1971 - The Naval War

The Naval Balance in 1971

Unlike the 1965 War, the Pakistan Navy knew very well that it was ill-prepared for the naval conflict with India. It was neither in a  condition to fight an offensive war in deep-sea against the Indian Navy, nor was it equipped to mount a serious defence against the Indian Navy's likely offensive.

In his report submitted before the 1971 War, Captain Shariff (Later, Admiral Shariff, CNS Pakistan Navy), had recommended a gradual replacement cum extensive repair program for the navy’s all surface combatants. The recommendations could not be implemented because of a shortage of funds. When Shariff became CNS, the Navy, which had so far operated on a policy of Sea Control, opted to operate, for an interim period, on a policy of Sea Denial as Sea Control was beyond its capacity. Whereas India was getting the latest Soviet warships and submarines for a song, against payments in the form of footwear and such like items, Pakistan Navy was decommissioning its WW2 vintage surface combatants. China had provided a few coastal defence craft. PN was thus relegated to a coastal defence, nay, a harbour defence force.

 Before the 71 War, the Soviet Union had offered Ossa missile boats to Pakistan. These were rejected by the Pakistan Navy due to their limited range, which, according to the naval top brass, would have reduced Pakistan Navy to a coastal defence force. In the 71 War, the same missile boats were employed by the Indian Navy in an imaginative manner for bombarding the Karachi port. They towed these missile boats behind frigates and when in the vicinity of Karachi, used them to sink PN destroyer Khyber and two other non-combatant ships, though sections of the Pakistan Navy still maintain that Khyber was sunk by a Soviet submarine.

A naval task force under Admiral Vladimir Kruglyakov had reportedly left Vladivostok on 3rd December 1971. It comprised a Kynda anti-ship missile cruiser, a diesel-electric submarine (possibly the Juliet class), an anti-aircraft missile destroyer, and a Foxtrot class (diesel-electric) attack submarine already in the Indian Ocean . After the war, Admiral Kruglyakov, in an interview, stated that he had orders to stop the U.S. fleet from interfering with Indian Navy’s operations. 

(www.history.stackexchange.com).

In his interview, Admiral Kruglyakov makes contradictory claims. He says that his task force had entered the Bay of Bengal three days after the arrival of USS Enterprise which, given the distance from Vladivostok to the Bay of Bengal , seems true. On the other hand, he says that on arrival, he had ordered his submarines to surface and make their presence felt to the American task force. By that time Pakistani forces had already surrendered and fighting had ceased in the Eastern theatre. With the fighting, all the chances of USS Enterprise helping in the evacuation of the Pakistani garrison had also ceased.

Hence there was no requirement for a show of force by Admiral Kruglyakov’s task force*. So, if the Soviet task force had started off from Vladivostok on 3rd December, it could not possibly sink PNS Khyber on 4th December (when the Indian Navy launched Operation Trident against Karachi harbour). However, the Foxtrot class Soviet submarine, which was already in the Indian Ocean (we do not know which group it belonged to before being regrouped with Kruglyakov’s flotilla), could have regrouped with the Indian Navy’s task force and taken part in Operation Trident. Foxtrot class submarines were armed with 10x torpedo tubes (6x bow, 4x stem) and carried 22 torpedoes.  The claim by a Pakistan Navy source is based on submarine signatures. Prior to the 71 War, the Indian Navy had no experience in employing missile boats. Was Operation Trident a joint Indo-Soviet Operation?

*The US Task Force 74 was led by the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. Performing its routine duties in the Gulf of Tonkin, the task force was ordered into the Indian Ocean on 14th December 1971, crossed Malacca Straits on night 14th -15th December and entered the Bay of Bengal on the morning of 15th December. The surrender of Pakistani forces took place on 16th December. Going by Kruglyakov’s account the flotilla commanded by him reached the Bay of Bengal on the morning of 18th December.

PAF responded to the attack by bombing Okha, from where the Indian naval task force had commenced operations against Karachi, the next night. However, the Indians had already withdrawn their naval assets to Bombay. PN’s response to the Indian raid on Karachi was sinking of Indian frigate Khukri by submarine Hangor, the first sinking of a surface ship by a submarine since WW2. Contrary to Indian perceptions, what to talk of a submarine base at Gwadar, in 1971 Pakistan Navy did not have any naval presence west of Karachi. Gwadar, at that time, was a sleepy fishermen’s village (despite the construction of some jetties, not much has changed to date). It was only after the 71 war when a surface ship was deployed at Gwadar. If the Indian Navy had any plans to attack Gwadar, it shelved them after the sinking of Khukri. We also heard about Indian plans to land a brigade minus at or near Gwadar. Without any logistical support, how long would such a task force survive?

Talking of Vikrant, it remained elusive during the 71 War also, till submarine Ghazi was sunk, accidentally, or by the Indian Navy, as claimed by them. Fearing Ghazi, Vikrant was moved from Bombay to Vishakapatnam, and thence to the Andamans. Only when it was confirmed that Ghazi had been sunk was Vikrant moved to the Bay of Bengal. Never before was an aircraft carrier relegated to the role of attacking enemy gunboats, merchant navy ships, and cargo ships. 

In the absence of PAF and PN, Vikrant threw a naval blockade of East Pakistan and its Sea Hawk aircraft destroyed about a dozen Pakistani improvised gunboats and civilian ships. However, PNS Rajshahi, the only proper Pakistani gunboat in the Bay of Bengal, slipped through the blockade and reached West Pakistan sometime after the war. According to the Indians, the Sea-Hawks emerged unscathed, achieving the highest kill ratio for any aircraft in the entire war”. They had to. As for the Ghazi, India refused the US and Soviet offers to salvage the wreck of Ghazi. Perhaps salvaging it would have confirmed if Ghazi were sunk by a depth charge fired by INS Rajput, as the Indians claimed, or as a result of hitting one of the mines, it had laid in Vishakapatnam’s navigation channel.

The most debatable question about the 71 War’s naval dimensions remains if the Indian Navy could have slapped a naval blockade on West Pakistan. Given the Indian ambitions to destroy West Pakistan’s military machine also after the fall of East Pakistan, it would have taken Vikrant more than a week to reach the western seaboard from the Bay of Bengal. 

Even if the Indian Navy had deployed all its naval combatants to block Pakistan’s sea lanes of communications, the more likely Pakistani response would have been to deploy its three remaining submarines in an arc south of Karachi where, due to the shallow waters of the Arabian Sea, they would be very difficult to detect by the Indian Navy’s frigates and Alize ASW aircraft.

Lying there quietly, they could very effectively ambush any intruding enemy ship Thus, it would have been easier for Pakistan to deny India control of its sea lanes of communication, than for India to establish and maintain positive sea control.

Unlike the 65 War, PAF possessed Mirages against which the Sea-Hawks on board Vikrant would be no match. If we go by the thesis that Pakistan’s military junta and Bhutto had relinquished East Pakistan even before the war, it makes sense that the PAF had used its Mirages very sparingly during the war, saving them for the final round in case India attempted to destroy West Pakistan also.

Without a potent organic air capability to counter Pakistani Mirages, the Indian navy would be forced to rely on the IAF, or to deploy at sea without adequate air cover. Going by Clary’s (2014) argument, with the IAF engaged in support of land operations, it is doubtful if it could provide meaningful air cover to the Indian Navy, calling the Indian sea control efforts into serious doubt. India’s ability to successfully interdict vessels would weaken further west because of the decrease in air cover and because of the dangers of hitting neutral shipping coming out of the Gulf of Oman.

Postscript

Indian Navy destroyed the record of  the sinking of submarine Ghazi 

By Josy Joseph

NEW DELHI: The sinking of Pakistani submarine Ghazi in the 1971 Indo-Pak war may have been one of the high points of India's first-ever emphatic military victory but there are no records available with naval authorities on how the much-celebrated feat was pulled off.

As a debate rages over a TOI report on the destruction of all records of the 1971 Bangladesh war at the Eastern Army Command headquarters in Kolkata, it transpires that naval authorities also destroyed records of the sinking of Ghazi.

The troubling finding has been thrown up by a trail of communications among the naval brass. Pakistani submarine PNS Ghazi, regarded as a major threat to India's plans to use its naval superiority, sank around midnight of December 3, 1971 off Visakhapatnam, killing all 92 on board in the initial days of the war between India and Pakistan. Indian Navy claims the submarine was destroyed by depth charges fired by its ship INS Rajput. Pakistani authorities say the submarine sank because of either an internal explosion or accidental blast of mines that the submarine itself was laying around Vizag harbour.

According to a set of naval communications made available to TOI by sources familiar with the Ghazi sinking, senior officers and those writing the official history of Navy exchanged a host of letters admitting to the fact that crucial documents of Ghazi were missing.

Immediately after Ghazi sank, Indian naval sailors had recovered several crucial documents and other items from the submarine, wreckage of which is still lying underwater off Vizag.

On June 22, 1998, Rear Admiral K Mohanrao, then chief of staff of Visakhapatnam-based Eastern Naval Command, told Vice Admiral G M Hiranandani, who was writing the official history of Navy, "All-out efforts were made to locate historical artifacts of Ghazi from various offices and organizations of this headquarters. However, regretfully, I was unable to lay my hands on many of the documents that I personally saw during my previous tenure."

Mohanrao went on to tell Hiranandani, "We are still continuing to search for old files and as and when they are located, I will send appropriate documents for your project." Mohanrao also refers to their inquiries with Commodore P S Bawa (retd), who worked with the Maritime Historical Society, to find out about the artifacts. Here also they drew a blank.

What Mohanrao's letter does not disclose is the letter written by Bawa himself in 1980. On December 20, 1980, Bawa, then a commander with the Maritime Historical Society, said, "In Virbahu, to my horror I found that all Gazi papers and signals were destroyed this year. Nothing is now available there." He was writing after a visit to Virbahu, the submarine centre at Vizag, where the documents, signals and other artifacts recovered from Ghazi were stored. His letter (MHS/23) was addressed to Vice Admiral M P Awati, the then chief of personnel at the naval headquarters.

Over the years, in the 1990s, as Vice Admiral Hiranandani sat down to write the official history of Navy, he made several efforts to get the Ghazi documents, records show. In one of his letters to the then chief of eastern naval command, Vice Admiral P S Das, he sought the track chart of the Ghazi, the official report of the diving operations on the Ghazi from December 1971 onwards and any other papers related to Ghazi. But none of it was available for the official historian of the Navy.

A retired Navy officer who saw action in 1971 said the destruction of the Ghazi papers and those of Army in Kolkata are all fitting into a larger trend, many of them suspected about Indian war history, of deliberate falsification in many instances. It is high time the real history of those past actions were revealed. "We have enough heroes," he said. "In the fog of war, many myths and false heroes may have been created and many honest ones left unsung," he admitted.