Its funny Indians tend to ignore that NLI was a paramilitary force & wasn't even part of the army back then, yet those sons of Gilgit Baltistan stood their ground in the face of a numerically superior force of indian army backed by artillery & air support. NLI was ordered to abandon its positions by the high command, when nawaz sharif was pressurized by clinton administration, infact sect of state was the one who prepared the statement to be issued by Pak govt.
Civilian govt should have been consulted, that was a huge mistake, otherwise NLI had indians by their throats. If Indians were such superheroes which their fantasy media claims them to be then why they couldn't clear some peaks including 5353 still in Pakistani control. The ones indians claim to have captured were those abandoned by NLI under orders from high command as this is what the int'l community wanted, indians can claim whatever they want to feed their public, their officers involved in the conflict know the reality & have on occasions severely criticized their official govt stance of victory in that limited war.
Why just 5353.IA re captured more than 100 peaks in 3 sectors of kargil including Tiger Hill and Tololing.5353 is situated directly on LOC not inside Indian Territory and surrounded by 3 Indian Posts,troops on 5353 were pounced by IA artillery in early 2000 which resulted in 40 ~ Pak casualties,first they were flushed out by smoke shells then air burst rounds.
As for re capturing this lone post,it's not about the mettle of IA,we annexed this entire region including Turtok in 1971 and forced pak to sign humiliating shimla agreement converting CFL into LOC in our Favor.
Can I get the direct link to this article? Please!
@Jamwal's
Department of National Security Affairs - Naval Postgraduate School
@Jamwal's - excellent read.
The conclusion - Holding the high ground does not ensure victory...... The Indian Army changed the theory.
Some peaks which troops scaled with the help of ropes and hours of crawling are now been been connected with Kaccha Roads so that our BMP 2 could reach the peaks within Hours,if need arise.
Road construction on few kargil heights
The guns of Kargil
Behind the infantry's heroism lay the artillery's prowess.
Raj Chengappa
August 9, 1999 | UPDATED 18:58 IST
A +A -
Brigadier Lakhwinder Singh, Lucky for short, makes no apologies for his tactics. The commander of the artillery brigade of India's 8 Mountain Division admits what he did was akin to using a sledgehammer to shell a peanut.
After all when has a powerful gun like Bofors, capable of hurling over 40 kg of deadly explosive to a distance of over 30 km, ever been used like a sharpshooter to knock down well-entrenched enemy soldiers sitting on top of peaks? Or which recent battle has seen over 100 artillery guns both big and small lined up and fired simultaneously to pulverise the enemy in a small target area into submission?
This was the untold story. While the infantry came in for much praise, it was the artillery that worked hard to soften up the enemy. In a war the ends usually justify the means. Singh unabashedly admits that he took a page out of history to use what even his Corp Commander Krishan Pal describes as " one of the most innovative artillery tactics to win a war".
He remembers reading how famous warriors like Babar and Ranjit Singh employed rows of master gunners to fire cannonballs directly at the enemy. His logic: if such simple tubes could be utilised in controlled direct firing then why not sophisticated gun systems?
So he first tried out the technique during the battle for Tololing. A battery of six guns were lined up and told to make direct hits at targets on top of the peak where Pakistani intruders were holed up. It made the final assault by the infantry much easier - casualties were lower too - to give India its first major victory in the Kargil war.
TOP SHOT: Lakhwinder (second from left) with commanders
Yet it was on a neighbouring peak called Point 5140 where Singh's brigade demonstrated how an ancient war tactic still held good. Singh ordered all available guns, including Bofors, 105 mm field guns and 120 mm mortars, to line up.
In all they numbered over 100. He then told his gunners to fire them continuously at the positions held by Pakistanis on the heights. Singh even had rockets launched against them. So effective was the firepower that the infantry was able to regain the positions without a single casualty.
With the infantry getting more confident of the artillery's prowess it was even willing to cut down the safety margins and take some daring risks. Normally the soldiers stay at least 350 m away from a spot towards which the shells are directed. But with the guns proving so accurate they would call for shelling even when they ventured to within 50 m of the targeted enemy positions.
It was night when the brigade targeted Tiger Hill and the entire sky lit up like Diwali as they resorted to nonstop firing for several hours. The pounding saw the Pakistani soldiers running for cover though many of them were killed by the deadly fusillade. Intercepts of conversations had one of them saying:
"Hell has fallen on us."
The continuous firing made the infantry's task of capturing the hill much easier. Major-General Mohinder Puri, general officer commanding of the 8 Division, acknowledges that "it was the preponderance of the artillery fire that helped us score many victories".
The brigade has one regret though. It just could not silence the big guns of the Pakistanis. The result:
splinters caused almost 80 per cent of the Indian casualties.
Without a sophisticated weapon-locating radar, which Pakistan had, the Indian Army had to depend on the conventional method of observers perched at vantage points and directing the fire. But they were unable to cause telling damage.
There were other problems too. Because of the rarefied air and strong wind currents in the upper atmosphere, the accuracy of the Bofors gun, especially over longer distances of 20 km or more, caused problems. Singh dismisses them as minor hitches. There was such a demand for the Bofors gun that while in the beginning there were barely 25, by the end of the war the number had swelled to 100. Not bad for a gun whose name had become infamous for other reasons.