPLE etc. This is where data can be used to model and find what A was and modify simplistic models above.

For guerilla-conventional, the model is a little bit more complicated. If there are re-inforcements like Iwo Jima the ODE system will be like

x'(t)=-A y(t)(Japanese cannot re-inforce themselves)

y'(t)=-B x(t)+f(t) where f(t) is the re-inforcements as they arrive on different days. See Braun for example.

OK enough with gobblydook.
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by rohitvats »

ramana wrote:vsunder, Since your a math guru, my plan is to read up Dupuy's book linked above and apply his force ratios and wisdom to the Punjab campaign and see what turns up.
Please read that pdf if you can by month end.
Thanks.
ramana, have you see this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_concentration
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by vsunder »

Hi Rohit,
Most of the wiki links you have given is subsumed in my post and explanation in it that goes well beyond the wiki link. In fact I generated several phase plane plots of modern battles and ancient battles with varying initial force concentrations of enemy and friendly and ran MAPLE to generate it to see the outcomes. Ramana has these pictures. You can ask him to send it to you. There are some brief notes in the footnotes explaining the phase plane plots and outcomes.
Staring at these pictures I could prove a small theorem that seems unknown in the literature. I shall phrase it in layman's language.

FACT: 1. In an ancient battle using the Lanchester model, it is possible to have an initial concentration of enemy and friendly forces so that at the end of the battle nobody survives. All killed. (One hears of historical battles where such a thing happened)

2. In a modern battle using the Lanchester model, given ANY initial concentration of friendly and enemy forces, some force will definitely survive.

The proof uses the Picard existence theorem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picard%E2 ... 6f_theorem

The application of the above result to obtain Fact is completely elementary and a few lines and straightforward. I think it is publishable but really who cares and not worth ones time to even formally type it up.

You may actually take a look at the modification to the Lanchester model for salvo mode. This is a discrete model instead of the continuous Lanchester model and adapted to launching aircraft waves from a carrier fleet, cruise missile salvos of naval surface combatants and so on. It was developed at the Naval Postgraduate school in Monterrey, California. There is a probabilistic element also that can be inserted into the equation to model CEP for cruise missiles and the fact that such missiles can be intercepted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvo_combat_model

http://weaponsanalysis.com/docs/SalvoModel.pdf

They have applied this model to the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway, both of them being the first time in history when large naval forces did not make any contact except through waves of carrier borne aircraft. That fits a salvo mode, thinking of aircraft as air artillery coming in discrete waves instead of continuously. There is a copious list of references in the link above. It will be a nice undergraduate thesis for some bright youngster to model the Indo-Pak conflicts, 1965, 1971 and 1999 using these models, in particular the local battles, Khem Karan, Sialkot, Bangladesh campaign etc. More so one could try modeling a conflict in the Indian Ocean between IN and PLAN using these models and see what the outcomes are using current force levels. It is completely doable using a laptop and MAPLE which is extremely powerful.
vsunder
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by vsunder »

Most of what I have posted about the Amritsar radar Fish Oil ^^^^ is from a personal recounting by somebody and also information gathered from a book by Mandeep Singh about Anti aircraft artillery in the war of 1965. The P-30M Soviet radar had a range of 112 miles and could look upto to 40,000 feet. Here is the link to the book Baptism Under Fire

https://books.google.com/books/about/Ba ... LHDgAAQBAJ
ramana
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by ramana »

vsunder thanks for the insights and clarifications.
Rockz as ususal.

BTW the MB war an ancient battle led to almost zero survivors.
So Lanchester ancient battle model is right.
ramana
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Re: 1965 India Pakistan War: History

Post by ramana »

Rohit thanks.

I have a question for you.

In Chapter VI of the 1965 Official War history, there is short description of Maj Gen Niranjan Prasad's plan for 15 Division operations which was different than the Corps plan.
I know he asks for air cover etc but looking at the events turned out what do you think?

I would ask Ravi Rikhye too if I could.

I am getting the feeling that the Lahore was Western Command attack to relieve the pressure on Chamb while the I Corps attack in Sialkot was a Army HQ attack.
So these are two different campaigns.
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