What China didn’t do
24 Oct 2012 3:49 AM IST
A view expressed by Air Vice Marshal A K Tewary in 2006 in an Indian Defence Review article, in which he quoted Lt Gen B M Kaul, the army commander in today’s Arunachal Pradesh, as saying ‘we made a great mistake in not employing our Air Force in a close support role…’
The crucial assumption here is that there was a relatively smaller asymmetry between the Indian and Chinese air forces, and the IAF’s deployment would have reduced the overwhelming superiority that China enjoyed in the balance of the land forces. These judgments may belatedly provide some comfort to Indian military leaders. But they are speculative and based on the ‘what if’ question, or what social scientists call counterfactuals. It’s hard to prove or disprove counterfactuals conclusively.
On these criteria, it appears highly unlikely and even implausible that the use of airpower would have changed the India-China military balance in a major way. China’s airpower was, or was believed to be, far superior to India’s, with a 3:1 asymmetry in the total number of planes. The asymmetry was even a greater 5:1 in respect of fighters.
Using the IAF in offensive operations would have invited large-scale retaliation, including bombing of Indian cities, with extremely high civilian casualties. India would have very little defence against such an offensive. Besides, no amount of airpower could have helped its Army overcome the fundamental disadvantages it suffered. Its soldiers were severely under-prepared for battle – ill-clad and ill-shod for the cold weather, poorly armed, and for the most part, poorly led too. Their advances were repulsed within the first fortnight, both in the Northeast and the Western sector.
Indian Army units could not have held out for long in the harsh Himalayan conditions. It is only in Chushul in Ladakh and in Walong in the Northeast that they put up resistance. But India’s great hope, the 12,000-strong 4th Division, simply disintegrated after an attack on a patrol party by 800 Chinese troops. Lt Gen Kaul reported ill and ignominiously fled the field. On 19 November, army chief P N Thapar was relieved of his charge. The next day, China unilaterally declared a ceasefire.
It’s hard to see how the IAF, which didn’t then have a command close to Arunachal Pradesh, could have significantly altered the war’s outcome. The overall strategic balance and the appalling quality of India’s military and civil leadership would have prevented a better outcome.
It was later revealed that with mounting Sino-Soviet tensions, the USSR refused to supply spares for the warplanes transferred to China, thus effectively grounding much of its air force. But this wasn’t known in 1962 to Indian leaders, who depended primarily on the CIA for such intelligence, which the agency didn’t have. But that doesn’t give more credibility to Air Chief Marshal Browne’s claims.
At any rate, having militarily humbled India, the Chinese voluntarily vacated the posts which they could have continued to occupy, and withdrew to positions 20 km behind the Line of Actual Control, positions going back to November 1959. They didn’t take prisoners of war although they could have easily done so. The Chinese could have marched all the way to Kolkata without meeting much resistance. But having made their point, they stopped well short of the border.
In fact, the People’s Liberation Army treated the surrendered Indian officers courteously and flew down some of the unfit ones close to the border. Why, in some instances, its soldiers even oiled and polished the firearms seized from Indian soldiers before returning them!
This doesn’t argue that the Chinese were or are noble-spirited angels, but only that the primary purpose of their 1962 operation was to repulse India’s ill-conceived ‘forward policy’, of evicting them from disputed areas without seriously negotiating the border issue.
This was in keeping with the delusion harboured by many Indian leaders that they could inflict a military defeat on China. Gen Kaul had declared, ‘a few rounds fired at the Chinese would cause them to run away.’ The then home minister Lal Bahadur Shastri announced that if China didn’t vacate the disputed areas, India would eject it from them just as easily as it had thrown Portugal out of Goa.
As India’s rout became imminent, Jawaharlal Nehru panicked and begged the US for military help and air cover not just in ‘our fight for survival’, but ‘the survival of freedom and independence in this sub-continent and rest of Asia.’ He wrote two desperate letters to President Kennedy within a few hours’ interval on 19 November, which remained classified in the US until recently. They expose the depths to which Indian leaders’ morale had sunk.
Confirming the IAF’s weakness, Nehru wrote, ‘We have repeatedly felt the need of using air arm in support of our land forces, but have been unable to do so as in the present state of our air and radar equipment, we have no defence against retaliatory action …’ But Nehru added, ‘Any air action to be taken against the Chinese beyond the limits of our country … will be taken by IAF planes manned by Indian personnel.’ To attack Chinese air bases, Nehru wanted ‘two squadrons’ of B-47 bombers, for which Indian pilots and technicians would be trained in the US. ‘We are confident that your great country will in this hour of our trial help us...’
Arms poured in from the US, and also Britain and Israel. US ambassador J K Galbraith also recommended that ‘elements of the Seventh Fleet be sent into the Bay of Bengal.’
Thus the aircraft carrier Enterprise arrived as a mark of solidarity with India. This manoeuvre, which India didn’t protest against, was repeated during the Bangladesh war, when it was seen as a menacing gesture.
The crucial assumption here is that there was a relatively smaller asymmetry between the Indian and Chinese air forces, and the IAF’s deployment would have reduced the overwhelming superiority that China enjoyed in the balance of the land forces. These judgments may belatedly provide some comfort to Indian military leaders. But they are speculative and based on the ‘what if’ question, or what social scientists call counterfactuals. It’s hard to prove or disprove counterfactuals conclusively.
On these criteria, it appears highly unlikely and even implausible that the use of airpower would have changed the India-China military balance in a major way. China’s airpower was, or was believed to be, far superior to India’s, with a 3:1 asymmetry in the total number of planes. The asymmetry was even a greater 5:1 in respect of fighters.
Using the IAF in offensive operations would have invited large-scale retaliation, including bombing of Indian cities, with extremely high civilian casualties. India would have very little defence against such an offensive. Besides, no amount of airpower could have helped its Army overcome the fundamental disadvantages it suffered. Its soldiers were severely under-prepared for battle – ill-clad and ill-shod for the cold weather, poorly armed, and for the most part, poorly led too. Their advances were repulsed within the first fortnight, both in the Northeast and the Western sector.
Indian Army units could not have held out for long in the harsh Himalayan conditions. It is only in Chushul in Ladakh and in Walong in the Northeast that they put up resistance. But India’s great hope, the 12,000-strong 4th Division, simply disintegrated after an attack on a patrol party by 800 Chinese troops. Lt Gen Kaul reported ill and ignominiously fled the field. On 19 November, army chief P N Thapar was relieved of his charge. The next day, China unilaterally declared a ceasefire.
It’s hard to see how the IAF, which didn’t then have a command close to Arunachal Pradesh, could have significantly altered the war’s outcome. The overall strategic balance and the appalling quality of India’s military and civil leadership would have prevented a better outcome.
It was later revealed that with mounting Sino-Soviet tensions, the USSR refused to supply spares for the warplanes transferred to China, thus effectively grounding much of its air force. But this wasn’t known in 1962 to Indian leaders, who depended primarily on the CIA for such intelligence, which the agency didn’t have. But that doesn’t give more credibility to Air Chief Marshal Browne’s claims.
At any rate, having militarily humbled India, the Chinese voluntarily vacated the posts which they could have continued to occupy, and withdrew to positions 20 km behind the Line of Actual Control, positions going back to November 1959. They didn’t take prisoners of war although they could have easily done so. The Chinese could have marched all the way to Kolkata without meeting much resistance. But having made their point, they stopped well short of the border.
In fact, the People’s Liberation Army treated the surrendered Indian officers courteously and flew down some of the unfit ones close to the border. Why, in some instances, its soldiers even oiled and polished the firearms seized from Indian soldiers before returning them!
This doesn’t argue that the Chinese were or are noble-spirited angels, but only that the primary purpose of their 1962 operation was to repulse India’s ill-conceived ‘forward policy’, of evicting them from disputed areas without seriously negotiating the border issue.
This was in keeping with the delusion harboured by many Indian leaders that they could inflict a military defeat on China. Gen Kaul had declared, ‘a few rounds fired at the Chinese would cause them to run away.’ The then home minister Lal Bahadur Shastri announced that if China didn’t vacate the disputed areas, India would eject it from them just as easily as it had thrown Portugal out of Goa.
As India’s rout became imminent, Jawaharlal Nehru panicked and begged the US for military help and air cover not just in ‘our fight for survival’, but ‘the survival of freedom and independence in this sub-continent and rest of Asia.’ He wrote two desperate letters to President Kennedy within a few hours’ interval on 19 November, which remained classified in the US until recently. They expose the depths to which Indian leaders’ morale had sunk.
Confirming the IAF’s weakness, Nehru wrote, ‘We have repeatedly felt the need of using air arm in support of our land forces, but have been unable to do so as in the present state of our air and radar equipment, we have no defence against retaliatory action …’ But Nehru added, ‘Any air action to be taken against the Chinese beyond the limits of our country … will be taken by IAF planes manned by Indian personnel.’ To attack Chinese air bases, Nehru wanted ‘two squadrons’ of B-47 bombers, for which Indian pilots and technicians would be trained in the US. ‘We are confident that your great country will in this hour of our trial help us...’
Arms poured in from the US, and also Britain and Israel. US ambassador J K Galbraith also recommended that ‘elements of the Seventh Fleet be sent into the Bay of Bengal.’
Thus the aircraft carrier Enterprise arrived as a mark of solidarity with India. This manoeuvre, which India didn’t protest against, was repeated during the Bangladesh war, when it was seen as a menacing gesture.
Next Story
