Roy Meloni,
American Broadcasting Corporation
September 15, 1965.
"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."
"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 propaganda 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."
"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."
Peter Preston,
The Guardian, London
September 24, 1965.
"One thing I am convinced of is that Pakistan morally and even physically won the air battle against immense odds."
"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 about 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."
Everett G. Martin,
General Editor, Newsweek
September 20, 1965.
"One point particularly noted by military observers is that in their first advances the Indians did not use air power effectively to support their troops. by contrast, the Pakistanis, with sophisticated timing, swooped in on Ambala airfield and destroyed some 25 Indian planes just after they had landed and were sitting on the ground out of fuel and powerless to escape (NOTE: PAF has not claimed any IAF aircraft during it's attacks on Ambala due to non-availability of concrete evidence of damage in night bombing.)"
"By the end of the week, in fact, it was clear that the Pakistanis were more than holding their own."
Indonesian Herald
September 11, 1965.
"India's barbarity is mounting in fury as the Indian army and Air Force, severely mauled, are showing signs of demoralization. The huge losses suffered by the Indian Armed Forces during the last 12 days of fighting could not be kept from the Indian public and in retaliation, the Indian armed forces are indulging in the most barbaric methods."
"The Chief of Indian Air Force could no longer ensure the safety of Indian air space. A well known Indian journalist, Mr Frank Moraes, in a talk from All-india radio, also admitted that IAF had suffered severe losses and it was no use hiding the fact and India should be prepared for more losses...."
Patrick Seale,
The Observer, London,
September 12, 1965.
"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."
The London Daily Mirror (during the coverage of the war of 1965)
"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 Pakistanis"
London Daily Times (covering the 65 war reports)
" India 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".
USA - Aviation Week & Space Technology - December 1968 issue says :-
"For the PAF, the 1965 war was as climatic as the Israeli victory over the Arabs in 1967. A further similarity was that Indian air power had an approximately 5:1 numerical superiority at the start of the conflict. Unlike the Middle East conflict, the Pakistani air victory was achieved to a large degree by air-to-air combat rather than on ground. But it was as absolute as that attained by Israel."