Illusion of victory: In the eyes of the media (September 1965)

[ice_man]

You can consider it whatever you want. Like the example I gave, you could call that a "save the underpants day". Makes no difference.

yup you can sulk all you want that in 22 days you couldn't capture Lahore or Sialkot.

but like the USSR considers Stalingrad a victory so do we.

 

[Bang Galore]

No sense crying over spilt milk, but we messed up by not pushing through with Lahore.

If Lahore had fallen, today we would be holding Pakistan occupied Kashmir.

Going for the jugular has never been an Indian virtue. Briefly in fits and starts, but not a civilizational characteristic.

A good article:

Gibraltar, Grand Slam and war
Cyril Almeida — Updated Aug 30, 2015

This isn’t a week for civilians. Wars old and new will be celebrated and much made of the abilities and wisdom of the Great Protectors. Which is fine, really. What’s a week between friends.

Especially if there’s not much good to say. 1965 was a bad idea taken to perfection, all three stages of it. First came Gibraltar, that silliness of sending irregulars and radicalised civilians over into India-held Kashmir to foment revolution.

When revolution didn’t show up, we got into the business of Grand Slam — sending regular army troops over to wrest a bit of India-held Kashmir and win that most lusted after of victories, a strategic one.

We don’t have to rely on uninformed opinion, because there is a uniformed one available.


Then came actual war across the border, for which we were somehow unprepared and scrambled to fight to a stalemate because the Indians were a bunch of reluctant invaders.

Told you, it’s not a week for civilians. Luckily, we don’t have to rely on uninformed opinion, because there is a uniformed one available.

An eminent one — dripping with medals, reached the highest offices, tasked to write the official tale of 1965 and took two decades to do it. But then he got the funny idea of publishing his 650-page report, which was promptly banned by the army and never heard of again.

It’s a good week to remember the forgotten. Coming to you from a dusty shelf, the words of Lt Gen (retd) Mahmud Ahmed from a tome rather unassumingly and modestly titled History of the Indo-Pak War — 1965.

Tell us, General, what was Operation Gibraltar all about?

“The military aim of launching the guerrilla operations was threefold. Firstly, disrupt Indian civil and military control of the State. Secondly, to encourage, assist and direct an armed revolt by the people of Kashmir against Indian military occupation, and thirdly, to created conditions for an advance by the Azad Kashmir forces into the heart of occupied Kashmir and eventual liberation of IHK.”

So, how’d it go?

“The intelligence directorates were unable to provide any worthwhile intelligence to 12 Division for the guerrilla operations. Each commander of the Gibraltar Forces was given a few names of collaborators whom they were able to contact after infiltration into inside Indian Held Kashmir but their reliability was uncertain. In fact, none came forth to help the guerrilla forces. Therefore, despite undetected infiltration across the Cease Fire Line, all the Gibraltar Forces, with the exception of Ghaznavi, ran into trouble at the very outset of their operations.”

Then what, General?

“In the event, the Gibraltar Forces were unable to initiate any large scale uprisings in IHK as was visualised or hoped. Instead, the Indian Army in Kashmir retaliated violently resulting in the loss of some valuable territory. Undismayed by these losses, [Maj Gen Akhtar Hussain Malik, commander of 12 Division] was able to convince GHQ that the time for the attack he had envisaged through the Munawwar Gap was indeed opportune since the bulk of the Indian Army in IHK was committed in the retaliatory operations in addition to its involvement in counter-insurgency measures. A reluctant GHQ was thus compelled to act in accordance with Gen Akhtar’s proposal by sheer force of circumstances rather than by sound professional reasoning which demanded logical military contingency preparations from the very moment when the decision to launch Operation Gibraltar was first taken.”

How’d one screw-up, Gibraltar, lead to an even bigger cock-up, Grand Slam?

“If anything, the limited guerrilla operation [Gibraltar] served as pinpricks to rouse a slumbering giant as it were, though India initially went into action almost reluctantly with a self-imposed restraint of confining its attacks to the upper parts of Kashmir. Operation Grand Slam was a logical move after the failure of the guerrilla operations.”

Civilian note: Mahmud doesn’t think Grand Slam was a bad idea. He thinks it was not ambitious enough — the army should have gone for Jammu and created a giant Punjabi pincer to gobble up the Indian armed forces. Total victory could have been ours! Oh, generals.

So, err, what happened next?

“The Pakistani high command considered the international boundary with India and the Working Boundary with the State of Jammu and Kashmir inviolable and expected its Indian counterpart also to regard it as such. From the inviolability of the international boundary sprang the policy of ‘no provocation’. Having had all defence works dismantled and the mines removed as part of the Kutch agreement, the GHQ forbade occupation of defences along the Punjab border on the eve of Operation Grand Slam to avoid provoking India into launching an offensive across the international boundary.”

You’re saying we left ourselves open to invasion, General?

“It is a matter of great irony that despite its forward assembly the Pakistan Army still managed to allow itself to be surprised by the Indian attack on 6 September 1965! The Indian build-up (as reaction to Operation Grand Slam), of which there were clear indications since 3 or 4 September, was somehow not taken note of. It was only after listening to an All India Radio broadcast in the evening of 4 September that the Pakistan C-in-C, Gen Muhammad Musa, reached the conclusion that Indian intentions were hostile. Then too the GHQ sent a rather ambiguous signal message to the formations.”

But the fight was heroic, yes?

“Apart from the sheer number of tanks involved, it is well worth asking if the armoured battles were really great by any standard? The fact is both sides lacked skill in handling armour at the operation level.”

In the end, we did get something out of it, right? Right?

“In the case of Pakistan, if it was solution of Kashmir, then we failed; if it was merely to defreeze the issue, then the means employed and risks taken were grossly disproportionate to the results achieved. In the bargain, we got a war which we perhaps did not want and could have avoided.”

So there it is. An official history by an official general in a proper book with maps and diagrams. But who needs history when we’ve got a war to celebrate.

Gibraltar, Grand Slam and war - Newspaper - DAWN.COM

 

[ice_man]

No sense crying over spilt milk, but we messed up by not pushing through with Lahore.

If Lahore had fallen, today we would be holding Pakistan occupied Kashmir.

Going for the jugular has never been an Indian virtue. Briefly in fits and starts, but not a civilizational characteristic.

nope indians went after the juglar in 71 hence the Dhaka fall.

So the intentions were correct implementation in 65 was a failure, that the credit goes to our troops to hold indians at bay.

 

[Windjammer]

are you that fool to believe this kind of your army propaganda?? "for 50 years india iclking its wounds!!??? wow!! don't you know that india didn't sustain any wounds in 1965 war. it was your army and air force which almost lost its nation. even your officials agreed that Pakistan was running out of ammunition and spare parts in 1965 war.

as for 1971, IAF achieved air supremacy in east pakistan... this tells all.

Could, would, should,.....fool does what fool says, Pakistan has been celebrating 6th September defence day since 1966 and not without reason, however, it's you Indians who are being made a fool to celebrate after 50 years something you never achieved.
And yes, IAF achieved air superiority in the Eastern sector because it had a majority of 10 : 1... it fielded ten squadrons of MiG-21s, SU-7s, Gnats and Hunters against a solitary F-86 unit, which in any case was grounded within 48 hours because of runway damage.....however, in West it was a different story where PAF was hitting Indian targets as late as 17th December.
As a military observer put it, PAF whipped Indian asses in the air.....in any case this is off topic as subject is 1965 war.

 

[Bang Galore]

yup you can sulk all you want that in 22 days you couldn't capture Lahore or Sialkot.

but like the USSR considers Stalingrad a victory so do we.

Little knowledge of history would help. USSR did not start the war and Stalingrad was where the German offensive was stopped but then they pushed back all the way to.......Comparisons are so unkind sometimes.......

 

[Foxtrot-Bravo]

not city, but the police station was captured by indian forces.

really
Air incapability, Air denial, Air parity, Air superiority, Air supremacy, which one PAF successfully done over indian air space??? none. of them.
leave indian air space, PAF was unable to attain air denial over their own air space. pakistan was under constant attack by indian AF till the end of the war.

Not just a deserted Police Station but we captured the whole Khem Karn town dude.

 

[ice_man]

Little knowledge of history would help. USSR did not start the war and Stalingrad was where the German offensive was stopped but then they pushed back all the way to.......Comparisons are so unkind sometimes.......

Stalingrad did break the moral of the Germans. and was hailed as a great stand by the Soviets. that turned the tide etc etc

so yes 50 kilometers of land 22 days to win it over and yet failure. really does rank up there with Stalingrad.

and not to forget no "hostile weather".

 

[Foxtrot-Bravo]

Could, would, should,.....fool does what fool says, Pakistan has been celebrating 6th September defence day since 1966 and not without reason, however, it's you Indians who are being made a fool to celebrate after 50 years something you never achieved.
And yes, IAF achieved air superiority in the Eastern sector because it had a majority of 10 : 1... it fielded ten squadrons of MiG-21s, SU-7s, Gnats and Hunters against a solitary F-86 unit, which in any case was grounded within 48 hours because of runway damage.....however, in West it was a different story where PAF was hitting Indian targets as late as 17th December.
As a military observer put it, PAF whipped Indian asses in the air.....in any case this is off topic as subject is 1965 war.

Lol, 2 days ago some Bangali mate posted a thread that Indian even didn't know where most of the aircrafts of PAF were and that IAFs intel was poorly arranged.

I think you Chuck Yeager? Huh? Well go search about him and his views over areal war in 1971.

 

[Bang Galore]

Stalingrad did break the moral of the Germans. and was hailed as a great stand by the Soviets. that turned the tide etc etc

so yes 50 kilometers of land 22 days to win it over and yet failure. really does rank up there with Stalingrad.

and not to forget no "hostile weather".

You forget, you started it, presumably with the expectation of a victory. Staving off defeat is, not in such cases, something to boast of.

 

[Foxtrot-Bravo]

The kargil Conflict is called a War - even by Pak posters.

This involved crossing the LC by Pak troops.

Who started this Kargil war ? .. Pakistan

Howcome when Pak did the same thing in 65 you choose to ignore it & do not accept the fact that Pak started the war !!

It wasn't a war. It was just an operation like your General just yesterday gave a statement that India should be preparing for a limited war. Well, Operation Gibraltar wasn't even a limited war just a covert operation to which India turned into a full scale war to pretend to the world that India is a victim and an innocent being invaded.

 

[vsdoc]

A good article:

Gibraltar, Grand Slam and war
Cyril Almeida — Updated Aug 30, 2015

This isn’t a week for civilians. Wars old and new will be celebrated and much made of the abilities and wisdom of the Great Protectors. Which is fine, really. What’s a week between friends.

Especially if there’s not much good to say. 1965 was a bad idea taken to perfection, all three stages of it. First came Gibraltar, that silliness of sending irregulars and radicalised civilians over into India-held Kashmir to foment revolution.

When revolution didn’t show up, we got into the business of Grand Slam — sending regular army troops over to wrest a bit of India-held Kashmir and win that most lusted after of victories, a strategic one.

We don’t have to rely on uninformed opinion, because there is a uniformed one available.


Then came actual war across the border, for which we were somehow unprepared and scrambled to fight to a stalemate because the Indians were a bunch of reluctant invaders.

Told you, it’s not a week for civilians. Luckily, we don’t have to rely on uninformed opinion, because there is a uniformed one available.

An eminent one — dripping with medals, reached the highest offices, tasked to write the official tale of 1965 and took two decades to do it. But then he got the funny idea of publishing his 650-page report, which was promptly banned by the army and never heard of again.

It’s a good week to remember the forgotten. Coming to you from a dusty shelf, the words of Lt Gen (retd) Mahmud Ahmed from a tome rather unassumingly and modestly titled History of the Indo-Pak War — 1965.

Tell us, General, what was Operation Gibraltar all about?

“The military aim of launching the guerrilla operations was threefold. Firstly, disrupt Indian civil and military control of the State. Secondly, to encourage, assist and direct an armed revolt by the people of Kashmir against Indian military occupation, and thirdly, to created conditions for an advance by the Azad Kashmir forces into the heart of occupied Kashmir and eventual liberation of IHK.”

So, how’d it go?

“The intelligence directorates were unable to provide any worthwhile intelligence to 12 Division for the guerrilla operations. Each commander of the Gibraltar Forces was given a few names of collaborators whom they were able to contact after infiltration into inside Indian Held Kashmir but their reliability was uncertain. In fact, none came forth to help the guerrilla forces. Therefore, despite undetected infiltration across the Cease Fire Line, all the Gibraltar Forces, with the exception of Ghaznavi, ran into trouble at the very outset of their operations.”

Then what, General?

“In the event, the Gibraltar Forces were unable to initiate any large scale uprisings in IHK as was visualised or hoped. Instead, the Indian Army in Kashmir retaliated violently resulting in the loss of some valuable territory. Undismayed by these losses, [Maj Gen Akhtar Hussain Malik, commander of 12 Division] was able to convince GHQ that the time for the attack he had envisaged through the Munawwar Gap was indeed opportune since the bulk of the Indian Army in IHK was committed in the retaliatory operations in addition to its involvement in counter-insurgency measures. A reluctant GHQ was thus compelled to act in accordance with Gen Akhtar’s proposal by sheer force of circumstances rather than by sound professional reasoning which demanded logical military contingency preparations from the very moment when the decision to launch Operation Gibraltar was first taken.”

How’d one screw-up, Gibraltar, lead to an even bigger cock-up, Grand Slam?

“If anything, the limited guerrilla operation [Gibraltar] served as pinpricks to rouse a slumbering giant as it were, though India initially went into action almost reluctantly with a self-imposed restraint of confining its attacks to the upper parts of Kashmir. Operation Grand Slam was a logical move after the failure of the guerrilla operations.”

Civilian note: Mahmud doesn’t think Grand Slam was a bad idea. He thinks it was not ambitious enough — the army should have gone for Jammu and created a giant Punjabi pincer to gobble up the Indian armed forces. Total victory could have been ours! Oh, generals.

So, err, what happened next?

“The Pakistani high command considered the international boundary with India and the Working Boundary with the State of Jammu and Kashmir inviolable and expected its Indian counterpart also to regard it as such. From the inviolability of the international boundary sprang the policy of ‘no provocation’. Having had all defence works dismantled and the mines removed as part of the Kutch agreement, the GHQ forbade occupation of defences along the Punjab border on the eve of Operation Grand Slam to avoid provoking India into launching an offensive across the international boundary.”

You’re saying we left ourselves open to invasion, General?

“It is a matter of great irony that despite its forward assembly the Pakistan Army still managed to allow itself to be surprised by the Indian attack on 6 September 1965! The Indian build-up (as reaction to Operation Grand Slam), of which there were clear indications since 3 or 4 September, was somehow not taken note of. It was only after listening to an All India Radio broadcast in the evening of 4 September that the Pakistan C-in-C, Gen Muhammad Musa, reached the conclusion that Indian intentions were hostile. Then too the GHQ sent a rather ambiguous signal message to the formations.”

But the fight was heroic, yes?

“Apart from the sheer number of tanks involved, it is well worth asking if the armoured battles were really great by any standard? The fact is both sides lacked skill in handling armour at the operation level.”

In the end, we did get something out of it, right? Right?

“In the case of Pakistan, if it was solution of Kashmir, then we failed; if it was merely to defreeze the issue, then the means employed and risks taken were grossly disproportionate to the results achieved. In the bargain, we got a war which we perhaps did not want and could have avoided.”

So there it is. An official history by an official general in a proper book with maps and diagrams. But who needs history when we’ve got a war to celebrate.

Gibraltar, Grand Slam and war - Newspaper - DAWN.COM

Moral of the story.

The next time around there will be no reluctance.

Kargil by its scope and execution proved that the Pakistanis recognized the same.

We are one people. Both equally intelligent.

 

[dray]

Yeah. You were claiming a false victory. I corrected you.

Give it a rest mate, for fifty years, India has been l;licking it's wounds and living under the humility of being beaten by a much smaller nation, now since Modi has come to power, your history is being re-written again, like Indians were flying 5000 years earlier and all that nonsense, now after sulking for the last 50 years, Indians have suddenly realised to celebrate 1965 war.
As for the air superiority, even for 1971, IAF admitted that most air battles took place over India......what does that tell you. !!!

1965 Indo-Pak war:

Pakistani objective of war: Capture Kashmir.
Result: FAILED.

Indian objective of war: Defend Kashmir.
Result: ACHIEVED.

Results are clear.

 

[third eye]

Kargil was a war because of the intense buildup along the LoC that eventually turned into armed combat limited to LoC. that turned "skirmishes" across the LoC into a full blown out war.

LoC is fair game. hence entering Siachen by indian troops is also considered a war yet limited to a specific theater.

shelling across the LoC and even currently across the actual border it is not war it is "violations".

You are intentionally beating about the bush.

It wasn't a war. It was just an operation like your General just yesterday gave a statement that India should be preparing for a limited war. Well, Operation Gibraltar wasn't even a limited war just a covert operation to which India turned into a full scale war to pretend to the world that India is a victim and an innocent being invaded.

ha ha..

Hum karein to Character Dheela hai !!

 

[Tipu7]

the land war was stalemate, but in the air, PAF dominated....... so in air it can be termed pakistan's victory.

Also sea ..........

 

[al_asad_al_mulk]

not city, but the police station was captured by indian forces.

really
Air incapability, Air denial, Air parity, Air superiority, Air supremacy, which one PAF successfully done over indian air space??? none. of them.
leave indian air space, PAF was unable to attain air denial over their own air space. pakistan was under constant attack by indian AF till the end of the war.