Joe Shearer
PROFESSIONAL
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2009
- Messages
- 27,493
- Reaction score
- 162
- Country
- Location
At this point, before plunging into the narrative relating to the actions of the Indian XI Corps, and then I Corps, one asks oneself: what was Operation Grand Slam, after all? Was it, is it, just a footnote in history?
It is so tempting to dismiss it with the thought that it was a child of the Pakistani military establishment, or at least, that part of it secretly engaged in planning the sequence of events that was to achieve a bigger victory than in the Rann of Kutch. On the other hand, it had an historical and public policy value.
This is the war that Pakistan should have fought, but didn't.
General Malik actually was outnumbered. Far from a conventional 3:1 superiority in numbers, he had fewer infantry battalions. But those who have learnt to use Lanchester equations would have a different story to tell. They would have pointed to the overwhelming superiority in armour, the overwhelming superiority in artillery, and would have said, with this force composition, cutting through a bloated infantry only formation would be as easy as a hot knife through butter. So two armoured regiments with the best contemporary armour, opposed to the light tanks of the Indian 20 Cavalry, a Corps artillery strength against one single solitary field artillery regiment and a troop of big guns: Malik knew precisely what to do, and how to do it. And he was precisely right in his execution.
Thus he put pressure alternately on different points of the Indian front, first, a softening up with ambushes and hit-and-run raids, then, a softening up by massive artillery bombardment, third, probing attacks where the objectives were well-guarded by Indian Army troops, and then the last, fourth phase, the combined arms attack in full strength.
These tactics succeeded in the west, where the Azad Kashmir Brigade softened up the Mahars and the Gorkhas; it succeeded in the south, where the armoured regiment the 11 Cavalry softened up the 6 Sikh LI, and then broke through. It was at the last step, to bear down on 28 Brigade at Akhnoor, and to sweep them aside, that they faltered.
It is so tempting to dismiss it with the thought that it was a child of the Pakistani military establishment, or at least, that part of it secretly engaged in planning the sequence of events that was to achieve a bigger victory than in the Rann of Kutch. On the other hand, it had an historical and public policy value.
This is the war that Pakistan should have fought, but didn't.
General Malik actually was outnumbered. Far from a conventional 3:1 superiority in numbers, he had fewer infantry battalions. But those who have learnt to use Lanchester equations would have a different story to tell. They would have pointed to the overwhelming superiority in armour, the overwhelming superiority in artillery, and would have said, with this force composition, cutting through a bloated infantry only formation would be as easy as a hot knife through butter. So two armoured regiments with the best contemporary armour, opposed to the light tanks of the Indian 20 Cavalry, a Corps artillery strength against one single solitary field artillery regiment and a troop of big guns: Malik knew precisely what to do, and how to do it. And he was precisely right in his execution.
Thus he put pressure alternately on different points of the Indian front, first, a softening up with ambushes and hit-and-run raids, then, a softening up by massive artillery bombardment, third, probing attacks where the objectives were well-guarded by Indian Army troops, and then the last, fourth phase, the combined arms attack in full strength.
These tactics succeeded in the west, where the Azad Kashmir Brigade softened up the Mahars and the Gorkhas; it succeeded in the south, where the armoured regiment the 11 Cavalry softened up the 6 Sikh LI, and then broke through. It was at the last step, to bear down on 28 Brigade at Akhnoor, and to sweep them aside, that they faltered.
