Yeah, the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 was not a great land or air battle. But it did have its moments until the bloody Pakistanis just gave up and keeled over! The '65 War is a much better example of a land battle and an air battle.
Watch this excellent documentary short on the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. Note the bravado of Lt-Gen. A. A. K. Niazi, the Pakistani general officer commanding, at 5:30 when he tells assembled journalists that he will "fight it out to the last." More Pakistani revisionism!
1971 was a great battle.
We. through planning and good tactics, apart from a fine strategy ran through East Pakistan in just
13 days.
No soldier, even if he is a Pakistan, simply gives up. He has to be defeated. And defeated they were - hands down!
Between 90,000 and 93,000 members of the Pakistan Armed Forces including paramilitary personnel were taken as Prisoners of War by the Indian Army.
Illustration showing military units and troop movements during operations in the Eastern sector of the war.
In the western theatre of the war, the Indian Navy, under the command of Vice Admiral S.N. Kohli, successfully attacked Karachi's port in Operation Trident on the night of 4–5 December,[14] using missile boats, sinking Pakistani destroyer PNS Khyber and minesweeper PNS Muhafiz; PNS Shah Jahan was also badly damaged. 720 Pakistani sailors were killed or wounded, and Pakistan lost reserve fuel and many commercial ships, thus crippling the Pakistan Navy's further involvement in the conflict. Operation Trident was followed by Operation Python on the night of 8–9 December,[14] in which Indian missile boats attacked the Karachi port, resulting in further destruction of reserve fuel tanks and the sinking of three Pakistani merchant ships.
In the eastern theatre of the war, the Indian Eastern Naval Command, under Vice Admiral Krishnan, completely isolated East Pakistan by a naval blockade in the Bay of Bengal, trapping the Eastern Pakistani Navy and eight foreign merchant ships in their ports. From 4 December onwards, the aircraft carrier INS Vikrant was deployed, and its Sea Hawk fighter-bombers attacked many coastal towns in East Pakistan including Chittagong and Cox's Bazaar. Pakistan countered the threat by sending the submarine PNS Ghazi, which sank en route under mysterious circumstances off Vishakapatnam's coast reducing Pakistan's control of Bangladeshi coastline.[citation needed] But on 9 December, the Indian Navy suffered its biggest wartime loss when the Pakistani submarine PNS Hangor sank the frigate INS Khukri in the Arabian Sea resulting in a loss of 18 officers and 176 sailors.
The damage inflicted on the Pakistani Navy stood at 7 gunboats, 1 minesweeper, 1 submarine, 2 destroyers, 3 patrol crafts belonging to the coast guard, 18 cargo, supply and communication vessels, and large scale damage inflicted on the naval base and docks in the coastal town of Karachi. Three merchant navy ships – Anwar Baksh, Pasni and Madhumathi and ten smaller vessels were captured. Around 1900 personnel were lost, while 1413 servicemen were captured by Indian forces in Dhaka. According to one Pakistan scholar, Tariq Ali, the Pakistan Navy lost a third of its force in the war.
While India's grip on what had been East Pakistan tightened, the IAF continued to press home attacks against Pakistan itself. The campaign developed into a series of daylight anti-airfield, anti-radar and close-support attacks by fighters, with night attacks against airfields and strategic targets by B-57s and C-130 (Pakistan), and Canberras and An-12s (India). The PAF's F-6s were employed mainly on defensive combat air patrols over their own bases, but without air superiority the PAF was unable to conduct effective offensive operations, and its attacks were largely ineffective. During the IAF's airfield attacks, one US and one UN aircraft were damaged in Dacca, while a Canadian Air Force Caribou was destroyed at Islamabad, along with US military liaison chief Brigadier General Chuck Yeager's USAF Beech U-8 light twin.
Sporadic raids by the IAF continued against Pakistan's forward air bases in the West until the end of the war, and large scale interdiction and close-support operations, and were maintained. The PAF played a more limited part in the operations, and were reinforced by F-104s from Jordan, Mirages from an unidentified Middle Eastern ally (remains unknown) and by F-86s from Saudi Arabia. Their arrival helped camouflage the extent of Pakistan's losses. Libyan F-5s were reportedly deployed to Sargodha, perhaps as a potential training unit to prepare Pakistani pilots for an influx of more F-5s from Saudi Arabia.
Hostilities officially ended at 14:30 GMT on 17 December, after the fall of Dacca on 15 December. India claimed large gains of territory in West Pakistan (although pre-war boundaries were recognised after the war), and the independence of Pakistan's East wing as Bangladesh was confirmed. India flew 1,978 sorties in the East and about 4,000 in the West, while the PAF flew about 30 and 2,840. More than 80 percent of the IAF's sorties were close-support and interdiction, and about 65 IAF aircraft were lost (54 losses were admitted), perhaps as many as 27 of them in air combat. Pakistan lost 72 aircraft (51 of them combat types, but admitting only 25 to enemy action). Of the Pakistani losses, at least 24 fell in air combat (although only 10 air combat losses were admitted, not including any F-6s, Mirage IIIs, or the six Jordanian F-104s which failed to return to their donors). But the imbalance in air losses was explained by the IAF's considerably higher sortie rate, and its emphasis on ground-attack missions. On the ground Pakistan suffered most, with 8,000 killed and 25,000 wounded while India lost 3,000 dead and 12,000 wounded. The loss of armoured vehicles was similarly imbalanced. This represented a major defeat for Pakistan
Pakistan attacked at several places along India's western border with Pakistan, but the Indian army successfully held their positions.[citation needed] The Indian Army quickly responded to the Pakistan Army's movements in the west and made some initial gains, including capturing around 5,795 square miles (15,010 km2) of Pakistan territory (land gained by India in Pakistani Kashmir, Pakistani Punjab and Sindh sectors was later ceded in the Simla Agreement of 1972, as a gesture of goodwill).
On the eastern front, the Indian Army joined forces with the Mukti Bahini to form the Mitro Bahini (Allied forces); unlike the 1965 war which had emphasised set-piece battles and slow advances, this time the strategy adopted was a swift, three-pronged assault of nine infantry divisions with attached armoured units and close air support that rapidly converged on Dhaka, the capital of East Pakistan.
Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Aurora, who commanded the eighth, twenty-third, and fifty-seventh divisions, led the Indian thrust into East Pakistan. As these forces attacked Pakistani formations, the Indian Air Force rapidly destroyed the small air contingent in East Pakistan and put the Dhaka airfield out of commission. In the meantime, the Indian Navy effectively blockaded East Pakistan.
The Indian campaign employed "blitzkrieg" techniques, exploiting weakness in the enemy's positions and bypassing opposition, and resulted in a swift victory. Faced with insurmountable losses, the Pakistani military capitulated in less than a fortnight. On 16 December, the Pakistani forces stationed in East Pakistan surrendered.
Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
