A Successful Operation Chengiz Khan, 1971

MacCaulay

Banned
The Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 was seen as inevitable because of a host of intersecting factors, most importantly the unrest in the area that would become Bangladesh.

The Pakistani military knew it was numerically inferior to the Indian Army, and as such had to think outside of the box in order to gain an advantage and force a decision quickly if war seemed unavoidable. By late November it was deemed so. On December 3rd, the Pakistani Air Force launched aircraft on a first strike modeled after the Israeli decapitation raids that kicked off the Six Day War in 1967. The raids were code named Operation Chengiz Khan. They failed in their mission, as they launched only a few dozen so as to keep local air superiority over Pakistan. They also ordered the attacking aircraft to drop their bombs from high altitude at a single pass so as to avoid Indian aircraft and AAA.

But what if the Pakistanis had thrown all their air power into this initial raid, as the Israelis had with theirs, and achieved the affect they were hoping for? What if they had been able to paralyze the Indian airbases at Srinigar, Pathankot, and Awantipur, which it struck without dealing with any Indian aircraft and only very light anti-aircraft fire?

(Yes...MacCaulay's been reading to make up for the Bangladesh/India/Pakistan thread in FH)
 
In the 6 day war:

1. The Israeli pilots had been training for the pre-emptive strike for 2 years before hand.

2. The Israeli pilots were aided by detailed intelligence, telling them not only where to strike, but when. They didn't strike at dawn (the usual time for surprise attacks) because they knew the Egyptian airforce was on high alert at that time - instead the struck a couple of hours later, when the Egyptian airforce did their shift changes.

3. They had strategic surprise, since the Egyptians thought the Israeli armed forces had stood down on the weekend just before the attack.

4. They had tactical surprise, because they were able to approach low, mostly flying at 100 feet, but level, over the sea (this was in the days before terrain following radar).


This is the link at Wikipedia (your link is broken)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Chengiz_Khan

According Wikipedia, the Indians were forwarned of the attack (and had mostly moved their aircraft away from forward airbases), the Pakistani aircraft had poor servicibility, and had little training in the recent past... so failure seems inevitable regardless of the altitude of the attacks.

Amazingly however, the Pakistanis (according to Wikipedia) did achieve surprise over the airbases, since their approach was undetected. It seems also they also tried to emulate the Israeli trick of attacking during shift changes.
 
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One of the problems of the Pakistan Air Force was that the serviceability wasn’t optimal due to the US arms embargo. One of the setbacks because of that was that less F-104s were delivered tahan would without. It had effects on the amount of spare parts for their F-86s. So without US arms embargo a better result is likely.
 
And even if it had succeeded, there is very little it could have achieved, in terms of overall turn of events.

Most of the action was on the Eastern sector and the Indian plan was to just hold the western sector and launch the offensive in the east. This attack targetting the airbase in the east, would have made life more difficult for the Indian army in the west, while the action in the east would have went on just as usual and Dhaka in all likelyhood would have been captured.
 

Ak-84

Banned
The Operation and the whole western theatre was too little too late. East Pakistan had been lost on 21st November when the Indians had finally broken through.

If Pakistan has attacked in October than yes it could have had an impact.

And Operation Changiz Khan was not (as the wikipedia entry suggests) designed to emulate the Israelis at all, it was designed to achieve local superiority in the areas where the planes hit and in that it succeeded, and it was based upon the lessons of the '65 war, when the attack on Pathankot airbase had ensured that the Indian Airforce was not an issue duing the Battle of Chawinda.

Even the the PAF dominated the air war, as noted by the USAF observer; Chuck Yeager
http://military-history-pictures.blogspot.com/2009/07/chuck-yeager-on-pakistan-air-force.html
 

MacCaulay

Banned
The Operation and the whole western theatre was too little too late. East Pakistan had been lost on 21st November when the Indians had finally broken through.

If Pakistan has attacked in October than yes it could have had an impact.

And Operation Changiz Khan was not (as the wikipedia entry suggests) designed to emulate the Israelis at all, it was designed to achieve local superiority in the areas where the planes hit and in that it succeeded, and it was based upon the lessons of the '65 war, when the attack on Pathankot airbase had ensured that the Indian Airforce was not an issue duing the Battle of Chawinda.

Even the the PAF dominated the air war, as noted by the USAF observer; Chuck Yeager
http://military-history-pictures.blogspot.com/2009/07/chuck-yeager-on-pakistan-air-force.html

I've got to admit, everything you're saying is news to me. Every book I've found in the different libraries around here has continuously cited the Six Day War first strike as an impetus for the attempt.

And as with the PAF dominating the air war...I'm not so sure about that. The 1971 war was the one that really put the nail in the coffin of the F-104 Starfighter, seeing as even it's peacetime defenders couldn't find any way to explain away it's dismal work against Indian MiG-21s and Mirages.
 
And as with the PAF dominating the air war...I'm not so sure about that. The 1971 war was the one that really put the nail in the coffin of the F-104 Starfighter, seeing as even it's peacetime defenders couldn't find any way to explain away it's dismal work against Indian MiG-21s and Mirages.

The PAF had too few F-104s to have a major impact in this war, after all the spare parts of the dozen aircraft were hard to get with the US embargo. The majority of the interceptor force was the Shenyang F-6 (Chinese for MIG-19) and the Mirage IIIE as a back-up.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
The PAF had too few F-104s to have a major impact in this war, after all the spare parts of the dozen aircraft were hard to get with the US embargo. The majority of the interceptor force was the Shenyang F-6 (Chinese for MIG-19) and the Mirage IIIE as a back-up.

Well yeah, of course. You could give them 4 dozen in great shape and they still wouldn't be able to out turn a Fishbed. I'm using that as an example.

The PAF couldn't match the Indians in training or quality. Had they been able to pound them on the ground, then that might have been a moot point.
 
I doubt it would have made a difference, there was no way to win in East Pakistan when they were fighting their own people. The PAF demonstrated its superiority anyways, IIRC there was a 3:1 exchange ratio, so it's not like they had any critical shortcomings in the air war. You could try looking up on the Pathankot Strike, where most of the IAFs MIG-21s were destroyed as an example of what a more successful version of this would be. Also, I'd be hesitant do say that the PAF couldn't match for "training and quality", you should look at what foreign analisys has said about them.
 
Wait, wait, wait...are you arguing the western armed air force is better and I'm arguing the Soviet armed air force is better? This should get saved. :D

I thought that India Pakistan was in some bizzaro land where Western equipped can still mean foreign and nonwestern, while soviet equipped doesn't mean you aren't western (At least that's my impression from reading opinions on forums like this). I will edit my post and/or switch my position (to avoid confusion) if you so wish though. :D
 

MacCaulay

Banned
I thought that India Pakistan was in some bizzaro land where Western equipped can still mean foreign and nonwestern, while soviet equipped doesn't mean you aren't western (At least that's my impression from reading opinions on forums like this). I will edit my post and/or switch my position (to avoid confusion) if you so wish though. :D

I just thought it was amazingly odd. I mean, whenever we have these arguments and you call me or CalBear or anyone else and give us the ol' "You guys are hypocrites who only side with Western gear because it's Western" speech, I pretty much always trot out the fact that India was able to trounce Pakistan pretty well every time they went to war.

If every country was able to train it's troops like India did and then put them in Soviet gear, it wouldn't have a reputation as second-string coming out of the Cold War. Because it mopped the floor with the Western gear it faced. Now sure, the Indians used a fair amount of Western gear themselves: Centurion tanks, for example. But they did use PT-76 light tanks in their central and southern thrusts which faced off against Chaffee light tanks.

And if you wanted an answer as to how made better light tanks, that basically settled it: the Soviets did, and the question got answered about 20 miles inside Pakistan in 1972. Sure, the PT-76s came out later than the Chaffees did, but the West didn't develop anything else to replace them.

And when it came to the air war, I'm not sure exactly what air war Mark AH was referring to. Because the books I've checked out pretty much talk about Indian MiG-21s and Mirages pounding Pakistani F-104s, F-86s, and Mirages like nothing.

The big problem the Pakistanis seemed to have was that they were always a little bit behind the curve: the Indians sent the 1st Armoured Division in with Mk. 7 Centurions, while the Pakistanis were defending with M4A3 Shermans from the 26th Cavalry Regiment.
That kind of thing was replayed over and over again, and it was because the Indians knew how to put their strengths against the Pakistanis' weaknesses. They had numbers, but they also knew how to use what technological skill they had as well.

To go back to the air war, the MiG-21 could turn inside on an F-104 in a heartbeat: the Starfighter didn't have a prayer in a dogfight with the Fishbed. Heck, the Phantom normally had to actually make a go to get behind on one. And I haven't read any stories of Pakistani Mirages plinking Fishbeds out of the sky like Israelis were wont to do over Suez or the Golan so obviously there was some better training there.

Sidenote to that: the MiG-21 the Indians had was a better variant. This explains a great deal about why it performed so well. According to interviews with pilots published in Phoenix over the Nile, the Egyptian Air Force when it got the Fishbed, got a version that had no guns. Yeah. That's right: when the EAF when up against the Ha'avir after more than half of it's strength had been destroyed on the ground in 1967, it went up armed with only two AA-7 Aphid missiles.
No wonder the Egyptians didn't perform as well as the West was expecting: the Soviets made the same mistake the US did with the Phantom over Vietnam, but they hung another country out to dry with 1/4 as many missiles on their belly to replace the gun.
The MiG-17s were better armed, since they at least had a cannon to back up their chronically unreliable IR missiles.

So...yeah. First I'm defending the Indian Air Force (like always) and now I'm defending the Egyptians in the Six Day War. :rolleyes:
 
Part of the problem for the Pakistanis here has to what aircraft they had. By 1971 the F-86 was out of date and the F-104 was never designed as a dogfighter, it was designed as an interceptor. The Mirages were the best tool the PAF had, and they didn't use it as well.

And if the Pakistanis were serious about shutting down Indian Air Bases, why in the hell did they not use their Canberras? Fighters clear the skies, then the bombers do the heavy hitting.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
Part of the problem for the Pakistanis here has to what aircraft they had. By 1971 the F-86 was out of date and the F-104 was never designed as a dogfighter, it was designed as an interceptor. The Mirages were the best tool the PAF had, and they didn't use it as well.

And if the Pakistanis were serious about shutting down Indian Air Bases, why in the hell did they not use their Canberras? Fighters clear the skies, then the bombers do the heavy hitting.

Well, they could've also just gone low level like the Israelis did. They looked in their toolbox, saw the scalpel and butcher knife, and decided that instead of breaking their butcher knife they'd just try and bang the damn thing with the scalpel.
The one thing about the plan that was good was the timing and the weapons involved. Had they just moved the altitude on them down and practiced then they could've hit the airbases and it could've been a success.

With bombers, they could've hit the bases from the altitude they were at in OTL and probably done what they were hoping for since they could've put more bombs on target. Though who knows? Perhaps they wouldn't have had as much force flexibility. How many bombers were in the force?
 

Ak-84

Banned
I really don't know which books you have been reading, but I suggest you bin them.

1) Indian 1st Armoured Division v 25th (not 26th) Cavalry. The engagement took place outside Gadgor near Chawinda, and the reason that the "men of steel" found themselves alone was due to a messup at GHQ, the had expected the Indian attack to come from another area, as opposed to through Charwa as it did. Secondly, the 25th was not armed with Shermans, it had Pattons and also a Squadorn of M36 Jacksons (the regiment had been converting to Pattons before the war started). As it is, the Indian attack was blunted and the ensuing battle saw the destruction of both the 1st Armoured and the 6th Mountain Divisions of the Indian Army.

On the IAF in the battle, the Indian author Bhupinder Singh (a battalion commander in the battle) in his book, Tanks in Indo-Pak Wars stated that in the battle the "IAF was conspicious by its absence".

2) PAF training has always been of far higher standards than the IAF, that has been something which has been pretty much a mantra to the PAF since 47, they have expected to be outnumbered in any war, so they had better be well trained.

3) As pointed out, observers who were actually there during the '71 war have stated (like Chuck Yeager) that the PAF dominated the air war, a 3:1 kill ratio is not something to be dismissed as you have done.

4) The books that you allude to are clearly written by authors with zero knowledge of the Indo-Pak senarios. Sure the Operation Superficially looks like the Israeli strike, but a simple glance at a map will disemabue a person of that notion. Indias size is huge, it had airbases scattered around the country, there is not way the PAF can expect to hit them all, with launching a major effort, an effort which in 1971 would mean that come offensive time (a major 2 corps offensive was planned, it was due to commence the day after the ceasefire) the PAF's ability to support the Army would be be weakened. The aim of the operation was to do repeat what had been done in 65 by the strikes on Pathankot and Halwara, cripple the IAF effort in the sector, and to a large extent it succeeded in that effort, the IAF was unable to support its ground force collegues in both Shakargrah and in Chamb, as well as not being a factor at Fazlika.

5) Again, you have mixed up wars as far as the planes are concerned, in 1965, the main planes of the PAF were the Mirage III and the F-6, the Sabres and Starfighters were by now relegated to supporting roles. I believe that the Sabres were used mostly for CAS in the war.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
I really don't know which books you have been reading, but I suggest you bin them.

1) Indian 1st Armoured Division v 25th (not 26th) Cavalry...

I think you and I are reading very different books. I'll have to find this one you site, since it seems to offer some more information. Can you give me the author/title of two or three?

2) PAF training has always been of far higher standards than the IAF, that has been something which has been pretty much a mantra to the PAF since 47, they have expected to be outnumbered in any war, so they had better be well trained.

3) As pointed out, observers who were actually there during the '71 war have stated (like Chuck Yeager) that the PAF dominated the air war, a 3:1 kill ratio is not something to be dismissed as you have done.

I've got to admit that everything I've read has continually shown the Indian Air Force to perform at a higher quality than the Pakistani air force. I'll be honest in that I don't have the books at hand at the moment. They're from a library, so I can only reliably site them in a day or two after I get them.

4) ...Indias size is huge, it had airbases scattered around the country, there is not way the PAF can expect to hit them all...

On a tactical level, only certain airbases would apply. A Hunter or MiG-21 couldn't fly halfway across India and still have loiter time over the border, you know?

5) Again, you have mixed up wars as far as the planes are concerned, in 1965, the main planes of the PAF were the Mirage III and the F-6, the Sabres and Starfighters were by now relegated to supporting roles. I believe that the Sabres were used mostly for CAS in the war.

At that point, I was just arguing the merits of the different countries' arsenals on an East vs. West basis. If you want, I can pull out my Jane's and Arco guides and find the ones for the Shenyang F-6 and MiG-21. Believe me, it'd be fun! :D
 
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