A mythology has evolved around the performance of the first Armoured Division — the Mailed Fist — in the 1965, war with India. In popular history, Gen. Muhammad Musa, the army’s commander-in-chief, is standing victoriously on the platform of the Indian train station at Khem Karan.
But Khem Karan was just the first step, not the ultimate objective of Operation Mailed Fist. That was to cut off the Grand Trunk road between Amritsar and New Delhi. It was to be carried out by the first Armoured Division, based in Multan. This division was the pride of the army equipped with American-made M-47/48 Patton tanks.
When Operation Gibraltar failed to start a revolt in Indian Kashmir in August, Pakistan launched Operation Grand Slam on September 1, 1965. The army captured Chamb but never reached Akhnur, the goal set by President Ayub.
While both these operations failed, they put a lot of pressure on Indian forces in Kashmir. India responded by attacking Lahore on September 6. In response, Operation Mailed Fist was launched on September 8.
Victory was expected since the Patton tanks were superior to India’s tanks and since Ayub felt that one Pakistani soldier was worth ten Indian soldiers.
The Patton’s 90-mm cannon could hit targets at 2,000 yards, almost twice as far as India’s Centurion tanks. With its computer-controlled fire control system, it could fire the cannon while moving. Its automatic transmission allowed better mobility and its infrared device allowed for night-time fighting, unlike the Centurions which went blind after sunset.
Operation Mailed Fist began on a sour note. On September 7, the Indian Armed Forces had destroyed a supply train which left most of the Pattons with very limited ammunition and fuel.
Nevertheless, the Pattons charged ahead and soon found themselves in a death trap. India’s 106mm-Jeep mounted recoilless rifle and tank crews equipped with Shermans with their 76mm cannons could see movement in sugarcane fields as the Patton’s approached.
The war that was supposed to have delivered Kashmir to Pakistan and become Ayub’s crowning achievement, ended up paving the way for his downfall. In his memoirs the war is not even mentioned, let alone glorified
To complicate matters, the Indians breached the Rohi Nala canal, which did not even exist on Pakistani maps. That bogged down the Pattons whose frustrated tank commanders opened the hatches and stood up to look outside. They were shot and killed by Indian snipers. By nightfall, ten square miles around the Khem Karan-Asal Uttar battlefield were littered with 97 Pakistani tanks.
In just three days, Operation Mailed Fist was over. Pakistan was now fighting a war for its survival. Lt-Gen Mahmud Ahmed wrote that “September 11 was the gloomiest and worst day of the war for the Pakistan Army.”
Why did this happen? First, the Pakistani army showed little coordination in its infantry-armour manoeuvres. Second, its ground surveys were terrible and its reconnaissance activities were superficial.
Third, the army failed to send in the sappers to clear mines and make a path through the sugarcane fields. Fourth, Pakistani tanks had moved south too quickly leaving the maintenance crews far behind. Fifth, tank commanders had failed to follow US training advice to keep the tanks in reserve and spray the field with machine-gun fire before moving up.
A US observer noted that the “sheer modernity of the Patton was its undoing vis-à-vis the older, slower, weaker and simpler Centurions and Shermans used by the Indians… Pakistani tank crews fed misleading information into the electronic brains [of the Patton], the heavy guns had to be operated by hand, and the crews were so occupied by modern gadgetry that they had little time for fighting.”
Some of the Pattons captured by India had as few as 300 kilometres on them, a standard totally inadequate for troop training. Some appeared “so new that even the original US markings on them had not been erased. They had been obviously lying in cotton wool.”
Commenting on the lack of infantry-armour coordination, Air Marshal Asghar Khan said, “even senior commanders in the counter-attack force had been kept in the dark about their role, objectives and the exact area of operation. Large-scale maps, which are essential for fighting a land battle, were not available with commanders until about twenty four hours after the attack had been launched.”
The failure of the first Armoured can largely be attributed to poor training. In his memoirs, Lt-Gen Gul Hassan, who later served as the army chief under Z.A Bhutto, noted that the division had been put through a major peace-time exercise involving the crossing of a water obstacle during which “the most powerful brigade of this formation was launched into a well-known duck-shooting marsh it never regained its balance.”
Even in the exercise, nobody had taken time to study the ground, even though “the bog was marked on our military maps.” In addition, attempts afterwards to derive lessons from this exercise degenerated into an argument between the Army Chief and the Divisional Commander. This episode presaged events leading to the stalemate and cease-fire of September 1965.
The failure of the first Armoured Division basically ended Pakistan’s attempts to wrest Kashmir from India. An Indian general wrote, “had the Pakistani counter-offensive succeeded, it would have cut off Indian forces between the Beas River and the border. East of that point, up to Delhi, the Grand Trunk Road lay open, practically undefended — thus bringing within an ace of realisation Ayub’s dream of ‘strolling up’ to Delhi.”
Ayub knew better than anyone else that Pakistan had initiated the war. The fact that Lahore and Sialkot did not fall is a testament to the courage of the Pakistani soldiers, airmen and sailors. But the adventure reflected very poorly on Ayub who had put them in harm’s way.
The war that was supposed to have delivered Kashmir to Pakistan and become Ayub’s crowning achievement ended up paving the way for his downfall. In his memoirs the war is not even mentioned, let alone glorified.
The writer is a defence analyst and economist. He has authored Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan (Ashgate Publishing, 2003)
Published in Daily Times, September 5th 2018.