PanzerKiel
MILITARY PROFESSIONAL
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That's a non-sequitur.
Sam got the mandate from the political leadership, and told Bewoor in the West and Arora in the East what to do. He didn't actually go out there and pull triggers, and go ratatat at Pakistani planes flying overhead.
[Diversion]I had a fairly fixed idea about what happened in the west, driven by two factors:
However, @PanzerKiel threw out a view that has made me think very hard about the whole situation; he points out that Longewala was a spoiling operation, and that it succeeded, because it completely 'spoilt' Khambatta's plans for his own deep strike into Pakistan. That is a new angle to that most unusual of battles, Hawker Hunters vs. armoured tanks, won by the Hunters (I don't remember things too well these days, and can't remember what tanks the Pakistani formation had deployed).
- Eftekhar (Iftikhar?) Janjua's firm grip on the battle he fought; the outstanding thing was the way he changed axis once his original thrust was defeated, and caught us off balance.
- Bewoor's general state of muddle, and the inability of Candeth to recover the situation.
A fascinating thought. Coming from anyone else, I would have dismissed it as post-defeat justification; coming from that professional officer, the thought takes on very tangible dimensions. [End of Diversion]
What people don't realise was that the Indian Army had very modest aims all along. First, there was never any thought of destroying the West, never any thought of destroying the military capability of the Pakistan Army; the Pakistani Air Force was to be held at bay, then progressively whittled down by steadily increasing the sortie rate. The Indian Navy had the bit in its teeth, and were stopping for no one.
In the East, the first phase was to have been to slice off a piece of territory in which the emigres could hoist their flag. That grew to taking up the maximum amount of space possible to re-capture with the troops at Jake's disposal.
It was a stroke of daring audacity on Jake's part to fly to Dhaka and bully Niazi into surrendering. That was all his. Obviously he had to clear it with the corps commanders and with his own Army commander. But they presumably thought that it was a good idea, so there he was in Dhaka.
So my answer is - neither did. The soldiers were the ones who did it.
Would love to discuss all this but, alas, this isn't the right thread.