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PRELUDE TO THE 1965 INDIA-PAKISTAN WAR
By Colonel George L. Singleton, USAF, Retired
In my previous article you read about how I was wounded in the Rann of Kutch on January 31,1965. Now let me proceed to share little known facts of how we at the US Embassy then in Karachi, West Pakistan coordinated with the US Embassy in India to try to have a semblance of a wartime plan to try to deal with stopping the 1965 India-Pakistan War and an evacuation plan for the US intelligence base, the 6937th USAF Security Service Communications Group located just outside Peshawar in northern Pakistan.
The Indians noticed for the first time in January 1965 that Pakistani security forces were patrolling below the Indian claimed border line in the Little Rann of Kutch near the Arabian Sea coast. Pakistan patrolling south of Kanjarkot seemed to have been going on for a while without the Indians being aware. This sudden Pakistani occupation of Lanjarkot upset a long-standing status quo. Thus when Indian patrols discovered that Pakistani posts had been established in the area claimed by India, Pakistan was accused by India in January 1965 of aggression in the Rann of Kutch.
On Sunday January 31, 1965 two Pakistani friends of mine who were cousins to each other, one with the Pakistani Foreign Office and the other with Pakistan International Airways (PIA) were my hosts for a boar hunt in the Little Rann of Kutch. We were traveling in a PIA Land Rover open truck. We drove right into a totally unknown to any of us hot spot where Pakistani security forces should not have been and where Indian forces had decided that day to fire on the Pak interloping forces. We drove into that hot firing area quite innocently...and of course never got to the boar hunt area my hosts had hoped to find.
Indian fire blew another Pakistan truck into our oncoming toward it Land Rover Truck, wounding all of us in our vehicle.
To review further historic background: India had lodged unbeknownst to us a protest during January, 1965 against Pakistan for increased patrolling activity throughout January 1965 within the Indian sector of the Little Rann of Kutch. By mid-February 1965, Pakistani forces had dug themselves in around Kanjarkot which was previously unoccupied although President Ayub Khan of Pakistan claimed that Pakistan had long occupied it.
India moved large forces into the disputed territory during the months of JanuaryApril 1965, established forward military posts therein and carried out full-scale land, sea and air maneuvers in the vicinity, thus forcibly demolishing the status quo. Both sides built up the forces available to them in the area, manned strong points, and shifted defense responsibility from border units to the army.
The Indian response of occupying new posts near the frontier and, reportedly, building a bare base airstrip nearby brought the crisis to a head.
As further background President Kennedys India policy according to later day Pakistani military historians resulted in disturbing the military balance in the sub-continent to Pakistans disadvantage and had consequently strained Pakistan-America relations. In any event, Pakistan sought closer relations with Communist China.
Pakistans deteriorating relations with the US and India were very closely watched by both communist powers. As far back as 1960 Soviet Ambassador to Pakistan Mihail Kapitsa reportedly told the Pakistanis: We support India and Afghanistan against you because they are our friends, even when they are wrong. But your friends do not support you, even when they know you are right.
Pakistan wanted to reconcile her relations with the Soviet Union so that the USSR encouragement to Afghans for Pashtunistan might be stopped. The Soviet Union conversely wanted to improve relations with Pakistan in order to weaken the SEATO and CENTO alliances constructed by the US on the Soviet Union Southern flank.
Concurrently Pakistan also turned towards China. Pakistani Foreign Minister Z.A. Bhutto (who had become an internal political threat and rival to Pakistan President Ayub Khan) declared that We will not barter or bargain Chinese friendship away for anything. During 1963-64, China became the largest importer of Pakistani cotton. Ironically USAID in Pakistan had helped fund and provided technologists to enable Pakistan to develop cotton as a cash crop.
I well remember a young man named Bennie Dietimier from Prattville, Alabama, then a major cotton textile city. Bennies job was to import Pakistani cotton to his employers textile mills in Prattville. Since I was born in Montgomery, which is very near the textile town of Prattville in Alabama I became friends with Bennie, who was as a German orphan adopted and taken to Alabama from Germany by a US Air Force Captain and his wife after WW II.
On March 1, 1963 it was announced that Pakistan and Communist China had reached agreement about their common border. According to this treaty about 750 sq. miles of territory under the actual control of China was ceded to Pakistan while Pakistan had to do nothing in return. On May 17, 1963, Chou En-lai declared that China Would defend Pakistan throughout the world for Pakistan defended China in SEATO and CENTO. This statement by Communist China is baffling to say the least as our 6937th USAF Security Service Communications Group mission was to collect intelligence related to both the Soviet Union and Communist China, our two major Cold War adversaries. Perhaps Chinas statement reflected the episodic border clashes which the Soviets were periodically having with Communist China on their common border between Siberia and Mongolia.
What is generally believed to have led to great unhappiness between the US and Pakistan was the move for an air link between China and Pakistan. An agreement was signed in 1964 between China and Pakistan wherein Pakistan was given air traffic rights at Canton and Shanghai in exchange for air traffic rights for China at Karachi in West Pakistan and Dacca in East Pakistan. This was the first air agreement signed by China with any non-Socialist country. Pakistan said this agreement merely was a business proposition. China was happy with this air accord because she then was engaged in a campaign to win over the Afro- Asian countries in her stand against India regarding the China/India border clash dating from 1960.
Pakistani Airline flights provided a quick means of transport between China and many countries in the Middle East and Africa. The United States seemed to be losing patience with Pakistan over this new air accord in 1964 and held up a pending $ 4.3 million loan for Pakistani airport improvements. But, in fact, at the same time the United States intelligence gathering program inside Pakistan was able to get the Government of Pakistan, as owner/operator of Pakistan International Airways, to allow the US to install some wind sampling equipment on the surface of some PIA flights newly going into China. Wind sampling was and still is used today to check fall out from
nuclear tests for national security purposes.
Whatever we Americans thought in 1964/65 about Pakistan relations with Communist China, our government was not then prepared to reconcile itself to the new Sino-Pakistan friendship.
Another example of Pakistans deteriorating relationship with the US was demonstrated by the Pakistan attitude at the SEATO Council Meeting held in Manila in mid April, 1964. Pakistan due to its obsession and preoccupation with their perceived Kashmir/Indian threat refused to made a military contribution to SEATO. Pakistan President Ayub Khan complained: Now Americans do not hesitate to let down their friends. Today their policy is based on opportunism and is devoid of moral quality.
I must note that at this time the US was refusing demands from Pakistani Foreign Minister Z. A. Bhutto to be shown the inside of the US intelligence operations at our Peshawar base. And the US was refusing to schedule missions of the RB-57F to over fly Kashmir for Pakistan to gather anti-Indian military intelligence. It seemed
to me then that the leadership of Pakistan was the rawest of opportunists.
***Looking at how the US and the rest of the world in a post Cold War sense today deal in a free enterprise sense with a less strident China one can of course today view past history differently if you choose to. But at the time, in the 1960s, the Cold War was a hot, hostile process which also included the start up of the then long running Vietnam War.
It is important to note that after CIA Pilot Gary Powers was shot down in a U-2 over the USSR in May 1960, which U-2 flight originated from the Pakistani Air Base in Peshawar, President Eisenhower had subsequently suspended indefinitely use of the U-2 from inside Pakistan. Instead the US and Pakistan began using the B-57 as a replacement intelligence gathering platform. In June, 1964, two specially built and adapted to over 100,000 foot high altitude flight RB-57F aircraft were loaned, at no cost, absolutely free, to the Pakistan Air Force for use in our joint intelligence gathering over the USSR and Communist China. The two RB-57F aircraft were maintained and repaired in Pakistan entirely by the US at this time.
Two Royal Air Force pilots were trained in Texas to fly the RB-57F. These same two RAF pilots in turn helped train Pakistani Air Force pilots to fly the RB-57F. These same two RAF pilots also from time to time flew Pakistan reconnaissance missions for the US in these RB-57Fs. Remember that various versions of the B-57 had long been in the Pakistan Air Force air fleet, starting with the RAF English Electric Canberra B-57. Thus some Pakistan Air Force pilots mainly needed upgrade training to fly the uniquely built and adapted RB-57F. Critical differences the Pakistani pilots had to newly deal with to fly the RB-57F were the state of the art high altitude pressure suit they had to wear and the very large wing span used to gain very high altitude, in excess of 100,000 feet.
Now to the heart of the joint meeting of the US Pakistan and Indian Embassy staff held at the US Embassy in Karachi during March, 1964. I attended these meetings over several days together with my commanding officer, Colonel Thomas C. Hyde, USAF, who came down from our intelligence base at Peshawar.
Both US Ambassadors to Pakistan Walter P.McConnaughy, Jr. and Chester Bowls, US Ambassador to India, felt that their staff and related military aid mission teams needed to do some face to face what if scenario planning as in early 1965 India and Pakistan hostilities were episodically flaring up from the Rann of Kutch up to the disputed Kashmir northern in common border.
Certainly I was not allowed to take notes so this reminiscence is from memory alone. Among those attending the joint US Pakistan and Indian team meeting in Karachi were US Air Attaché to Pakistan Colonel Williams; US Naval Attaché to Pakistan Captain Miller; and Major General George Ruhlen, Chief of the US Military Advisory Assistance Group to Pakistan; Mr. Jack Schaffer and Commander Howard Amrine, USN, Retired, the CIA Team Chief and Deputy Chief for Pakistan at the US Embassy. I cannot recall the names of the US counterparts from the US Embassy in New Delhi. What I do recall is the senior ranking US Embassy in India official at the Karachi US Embassy meeting was the First Secretary from the US Embassy in New Delhi, India.
The meeting focused on two near term issues:
1. How could the US even handedly dampen the then on going military hostilities between Pakistan and India, which were stopping and starting irregularly at that time? I recall a partial answer was to cut off both nations resupply of US military parts and ammunition, which was done in due course.
2. What would be the evacuation plan for the civilian personnel and families as well as US forces stationed at the US Air Base at Badabur, just outside Peshawar, the 6937th USAF Security Service Communications Group. This topic was what brought my commanding officer down from Peshawar with me already permanently stationed at the US Embassy as his base USAF Liaison Officer.
My official identification was as Commander, Detachment 2, 6937th USAF Communications Group based at Karachi. I was promoted while serving in Pakistan from Second to First Lieutenant in February 1963, but for better or worse I was filling a Lt. Colonels slot with broad based US duties with Pakistani military and government agencies throughout Karachi as well as with three air fields I did business with: Maripur Pakistan Fighter-Bomber Air Base, where our USAF RB-57F reconnaissance aircraft were based most of the time; with the Karachi Civil Airport, where we had broad relations with Pakistan International Airways; and with Drigg Road Pakistan Air Base, which was the equivalent of our Wright Patterson US Air Base in Ohio. Drigg Road PAFB was a technology and maintenance/repair base of in common use and benefit at that time.
After this long historic background introduction and the brief description of our two US Embassies 1965 emergency meeting, I will summarize the 6937th Base evacuation plan/outcome.
The US CIA Country Team Chief, Mr. Jack Schaffer, who attended this emergency series of meetings, together with his CIA in country deputy, retired Navy Commander Howard Amrine, had been working with me to update and rewrite the evacuation plan for the US Air Base in Peshawar. We had planned for an airlift from Peshawar down country and out through Karachi. But, at and during our meetings the US Embassy teams for both Pakistan and India concluded that we all had to admit that things were already greatly out of control and unlikely to be tamed soon. Thus the plan was reshaped on the spot during these meetings (which lasted a few days within one week) and a different route USAF airlift was agreed upon. The USAF airlift was to come directly to Peshawar from and directly return to Turkey.
Looking at the map of SW Asia as it existed then we had the ability to negotiate quietly with the Pakistan Air Force directly in Peshawar (the PAF HQ was then based in Peshawar, near our 6937th Base) the over flight from within Turkey, a key CENTO ally, through/over Iran, then also a key CENTO ally into Peshawar where American civilians and family members and some military personnel were air evacuated out of country back to Turkey.
My US Embassy in Karachi USAF job ended May 28, 1965 when I rotated after 18 month back to the States. The evacuation airlift occurred in mid-summer 1965, after a particularly ferocious Indian Air Force vs. Pakistani Air Force battle over Peshawar, during which some Indian Air Force bombs fell in the vicinity of our US non-flying base at Badabur.
I heard from several friends who were still at the 6937th Base outside Peshawar that they had dug slit trenches for air raid purposes and had to use them on the day of this summer, 1965 heavy air engagement.
Some GI humor to help conclude this article, my fourth of twelve planned articles. The slit trenches on the grounds of the 6937th USAF Security Service Communications Group Base in Peshawar were filled with rain water at the time of the air battle. The air raid siren went off and my friends dashed outside and dove into the trenches...to discover a great deal of mud. My mental picture of these several friends coming up for air from several inches of water covered in mud then and now makes me chuckle. However the circumstances at that time were certainly no laughing matter.
In my future fifth of twelve Cold War Era contributions to THE COLD WAR TIMES I will delve into background events and circumstances which to my knowledge are unlikely to have ever been made of record. Stay tuned.
***Lieutenant George L. Singleton, regular USAF, Commanded Detachment 2, 6937th USAF Security Service Communications Group, based at the US Embassy in Karachi, then West Pakistan. Lt. Singleton held one of the most unique overseas assignments then in existence in the Air Force. His unique work as an undergraduate college Student Intern with career US Civil Service status in the Bureau of Northwest African Affairs in the US Department of State writing country briefing papers on Tunisia, Morocco, and Libya gave him unique exposure to Muslim culture and events which played into his very junior rank assignment into a Lt. Colonels billet at the US Embassy in Karachi in 1963. Today Colonel George L. Singleton, USAF, is retired from 6 years active and 25 years reserve service. Among his major reserve years duty was being the reservist mobilization assistant to the J-4, with overlapping duties with the J-5, at HQ US Special Operations Command Headquarters in Tampa, Florida. Mr. Singleton is also retired from 25 years in US Civil Service where he worked for the US Department of State; the US
Public Health Service; and the US Department of Veterans Affairs. Mr. Singleton helped found the first ever National Defense Medical Service (NDMS) program statewide in Alabama as the US Department of Veterans Affairs Manager for all of Alabama, in conjunction with local hospitals statewide; with various Alabama fire and police departments; with the US Public Health Service; with the Federal Emergency Management Agency; and in conjunction with the US Department of Defense both active duty and reserve/National Guard forces inside Alabama. Singleton is also a former New York City based International banker, having served as a Senior Territory Assistant in the Asia Section of the old Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company, since merged into JP Morgan Chase Bank. Mr. Singleton did his undergraduate degree at the University of Alabama and did MBA graduate business studies at New York University and the University of Tennessee. He is a graduate of the USAF Air War College and a graduate of the National Defense University Armed Forces Staff College Reserve Components National Security Course in Norfolk, Virginia. Numerous reserve active duty tours were with HQ US Commander in Chief Atlantic Fleet (CINCLANT) where his active duty Orders tours were on weekends spread out over a period of two years working the then NATO War Plan as Officer in Charge of an all reservists, all services J-4 Joint Services Combat Logistics plan writing team; with the Office of the Commanding General, then Lt. General Colin Powell, USA, at HQ US Forces Command at Ft. McPherson, Georgia, in J-4/J-5. Colonel Singleton went back on active duty January 1, 1991 as Assistant Deputy Commander for Airlift for Desert Storm I out of Charleston AFB, SC. Colonel Singletons Desert Storm War experiences included running with the first ever call up of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) whereby commercial airlines federally subsidized planes and their in place federalized civilian crews were used to augment the surge airlift to move numerous divisions, their weapons, and their tanks promptly to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia for use in the invasion and freeing of Kuwait from the invading Iraqi Army of Saddam Hussein. Toward the end of Colonel Singletons active and reserve military career he was called onto short active duty to help organize and run a National Test Mobilization Recall of USAF, all ranks, enlisted and officers, who had remaining Inactive Reserve Status service obligations. This short active duty tour was designed to test fill on paper key military skill needs from this then little used or paid attention to military manpower pool. This test USAF Mobilization Recall from the Inactive USAF Reserve has since been used repeatedly to fill key skill need slots for the Air Force in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
(Editors Note: Have a Cold War Memory you would like to share?)
By Colonel George L. Singleton, USAF, Retired
In my previous article you read about how I was wounded in the Rann of Kutch on January 31,1965. Now let me proceed to share little known facts of how we at the US Embassy then in Karachi, West Pakistan coordinated with the US Embassy in India to try to have a semblance of a wartime plan to try to deal with stopping the 1965 India-Pakistan War and an evacuation plan for the US intelligence base, the 6937th USAF Security Service Communications Group located just outside Peshawar in northern Pakistan.
The Indians noticed for the first time in January 1965 that Pakistani security forces were patrolling below the Indian claimed border line in the Little Rann of Kutch near the Arabian Sea coast. Pakistan patrolling south of Kanjarkot seemed to have been going on for a while without the Indians being aware. This sudden Pakistani occupation of Lanjarkot upset a long-standing status quo. Thus when Indian patrols discovered that Pakistani posts had been established in the area claimed by India, Pakistan was accused by India in January 1965 of aggression in the Rann of Kutch.
On Sunday January 31, 1965 two Pakistani friends of mine who were cousins to each other, one with the Pakistani Foreign Office and the other with Pakistan International Airways (PIA) were my hosts for a boar hunt in the Little Rann of Kutch. We were traveling in a PIA Land Rover open truck. We drove right into a totally unknown to any of us hot spot where Pakistani security forces should not have been and where Indian forces had decided that day to fire on the Pak interloping forces. We drove into that hot firing area quite innocently...and of course never got to the boar hunt area my hosts had hoped to find.
Indian fire blew another Pakistan truck into our oncoming toward it Land Rover Truck, wounding all of us in our vehicle.
To review further historic background: India had lodged unbeknownst to us a protest during January, 1965 against Pakistan for increased patrolling activity throughout January 1965 within the Indian sector of the Little Rann of Kutch. By mid-February 1965, Pakistani forces had dug themselves in around Kanjarkot which was previously unoccupied although President Ayub Khan of Pakistan claimed that Pakistan had long occupied it.
India moved large forces into the disputed territory during the months of JanuaryApril 1965, established forward military posts therein and carried out full-scale land, sea and air maneuvers in the vicinity, thus forcibly demolishing the status quo. Both sides built up the forces available to them in the area, manned strong points, and shifted defense responsibility from border units to the army.
The Indian response of occupying new posts near the frontier and, reportedly, building a bare base airstrip nearby brought the crisis to a head.
As further background President Kennedys India policy according to later day Pakistani military historians resulted in disturbing the military balance in the sub-continent to Pakistans disadvantage and had consequently strained Pakistan-America relations. In any event, Pakistan sought closer relations with Communist China.
Pakistans deteriorating relations with the US and India were very closely watched by both communist powers. As far back as 1960 Soviet Ambassador to Pakistan Mihail Kapitsa reportedly told the Pakistanis: We support India and Afghanistan against you because they are our friends, even when they are wrong. But your friends do not support you, even when they know you are right.
Pakistan wanted to reconcile her relations with the Soviet Union so that the USSR encouragement to Afghans for Pashtunistan might be stopped. The Soviet Union conversely wanted to improve relations with Pakistan in order to weaken the SEATO and CENTO alliances constructed by the US on the Soviet Union Southern flank.
Concurrently Pakistan also turned towards China. Pakistani Foreign Minister Z.A. Bhutto (who had become an internal political threat and rival to Pakistan President Ayub Khan) declared that We will not barter or bargain Chinese friendship away for anything. During 1963-64, China became the largest importer of Pakistani cotton. Ironically USAID in Pakistan had helped fund and provided technologists to enable Pakistan to develop cotton as a cash crop.
I well remember a young man named Bennie Dietimier from Prattville, Alabama, then a major cotton textile city. Bennies job was to import Pakistani cotton to his employers textile mills in Prattville. Since I was born in Montgomery, which is very near the textile town of Prattville in Alabama I became friends with Bennie, who was as a German orphan adopted and taken to Alabama from Germany by a US Air Force Captain and his wife after WW II.
On March 1, 1963 it was announced that Pakistan and Communist China had reached agreement about their common border. According to this treaty about 750 sq. miles of territory under the actual control of China was ceded to Pakistan while Pakistan had to do nothing in return. On May 17, 1963, Chou En-lai declared that China Would defend Pakistan throughout the world for Pakistan defended China in SEATO and CENTO. This statement by Communist China is baffling to say the least as our 6937th USAF Security Service Communications Group mission was to collect intelligence related to both the Soviet Union and Communist China, our two major Cold War adversaries. Perhaps Chinas statement reflected the episodic border clashes which the Soviets were periodically having with Communist China on their common border between Siberia and Mongolia.
What is generally believed to have led to great unhappiness between the US and Pakistan was the move for an air link between China and Pakistan. An agreement was signed in 1964 between China and Pakistan wherein Pakistan was given air traffic rights at Canton and Shanghai in exchange for air traffic rights for China at Karachi in West Pakistan and Dacca in East Pakistan. This was the first air agreement signed by China with any non-Socialist country. Pakistan said this agreement merely was a business proposition. China was happy with this air accord because she then was engaged in a campaign to win over the Afro- Asian countries in her stand against India regarding the China/India border clash dating from 1960.
Pakistani Airline flights provided a quick means of transport between China and many countries in the Middle East and Africa. The United States seemed to be losing patience with Pakistan over this new air accord in 1964 and held up a pending $ 4.3 million loan for Pakistani airport improvements. But, in fact, at the same time the United States intelligence gathering program inside Pakistan was able to get the Government of Pakistan, as owner/operator of Pakistan International Airways, to allow the US to install some wind sampling equipment on the surface of some PIA flights newly going into China. Wind sampling was and still is used today to check fall out from
nuclear tests for national security purposes.
Whatever we Americans thought in 1964/65 about Pakistan relations with Communist China, our government was not then prepared to reconcile itself to the new Sino-Pakistan friendship.
Another example of Pakistans deteriorating relationship with the US was demonstrated by the Pakistan attitude at the SEATO Council Meeting held in Manila in mid April, 1964. Pakistan due to its obsession and preoccupation with their perceived Kashmir/Indian threat refused to made a military contribution to SEATO. Pakistan President Ayub Khan complained: Now Americans do not hesitate to let down their friends. Today their policy is based on opportunism and is devoid of moral quality.
I must note that at this time the US was refusing demands from Pakistani Foreign Minister Z. A. Bhutto to be shown the inside of the US intelligence operations at our Peshawar base. And the US was refusing to schedule missions of the RB-57F to over fly Kashmir for Pakistan to gather anti-Indian military intelligence. It seemed
to me then that the leadership of Pakistan was the rawest of opportunists.
***Looking at how the US and the rest of the world in a post Cold War sense today deal in a free enterprise sense with a less strident China one can of course today view past history differently if you choose to. But at the time, in the 1960s, the Cold War was a hot, hostile process which also included the start up of the then long running Vietnam War.
It is important to note that after CIA Pilot Gary Powers was shot down in a U-2 over the USSR in May 1960, which U-2 flight originated from the Pakistani Air Base in Peshawar, President Eisenhower had subsequently suspended indefinitely use of the U-2 from inside Pakistan. Instead the US and Pakistan began using the B-57 as a replacement intelligence gathering platform. In June, 1964, two specially built and adapted to over 100,000 foot high altitude flight RB-57F aircraft were loaned, at no cost, absolutely free, to the Pakistan Air Force for use in our joint intelligence gathering over the USSR and Communist China. The two RB-57F aircraft were maintained and repaired in Pakistan entirely by the US at this time.
Two Royal Air Force pilots were trained in Texas to fly the RB-57F. These same two RAF pilots in turn helped train Pakistani Air Force pilots to fly the RB-57F. These same two RAF pilots also from time to time flew Pakistan reconnaissance missions for the US in these RB-57Fs. Remember that various versions of the B-57 had long been in the Pakistan Air Force air fleet, starting with the RAF English Electric Canberra B-57. Thus some Pakistan Air Force pilots mainly needed upgrade training to fly the uniquely built and adapted RB-57F. Critical differences the Pakistani pilots had to newly deal with to fly the RB-57F were the state of the art high altitude pressure suit they had to wear and the very large wing span used to gain very high altitude, in excess of 100,000 feet.
Now to the heart of the joint meeting of the US Pakistan and Indian Embassy staff held at the US Embassy in Karachi during March, 1964. I attended these meetings over several days together with my commanding officer, Colonel Thomas C. Hyde, USAF, who came down from our intelligence base at Peshawar.
Both US Ambassadors to Pakistan Walter P.McConnaughy, Jr. and Chester Bowls, US Ambassador to India, felt that their staff and related military aid mission teams needed to do some face to face what if scenario planning as in early 1965 India and Pakistan hostilities were episodically flaring up from the Rann of Kutch up to the disputed Kashmir northern in common border.
Certainly I was not allowed to take notes so this reminiscence is from memory alone. Among those attending the joint US Pakistan and Indian team meeting in Karachi were US Air Attaché to Pakistan Colonel Williams; US Naval Attaché to Pakistan Captain Miller; and Major General George Ruhlen, Chief of the US Military Advisory Assistance Group to Pakistan; Mr. Jack Schaffer and Commander Howard Amrine, USN, Retired, the CIA Team Chief and Deputy Chief for Pakistan at the US Embassy. I cannot recall the names of the US counterparts from the US Embassy in New Delhi. What I do recall is the senior ranking US Embassy in India official at the Karachi US Embassy meeting was the First Secretary from the US Embassy in New Delhi, India.
The meeting focused on two near term issues:
1. How could the US even handedly dampen the then on going military hostilities between Pakistan and India, which were stopping and starting irregularly at that time? I recall a partial answer was to cut off both nations resupply of US military parts and ammunition, which was done in due course.
2. What would be the evacuation plan for the civilian personnel and families as well as US forces stationed at the US Air Base at Badabur, just outside Peshawar, the 6937th USAF Security Service Communications Group. This topic was what brought my commanding officer down from Peshawar with me already permanently stationed at the US Embassy as his base USAF Liaison Officer.
My official identification was as Commander, Detachment 2, 6937th USAF Communications Group based at Karachi. I was promoted while serving in Pakistan from Second to First Lieutenant in February 1963, but for better or worse I was filling a Lt. Colonels slot with broad based US duties with Pakistani military and government agencies throughout Karachi as well as with three air fields I did business with: Maripur Pakistan Fighter-Bomber Air Base, where our USAF RB-57F reconnaissance aircraft were based most of the time; with the Karachi Civil Airport, where we had broad relations with Pakistan International Airways; and with Drigg Road Pakistan Air Base, which was the equivalent of our Wright Patterson US Air Base in Ohio. Drigg Road PAFB was a technology and maintenance/repair base of in common use and benefit at that time.
After this long historic background introduction and the brief description of our two US Embassies 1965 emergency meeting, I will summarize the 6937th Base evacuation plan/outcome.
The US CIA Country Team Chief, Mr. Jack Schaffer, who attended this emergency series of meetings, together with his CIA in country deputy, retired Navy Commander Howard Amrine, had been working with me to update and rewrite the evacuation plan for the US Air Base in Peshawar. We had planned for an airlift from Peshawar down country and out through Karachi. But, at and during our meetings the US Embassy teams for both Pakistan and India concluded that we all had to admit that things were already greatly out of control and unlikely to be tamed soon. Thus the plan was reshaped on the spot during these meetings (which lasted a few days within one week) and a different route USAF airlift was agreed upon. The USAF airlift was to come directly to Peshawar from and directly return to Turkey.
Looking at the map of SW Asia as it existed then we had the ability to negotiate quietly with the Pakistan Air Force directly in Peshawar (the PAF HQ was then based in Peshawar, near our 6937th Base) the over flight from within Turkey, a key CENTO ally, through/over Iran, then also a key CENTO ally into Peshawar where American civilians and family members and some military personnel were air evacuated out of country back to Turkey.
My US Embassy in Karachi USAF job ended May 28, 1965 when I rotated after 18 month back to the States. The evacuation airlift occurred in mid-summer 1965, after a particularly ferocious Indian Air Force vs. Pakistani Air Force battle over Peshawar, during which some Indian Air Force bombs fell in the vicinity of our US non-flying base at Badabur.
I heard from several friends who were still at the 6937th Base outside Peshawar that they had dug slit trenches for air raid purposes and had to use them on the day of this summer, 1965 heavy air engagement.
Some GI humor to help conclude this article, my fourth of twelve planned articles. The slit trenches on the grounds of the 6937th USAF Security Service Communications Group Base in Peshawar were filled with rain water at the time of the air battle. The air raid siren went off and my friends dashed outside and dove into the trenches...to discover a great deal of mud. My mental picture of these several friends coming up for air from several inches of water covered in mud then and now makes me chuckle. However the circumstances at that time were certainly no laughing matter.
In my future fifth of twelve Cold War Era contributions to THE COLD WAR TIMES I will delve into background events and circumstances which to my knowledge are unlikely to have ever been made of record. Stay tuned.
***Lieutenant George L. Singleton, regular USAF, Commanded Detachment 2, 6937th USAF Security Service Communications Group, based at the US Embassy in Karachi, then West Pakistan. Lt. Singleton held one of the most unique overseas assignments then in existence in the Air Force. His unique work as an undergraduate college Student Intern with career US Civil Service status in the Bureau of Northwest African Affairs in the US Department of State writing country briefing papers on Tunisia, Morocco, and Libya gave him unique exposure to Muslim culture and events which played into his very junior rank assignment into a Lt. Colonels billet at the US Embassy in Karachi in 1963. Today Colonel George L. Singleton, USAF, is retired from 6 years active and 25 years reserve service. Among his major reserve years duty was being the reservist mobilization assistant to the J-4, with overlapping duties with the J-5, at HQ US Special Operations Command Headquarters in Tampa, Florida. Mr. Singleton is also retired from 25 years in US Civil Service where he worked for the US Department of State; the US
Public Health Service; and the US Department of Veterans Affairs. Mr. Singleton helped found the first ever National Defense Medical Service (NDMS) program statewide in Alabama as the US Department of Veterans Affairs Manager for all of Alabama, in conjunction with local hospitals statewide; with various Alabama fire and police departments; with the US Public Health Service; with the Federal Emergency Management Agency; and in conjunction with the US Department of Defense both active duty and reserve/National Guard forces inside Alabama. Singleton is also a former New York City based International banker, having served as a Senior Territory Assistant in the Asia Section of the old Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company, since merged into JP Morgan Chase Bank. Mr. Singleton did his undergraduate degree at the University of Alabama and did MBA graduate business studies at New York University and the University of Tennessee. He is a graduate of the USAF Air War College and a graduate of the National Defense University Armed Forces Staff College Reserve Components National Security Course in Norfolk, Virginia. Numerous reserve active duty tours were with HQ US Commander in Chief Atlantic Fleet (CINCLANT) where his active duty Orders tours were on weekends spread out over a period of two years working the then NATO War Plan as Officer in Charge of an all reservists, all services J-4 Joint Services Combat Logistics plan writing team; with the Office of the Commanding General, then Lt. General Colin Powell, USA, at HQ US Forces Command at Ft. McPherson, Georgia, in J-4/J-5. Colonel Singleton went back on active duty January 1, 1991 as Assistant Deputy Commander for Airlift for Desert Storm I out of Charleston AFB, SC. Colonel Singletons Desert Storm War experiences included running with the first ever call up of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) whereby commercial airlines federally subsidized planes and their in place federalized civilian crews were used to augment the surge airlift to move numerous divisions, their weapons, and their tanks promptly to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia for use in the invasion and freeing of Kuwait from the invading Iraqi Army of Saddam Hussein. Toward the end of Colonel Singletons active and reserve military career he was called onto short active duty to help organize and run a National Test Mobilization Recall of USAF, all ranks, enlisted and officers, who had remaining Inactive Reserve Status service obligations. This short active duty tour was designed to test fill on paper key military skill needs from this then little used or paid attention to military manpower pool. This test USAF Mobilization Recall from the Inactive USAF Reserve has since been used repeatedly to fill key skill need slots for the Air Force in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
(Editors Note: Have a Cold War Memory you would like to share?)
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