How many of 600 tanks of India were lost on September 7,1965, in the biggest tank battle after 2nd World War ?

Question

During 1965 war India attacked Sialkot city by bringing its massive airforce & surrounded the city , barely 10 km from L shaped border by 600 tanks, some say 1000. That was biggest tank battle after 2nd world war. At night too tanks were orderd to fire. The small city having no river like hindrance could not be captured even 16 more days till ceasefire. Why ? What happened to all those 600 tanks ? How many of them were intact ? That was never disclosed. I know that India hit 243 Pak tanks . How many total no of Indian tanks were destroyed ? How many indian military fghter aeroplanes were lost ? Can anyone tell accurately ?

Answer 1

Neither India nor Pakistan take their military history seriously. India, for example, has still to release its war histories for 1965 and 1971, though xeroxed copies were obtained by the Times of India. The histories are so bland as to be next to useless. The history of the 1962 War may not even have been written. Aside from the Ministry of Defense's in-house historians, no one is allowed access to war documents. The same is true of Pakistan. Much of the conduct of Indian and Pakistani battles is by means of verbal orders, and there seems to be no scheme of keeping proper records and notes of conversations and signals. Unsurprisingly, Indian and Pakistani military history becomes an unbroken disaster of "I said - he said" Few of the histories published by retired soldiers would meet the requirement of rigor needed for real history. The more decent writers couch their language in ambigious terms, so as not to hurt anyone's feelings. Those with an axe to grind go after their bete noir, who can do nothing right, while covering up their own errors, to indicate they did nothing wrong. Good research is expensive, and almost without exception no Indian or Pakistani writer, university, or publisher can afford to pay for it. So accounts are written in great part because you happen to run across an officer who was there, or a story told you by the batchmate of the general concerned, who heard it from a staff officer, who was told by someone from the general's staff…and so on. Even the most concietntious writer has trouble getting a fair picture under these cirucmstances, and the best such writers can do is to acknowledge their limitations, and continue. Else we would have no history at all, good or bad.

When writing about Indo-Pakistan wars, a further complication arises. Both sides find it near impossible to give the other credit where credit is due, whereas criticism becomes rabid propaganda. So the pakdef.com account of the Battle of Assul Uttar makes the outcome a great victory for the Pakistanis, with cruel and demanding Indian generals heedlessly sacrificng thousands of their men to make unsuccessful inroads into the staunch Pakistani defense. Pakistanis, being from the smaller and more insecure country, are worse when it comes to objectivity, but we also have no shortage of Indians without a good word for the Pakistanis. It remains unclear how anyone is supposed to learn anything when neither side wants to be fair.

Into this morass come two Pakistani writers, Maj. Agha Humanyun Amin and Brig. Z.A. Khan, both retired and former cavalry officers. Both have a disspassionate commitment to getting as close to the truth as possible, and both completely reject any attempt by their Government to put a gloss on mistakes. Both are iconoclasts with a keen eye for the absurdity that war generates. Both have a sense of humor, prodigious memories, and many friends willing to talk freely off the record. Thanks to Mr. Ikram Seghal of Pakistan Defense Journal, both have a forum from which to speak candidly and courgageously, and we are the richer for it. It is hard to come up with any Indian writers who equal Amin and Khan in their attention to detail and frankness, though overall you will find Indians readier to blast their own side than is true for Pakistanis. India being the bigger is less insecure.

Because the Battle of Assul Uttar was a disaster for Pakistan cavalry, as an Indian I have chosen to use Amin and Khan's accounts rather than the Indian accounts, such as the excellent treatise by Lt. Col (Dr) Bhupinder Singh (1965 War: Role of Tanks, BC Publishers, Patiala, India, 1982) . To me what happened on the Pakistan side is of more interest than what happened on the Indian side. Amin and Khan have the inside story, which was not available in such detail to the world till they spoke. I hope also that by using primarily Pakistani sourcess, I will deflect criticism from chauvinistic Pakistanis who might think I am bent on slandering Pakistan because I am an Indian. I have been in enough trouble with my government for exposing Indian lies and propaganda with regard to Pakistan. If I can slam my own government for its stuypidies and mistakes, I certainly have the right to examine the mistakes and stupidites on the Pakistan side. I have no interest in proving something at the expense of someone else. Scholarship and propaganda are two different things. Like Amin and Khan, I am interested in the truth, however imperfectly we may get to view it.

My main concern, in this first of two parts, is to try and understand why Pakistan's 1st Armored Division, the pride of its army, blundered so badly at Assul Uttar despite an eneormous superiority in armor. In the second part, I will try and understand why the newly raised Pakistan 6th Armored Division, in contrast, put such a staunch defense in the Battle of Chaiwanda, against a much more closely match adversary.

Answer 2

Oh the India hater again, you just cant stop your hatred do you ?
Read that wiki links, for all the superior weapons supplied to them by the USA and all that hatred they still suffered heavy losses.
And even today they still bear this hatred against Indians, dont know if they will ever get any intelligence gift from allah :)

Why dont you ask yahoo to start a site for Pakistan only and pose all such hate filled questions there ?
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I love this part :
* According to the United States Library of Congress Country Studies:

The war was militarily inconclusive; each side held prisoners and some territory belonging to the other. Losses were relatively heavy--on the Pakistani side, twenty aircraft, 200 tanks, and 3,800 troops. Pakistan's army had been able to withstand Indian pressure, but a continuation of the fighting would only have led to further losses and ultimate defeat for Pakistan. Most Pakistanis, schooled in the belief of their own martial prowess, refused to accept the possibility of their country's military defeat by "Hindu India" and were, instead, quick to blame their failure to attain their military aims on what they considered to be the ineptitude of Ayub Khan and his government..[47]

Answer 3

Although the Pakistani military had superior tanks, the Indians had superior numbers of them, perhaps 1,000. According to the Wikipedia article on the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, both sides in the conflict give varying answers as to the casualties. Pakistan claims to have lost 165 tanks, India claims to have captured 150 and destroyed 150. It's assumed now that Pakistan lost 200 tanks. India claims to have lost 128 tanks. Given the tendency of exageration, it could be assumed India lost closer to 200 tanks as well. India lost about 3,000 troops while Pakistan lost about 3800. As for the airplanes, Pakistan says officially they lost 19 planes while shooting down 104 Indian planes. India officially claims to have lost 35 planes while shooting down 73 Pakistani planes but the Official Indian Armed Forces History claims 71 Indian planes were lost and 43 Pakistani planes were shot down.

Answer 4

No one knows for sure but a lot of Indian tanks were lost. In the beginning of the War they used Shermans I believe versus Pakistan's better Pattons. Then the Indians switched Centurion tanks and came back in full force

Answer 5

@funnysam2006...my friend u r absolutely right...this moron with a name like Supercool is nothing but a Pakistani stooge...whose hell-bent on flogging a dead-horse...seems there's nothing much 2 do 4 this good-4-nothing fella...kinda jus sitting all day...tweedling his/her thumbs...n then as they say...idle mind being devil's workshop...posting these kinda rhetorical questions...
And u r absolutely right...yeah Yahoo should start a page dedicated to morons like this guy...so that they can spill their hate-filled jargon over there only rather than polluting the general atmoshphere over here...:P

Answer 6

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pakistani_War_of_1965
try this link. It has a very extensive discussion of all aspects of this war.

Answer 7

u r a big chootia having no clue of military battles
Commander

Answer 8

india had no tank. all were imported. hence none was lost.

Answer 9

call miya Musharraf.