Nehru wasn’t worried much about aggression when India took Goa. But Shastri has plenty to worry about now, because he is facing penal and disciplinary action by one of the toughest and best trained armies in the world, excellently led, highly organized and totally dedicated. For himself he has a motley, disorganized, low-morale force of four time as many men as Pakistan, but they can’t or won’t fight. They only beg.
The first Indian regiment that found itself face to face with the Pakistanis didn’t get clobbered. They just turned and ran, leaving all of their equipment, artillery supplies and even extra clothing and supplies behind.
The Pakistan military hardware, including tanks, planes, and ground-warfare equipment of every kind is far superior to that of Indians, and one long time expert of the Indian-Pakistan picture told me this afternoon that in his military opinion, there is little doubt but that the Pakistanis will lick the Indians in the long run, despite the fact that the Indian army outnumbers the Pakistan army four to one.
This expert said, however, that there is great disparity between the quality of the two armies, not to mention the disparity in equipment. The Indian soldier is soft while the Pakistan soldier is tough and determined. The Indian leadership is vacillating and uncertain, while the Pakistan leadership is well trained, highly talented and decisive.
Furthermore, it began to develop today that the Indian claims of having shot down large numbers of Pakistan Air Force planes in the first days of conflict were highly exaggerated, and that the Pakistan losses have been virtually nil in this line.
The Indian claims, frankly, were highly suspicious from the beginning because they are notably poor airmen and their equipment is antiquated and not at all a match for the modern jet equipment of the Pakistan Air Force. It just didn’t hold water to anyone who knew the details of the Indian air inventory as against the Pakistan air inventory, that any such victories could have been achieved by the Indians.
Airforces Monthly
An article in the May 1993 issue (pages 46-47) of Airforces Monthly, a reputable UK-based air defence magazine, written by a Russian aviation writer, Sergey Vekhov, for the first time in public, provided a first-hand account about the PAF’s pilots:
“As an air defence analyst, I am fully aware that the Pakistan Air Force ranks today as one of the best air forces in the world and that the PAF Combat Commanders’ School (CCS) in Sargodha has been ranked as the best GCI/pilot and fighter tactics and weapons school in the world”. As one senior US defence analyst commented to me in 1992, “it leaves Topgun (the US Naval Air Station in Miramar, California) far behind”.
Article in the May 1993 issue (pages 46-47 by Sergey Vekhov)
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Jane’s International Defense (June 24, 1998)
The PAF, although outnumbered by IAF, has at least one qualitative edge over its rival: Pilot Training. The caliber of Pakistani instructors is acknowledged by numerous air forces, and US Navy pilots considered them to be highly ‘professionals’ during exercises flying off the USS Constellation (as co-pilots). The IAF is in an unfortunate position: it lacks an advanced training (and multi-role combat aircraft)
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During 1965 war, India’s General Chaudri ordered his troops to march on Sialkot and Lahore – jauntily inviting his officers to join him for drinks that evening in lahore Gymkhana. He didn;t reckon on the Pakistani troops.
“The first Indian regiment that found itself face to face with Pakistanis didn’t get clobbered,” said a report in Washington DC, America. “They just turned and ran, leving all of their equipment, artillery supplies and even extra clothing and supplies behind”.
I have been a journalist now for twenty years, ‘reported American Broadcasting Corporation’s Roy Maloni, “and want to go on record that I have never seen a more confident and victoroius group of soldiers than those fighting for Pakistan, right now.
“India is claiming all-out victory. I have not been able to find any trace of it. All I can see are troops, tanks and other war material rolling in a steady towards the front … These muslims of Pakistan are natural fighters and they ask for no quarter and they give none. In any war, such as the one going on between India and Pakistan right now, the propoganda claims on either side are likely to be startling. But if I have to take bet today, my money would be on the Pakistan side.“
The London Daily Mirror reported: “There is a smell of death in the burning Pakistan sun. For it was here that India’s attacking forces came to a dead stop.
“During the night they threw in every reinforcement they could find. But wave after wave of attacks were repulsed by the Pakistani troops.”
“India”, said the London Daily Times, “is being soundly beaten by a nation which is outnumbered by four and a half to one in population and three to one in size of armed forces.”
In Times reporter Louis Karrar wrote: “Who can defeat a nation which knows how to play hide and seek with death“.
“… I will never forget the smile full of nerve the conducting army officers gave me. this smile told me how fearless and brave are the Pakistani young men.
“Playing with fire to these men — from the jawan to the general Officer Commanding — was like children playing with marbles in the streets.
“I asked the GOC, how is it that despite a small number you are overpowering the Indians?
He looked at me, smiled and said: “if courage, bravery and patriotism were purchaseable commodities, then India have got them along with American aid.”
“Pakistan has been able to gain complete command of the air by literally knocking the Indian planes out of the skies, if they had not already run away.”
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“Indian pilots are inferior to Pakistan’s pilots and Indian officers’ leadership has been generally deplorable. India is being soundly beaten by a nation which is outnumbered by a four and a half to one in population and three to one three to one in size of armed forces.”
Sunday Times, London, September 19, 1965.
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“Pakistan’s success in the air means that she has been able to redeploy her relatively small army — professionally among the best in Asia — with impunity, plugging gaps in the long front in the face of each Indian thrust.”
“By all accounts the courage displayed by the Pakistan Air Force pilots is reminiscent of the bravery of the few young and dedicated pilots who saved this country from Nazi invaders in the critical Battle of Britain during the last war.”
Patrick Seale, The Observer, London, September 12, 1965.
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“India is claiming all out victory. I have not been able to find any trace of it. All I can see are troops, tanks and other war material rolling in a steady stream towards the front.”
“If the Indian Air Force is so victorious, why has it not tried to halt this flow?. The answer is that it has been knocked from the skies by Pakistani planes.“
“Pakistan claims to have destroyed something like 1/3rd the Indian Air Force, and foreign observers, who are in a position to know say that Pakistani pilots have claimed even higher kills than this; but the Pakistani Air Force are being scrupulously honest in evaluating these claims. They are crediting Pakistan Air Force only those killings that can be checked from other sources.”
Roy Meloni, American Broadcasting Corporation, September 15, 1965.
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“Although the Air Force gladly gives most credit to the Army, this is perhaps over-generous. India with roughly five times greater air-power, expected an easy air-superiority. Her total failure to attain it may be seen retrospectively as a vital, possibly the most vital, of the whole conflict.”
“Nur Khan is an alert, incisive man of 41, who seems even less. For six years he was on secondment and responsible for running Pakistan’s civil air-line, which, in a country where ‘now’ means sometime and ‘sometime’ means never, is a model of efficiency. he talks without the jargon of a press relations officer. He does not quibble abobut figures. Immediately one has confidence in what he says.”
“His estimates, proffered diffidently but with as much photographic evidence as possible, speak for themselves. Indian and Pakistani losses, he thinks, are in something like the ration of ten to one.”
“Yet, the quality of equipment, Nur insists, is less important than flying ability and determination. The Indians have no sense of purpose. The Pakistanis were defending their own country and willingly taking greater risks. ‘The average bomber crews flew 15 to 20 sorties. My difficulty was restraining them, not pushing them on.‘ “
“This is more than nationalistic pride. Talk to the pilots themselves and you get the same intense story.”
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