Basanti, with the exception of 1971, which other war do you take credit for. Remember this.
Only a single battle in the whole war.And even that too when Pakistani 6th Armored division,backed by the remnants of the 1st armored division was fighting a totally defensive battle from well heavily built up camouflaged position,armed with the prior knowledge of the impending Indian assault (since the Indian battle plan was already known to you guys) and backed up by excellent artillery support.
By the time the battle of Chawinda had actually started,Pakistani army in the Sialkot sector had amassed at least 280 tanks,mostly then state of the art Pattons with top notch fire control systems.Conventional wisdom dictates that Indian 1st armored division needed to deploy a minimum ~800-840 tanks just to overpass the defenses.
But in reality,the 1st armored division could only deploy 5 armored regiments - 4 Centurion MkIX and 1 M4 sherman or a total of 225 tanks!!Which means,while the Indian Army needed to outnumber your forces (who by the way fought from well prepared positions),in reality it was out numbered itself.In the broad day light,under the open,out numbered and out classed........this foolish attack by Indian 1st armored division was doomed to be a failure even before its inception.
You guys are led to believe that your Pakistani Army wrested away a spectacular victory against a 4 times bigger Indian enemy force during this battle.Well,you won,no one can take that away from you guys and congrats for that.But the victory was in no way that spectacular as you tend to believe.In reality,Indian Army could have never got you guys outnumbered by even 2.5 to 1,both the Indian armor and artillery were vastly inferior their Pakistani counterparts.
I mean,come on,against your ~480 or so Patton variants we could only manage those obsolete tincans like AMX 17s and early model M4s with only a handful of Centurion MkIXs.Even these tanks were not particularly suited for the terrain prevalent in and around the battlefield due to their crappy suspensions.
Then comes the artillery - Indian artillery arm was little more than a joke with about 90% of it was made of 105mm and 122mm guns where as Pakistani artillery was equipped with 155mm medium and 203mm heavy rewgiments.Indian artillery was seriously outmatched by their Pakistani counterparts.
then coming to the infantry situations,although India had more infantry but many of its infantry formations were fairly new and not very well trained or equipped.In fact,the most well equipped and well trained infantry divisions-the 8 mountain divisions were deployed on the northern borders against a possible PLA invasion because the wounds of the 62 debacle was still very fresh.
All these facts are well acknowledged by the world except by the Pakistanis because obviously it suits better with their agenda of their martial superiority.
Even I found the claims of the Pakistani authors to be ludicrous.Just look at the claims - for instance,Indian claims are that they managed to capture 41 or so Pakistani tanks in this battle which is very close to their official claims of "37 tanks captured" by their official history of 6th Armored division named 'Men of Steel'.But look at their claims - 130 Indian tanks destroyed where in reality it was not more than 30 or so tanks destroyed!!Although more of some 40 or so Indian tanks took damage of various magnitude but they were recovered and put back in service.
And @
Windjammer , stop bringing up this incidence at your defense all the time.Well,you don't don't have much else to show for I know,but it's getting a bit boring by now.
For your every Battle of Chawinda we have a Battle of Asal Uttar,where your 6 regiments of Pattons couldn't break through our defences.Indians were equipped with just 120 tanks and that too 80 of them were just AMX 13s and M4s.Your 1st armored division attacked with 6 Patton regiments totaling 270 M48 Pattons but managed to loose a hundred of them even when Indian tanks were in the open,with no man made defensive strong points,outnumbered by more than 2 to 1!! What do you have to say about this??
For every Battle of Chawinda of yours,we have a Battle of Burki,where again Pakistanis lost 50-60 tanks even when they managed to outnumber the lone Indian 18th Cavalry regiment by 3 to 1!!
For every Battle of Chawinda of yours,we have a battle of Phillora,a Dograi and a Jarpal/Barapind!!
But we usually do not brag about them like you guys do all the time.
