Quotes on Indo Pak Tank Battles

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This is a list of quotes on the Indo Pak tank battles of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965.

From Stanley Wolpert's India^[1] :

India fought a second war with Pakistan over Kashmir in 1965, little more than a year after Nehru's death. Pakistan's ruler at the time, Field Marshal Ayub Khan, personally planned Operation Grand Slam, which he hoped would totally cut Kashmir off at its narrow southern neck from India's Punjab. Ayub was a giant of a man, as tall and sturdy as India's Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri was small and physically frail. But India's army was four times larger than Pakistan's, and quickly dispelled the popular Pakistani myth that one Muslim soldier was “worth ten Hindus.” Operation Grand Slam ground to a halt as soon as India's tanks rolled west across the Punjab border to the environs of Lahore. In three weeks the second IndoPak War ended in what appeared to be a draw when the embargo placed by Washington on U.S. ammunition and replacements for both armies forced cessation of conflict before either side won a clear victory. India, however, was in a position to inflict grave damage to, if not capture, Pakistan's capital of the Punjab when the cease-fire was called, and controlled Kashmir's strategic Uri-Poonch bulge, much to Ayub's chagrin.

From "Centrurion Tank in Battle" (Osprey - Vanguard 22)- Peter Sarson, Tony Bryan and David E. Smith:

Both sides claimed victory in the conflict, with the Indians demonstrating greater tactifcal skill in the use of armour due to superior crew training. It must be realized that the Indian Armoured Corps had been seduced by Pakistani propaganda and entered the conflict in considerable trepidation, believing the Patton (i.e. M-47s and M-48s) to be vastly superior in terms of firepower, protection and mobility to any tank possessed by the Indians. This concern was reflected in many of the official citations for heroism following the war, one of which commended an NCO for an action against "several of the supposedly invulnerable Pattons...". Indeed, it appears the Pakistanis were victims of their own propaganda and believed the Patton to be virtually indestructible [my remark: this is illustrated by a photo of two Indian soldiers standing on shot-up Pakistani M-48, and pointing at two neat 105 mm holes on the left side of the turet]. This led to their rash tactics in assaulting Indian positions frontally and suffering proportionately higher losses among the Pattons, which invariably led their attacks. In the swirling dust of the Sialkot battles, Centurion fought Patton at ranges seldom exceeding 1,000 yards. The robust Centruion with its simple fire control system proved superior to the M-47 and M-48 Pattons equipped with stereoscopic range-finders and sophisticated ballistic computers, which proved too complex for the ordinary Pakistani "sowar".

From "The Encyclopedia of Land Warfare in the 20th Century", Part 5, Asian Wars of Imperial Succession, Brigadier Shelford Bidwell, Pages 164-173, Leisure Books, Salamander Books Ltd 1977, 27 Old Gloucester St, London WC1N 3AF, UK:

Hostilities with Pakistan were to flare up again in 1965 after the Indian government unilaterally announced that Kashmir and Jammu were henceforth to be regarded as similar in status to the other Indian states. This resulted in some fierce, entirely orthodox fighting for local objectives. Apart from skirmishing in the Rann of Kutch (April-May), Pakistan began infiltration backed by artillery across the Kashmir cease-fire line which showed the effectiveness of guerrilla tactic in such terrain, some 10,000 irregulars keeping 50,000 Indian regulars backed by over 200 guns and mortars fully occupied. Hoping that the Indians were sufficiently distracted in this way, on 1 September 1965 the Pakistanis attacked in the lightly-held Chamb sector north of Jammu where there was good tank country, in great armoured strength and with massive artillery support, and were checked by the Indians only after hard fighting. The Indians in turn mounted a limited offensive astride the axis Amritsar-Lahore on 6 September with the aim of drawing the Pakistani tanks away from Chamb and, as it got under way, the larger mission of inflicting decisive casualties on the Pakistani army. Offensive and counter offensive followed for another fortnight and the fighting died down with little territorial advantage, but the score in terms of tanks clearly favouring the Indians who, the Pakistanis began to perceive, were no push-over.