Military Digest | When farmers of Punjab thrashed and captured Pakistan’s elite commandos

According to a elaborate relationship of this ill-planned and ill-executed cognition by Air Commodore Kaiser Tufail (retd) of the Pakistan Air Force, the thought germinated from Air Marshal Asghar Khan the past main of aerial unit of the PAF successful July 1965. Asghar Khan demitted the bureau soon earlier the warfare broke retired but his successor, Air Marshal Nur Khan, continued with the plan.

A PAF squad was tasked to liaise with Col Seyyed Ghaffar Mehdi, commandant successful main of the Special Service Group (SSG). Kaiser Tufail notes that according to Col Mehdi, “nothing appreciable was achieved arsenic the demands made by the PAF were intelligibly beyond the operational capableness of our troops”.

“A ceremonial presumption was made to the PAF C-in-C by Col Mehdi (alongside his GSO-2 Ops, Major Ehsan-ul-Haq Dar) successful July astatine the Para Training School (PTS) successful Peshawar, and the SSG’s constituent of presumption was explained. Two important points were highlighted:

a) A daring cognition of this quality could lone win if some the strategical and tactical astonishment was with the attacker. The stroke against the Indian bases, therefore, had to beryllium struck arsenic a first-ever awesome of war, the accusation being that if the warfare had been going connected for immoderate clip and force airbase defences were successful a authorities of alert, the chances of occurrence of specified commando operations utilizing Second World War methods were remote.

b) An close and up-to-date investigation of the target, its characteristics, size, signifier and dimensions of its defences, and peculiarities of the wide environments successful which the people existed, had to beryllium provided to the SSG by PAF/GHQ,” wrote Tufail.

The exfiltration of the para-commandos aft the ngo was not good thought about.

“Landing transport craft connected an airfield that was expected to beryllium connected afloat alert aft the onslaught was, successful the least, a fanciful idea. As for helicopters, neither Pak Army, nor the PAF had unit transport versions that could evacuate a ample fig of commandos from force territory,” notes Tufail.

Three teams, each of 60 commandos including 3 officers, were airdropped by 3 C-130s. Each squad was to person 1 wireless acceptable truthful arsenic to beryllium capable to support the C-130s informed of its progress. Individual commandos were provided with 2 days’ rations (five meethi rotis each) and Rs 400 successful Indian currency, successful summation to idiosyncratic weapons, explosives, grenades, etc.

Eventually, the raids were mounted successful the aboriginal hours of September 7 with 64 SSG commandos dropped adjacent the Pathankot airbase, 55 commandos adjacent Adampur and 63 astatine Halwara.

The Pathankot batch landed respective kilometres distant from the airfield and by the clip they regrouped and started marching towards their objective, the fields surrounding the airbase were progressive with farmers who spotted them and raised an alarm. Leading to seizure of astir 45 commandos and the deaths of four. Many slipped distant towards Kangra hills and past managed to exfiltrate aft resting determination successful ravines.

In Adampur, the Pakistanis dropped close successful the mediate of a colony wherever the villagers caught clasp of galore and gave them a terrible beating earlier capturing them. An alarm was raised and Punjab Police teams rushed to the spot to circular disconnected the commandos, of whom 42 were captured, 12 changeable dormant and 1 escaped.

A akin lawsuit happened successful Halwara, wherever the driblet took spot adjacent to a colony and wherever the commandos encountered highly charged villagers who overpowered them. A consequent firefight besides took spot with Punjab Police personnel, resulting successful 4 Pakistani commandos getting killed, 53 captured and six managing to escape.

Thanks to the alert Punjab farmers and the accelerated effect of Punjab Police, the consolidated losses from a full of 182 commandos were—140 captured, 20 killed and 22 escaped.