Might is right, most of us think. Or at least that strength prevails. Not necessarily. Didn’t Sugriv fell his mightier brother Vali? Didn’t the puny shepherd boy David knock down the giant Goliath?
In battle, it is not always strength that prevails; most often, it is smartness. To be precise, smart tactics. History tells us hundreds of stories of smart commanders defeating armies 10 or 20 times larger than theirs, by employing superior or smarter tactics.
It doesn’t mean that the capability of weapons or the size of armies don’t matter in battle. Indeed, they do. But more important are the ability of the commanders to make use of the lay of the land or the topography of the battlefield, the weather, the ability to choose weapons that suit the weather and the geography, a knack to shape tactics according to these, the skill to see through the fog of the battle and to change tactics or employ forces according to the rapidly changing battlefield, the smartness to learn from past battles and employ the lessons in a way as to suit the current battle, and so on, and on, and on.
In short, it isn’t strength that always prevails; it is smartness.
We start a series from today, recounting tales of battlefield geniuses from India and abroad, who have grabbed victory by sheer employment of surprise and superior tactics.
Tanks on the mountains
A cold day in November 1948. Pakistani infiltrators, most of them soldiers disguised as tribesmen who had captured much of the Srinagar valley and been pushed back to the mountains, were warming themselves by a fire in the minus-20-degree cold of Zoji La pass. Zoji La and much of the hills were still in their control, and they were waiting for orders to mow down the Indian infantry, positioned at lower heights.
Then a strange sound puzzled them; the sound turned into louder rumbles, and soon into a roar that sounded like that of the tanks. But tanks at the mountain tops of 4,000 metres? No one had even heard of it.
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Only when the shells began to hit them and the mountainsides did they realise – yes, those were battle tanks. Most stood shell-shocked, literally. They were mowed down by the shells. The rest either scattered into the mountain night or were shot or bayoneted by the Indian infantrymen who were quietly following the tanks.
In two weeks, General Thimayya captured the Zoji La pass and Kargil. But for his daring decision to deploy tanks on the mountains, even Ladakh would have been in Pakistan's possession today.
Deploying tanks on the mountains is nothing new today. The Indian Army deployed them in hundreds in the days following the Chinese threat in Galwan and elsewhere. But in those days, no commander anywhere in the world had deployed heavy armour at such heights.
One has to look at the total battle theatre to understand the significance. The Pakistanis, who had reached Srinagar in October 1947, were somehow pushed back by the daring action of Major Somnath Sharma and others. But the Zoji La pass and the Kargil-Dras regions continued to be in the hands of the enemy. At that time, Zoji La-Kargil-Dras, which was essentially a mule track, or at the most a jeep track, was the only route to Ladakh, which was with India. This meant the enemy could threaten Ladakh at any time.
The rule of thumb is that, to defeat an enemy sitting on a mountaintop, the attacking force needs eight to 20 times more manpower or firepower than the enemy. This meant the only way to dislodge the Pakistanis from the Zoji La axis was to attack with 8 to 20 times more force. That much force wasn’t just available.
Major-General K.S. Thimayya, the head of the Kashmir Operation, had a brilliant idea. What if India used tanks? Those who heard it laughed, as they couldn't conceive the idea. Until then, no one in the world had ever taken a tank to an altitude of 4,000 meters. Moreover, the nearest tank base was in Akhnoor, Jammu. The road from there to Srinagar had been built long ago for transporting mules. Forget tanks; even a jeep could barely pass.
General Thimayya did not give up. He quietly got Army engineers to upgrade the mountain track. And he ordered his tanks to move along with the road-builders.
The next problem was: how would a tank with its long gun barrel navigate the sharp hairpin bends on the mountain slopes? Thimayya found a way. Dismantle the rotating upper part of the tank, including the cannon (the turret). This had two advantages. One, it became easier to navigate the sharp bends. Two, even if the enemy saw them, they wouldn't look like tanks. After crossing the mountains and bends, they were reassembled at the top.
There was a third problem, too. Tanks being heavy, most wooden bridges across the newly-built road could collapse under their weight. Thimayya’s engineers brought cranes which lifted the tanks over the bridges. Anyway, the tanks reached Srinagar in a month.
The attack began on November 1, 1948. Lieutenant-Colonel Rajinder Singh Sparrow was put in charge of the attack. General Thimayya himself rode in the lead tank. In two weeks, they captured the heights.
General Thimayya later became the Chief of the Army Staff. Rajinder Singh Sparrow earned a Maha Vir Chakra in the operation and another Maha Vir Chakra in the 1965 war, becoming one of the few to have received two Maha Vir Chakras. After retirement, he joined the Congress and became a member of the Punjab cabinet and later a Lok Sabha MP.