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Operation Dwarka

(Redirected from Operation Somnath)

This article is about the Pakistan Navy's 1965 Operation Somnath. For Ghaznavid attack on Somnath in 1026, see Sack of Somnath.

Operation Dwarka, codenamed as Operation Somnath, was a naval operation by the Pakistan Navy to attack the Indian coastal town of Dwarka on 7 and 8 September 1965. This instance was the first engagement by the Pakistan Navy in any of the Indo-Pakistan Wars.[a]

Operation Dwarka
Part of the naval conflict of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965
Date7–8 September 1965
Location
Dwarka, Jamnagar district, Gujarat, India
22°14′N 68°58′E / 22.23°N 68.97°E / 22.23; 68.97
Result

Pakistani claim: Operational success[1]

  • Damage to Dwarka
    Indian claim: Inconclusive
  • Light damage to Dwarka Town
Belligerents
 Pakistan  India
Commanders and leaders
Commodore S. M. Anwar Rear Admiral B. A. Samson
Units involved

Pakistan Navy

 Indian Navy
Strength
1 light cruiser
(PNS Babur)
6 destroyers
(PNS Khaibar, PNS Badr, PNS Jahangir, PNS Shah Jahan, PNS Alamgir, PNS Tippu Sultan)
1 submarine
(PNS Ghazi)		 unknown
(Ships did not leave port)
Casualties and losses
None damage to Dwarka town[2]
class=notpageimage|
Location within India

As the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 broke out between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, the armies and air forces of both nations were involved in intense fighting in the regions of Punjab and Kashmir. To relieve pressure on the southern front, Pakistan decided to send its navy to launch a strike on the Indian coast. The primary objective of the attack ostensibly was to destroy the radar station at Dwarka which was believed by Pakistani naval intelligence to have a Huff-Duff beacon to guide Indian bombers.[4] Pakistani high command also hoped to divert the operations of the Indian Air Force away from the north.

Objectives

The mission objectives of the Pakistan Navy were:[5]

  • To draw heavy enemy units out of Bombay for the submarine PNS Ghazi to attack.
  • To destroy the radar installation at Dwarka.
  • To lower Indian morale.
  • To divert the Indian Air Force's efforts away from the North.

Many Pakistani sources describe the operation as at least partially successful, while many Indian ones dispute this.[6]

Operation

On the night of 7 September, the Pakistan Navy launched its assault on Western Indian shores. Dwarka was chosen for its proximity 200 km (120 mi) from the Karachi Port, its relatively weak defences and historical political prominence. The plan called for a fleet of seven naval vessels to shell the town of Dwarka. The attack was aimed at luring the heavy ships anchored in Bombay into attacking the Pakistani ships to enable the submarine PNS Ghazi lurking in the Arabian Sea to engage and sink the Indian ships. Accordingly, a fleet of seven ships comprising PNS Babur, PNS Khaibar, PNS Badr, PNS Jahangir, PNS Alamgir, PNS Shah Jahan and PNS Tippu Sultan set sail for Dwarka and bombarded the town. The bombardment continued past midnight.[7]

The Indian warships harbored in Bombay were under refit and were unable to sortie, nor did Ghazi encounter active combatants on the West coast.[8] According to Pakistani sources, the objective of diverting the Indian Air Force from attacking Pakistan's southern front worked as air raids on the city of Karachi ceased. This was presumed to be due also to the lack of availability of the radar guidance, which Pakistan claimed was damaged in the attack.[7]

The Indian Navy's official version of events is that, around 23:55 hours, the Pakistani vessels fired on Dwarka for more than 20 minutes. The ships fired around 50 shells each, which included 5.25 inch rounds fired by the Pakistani cruiser PNS Babur. The report adds that most shells fell between the temple and the railway station, which lay 3 km (1.9 mi) from the lighthouse. Some buildings were hit, with the Railway Guest House suffering significant damage along with a cement factory. Smoke from the damage was visible to the Pakistani warships, approximately 20 km (12 mi) away.[2]

The radar installation was shelled during the bombardment but neither was the radar damaged nor were there any casualties according to Indian sources.[6] The frigate INS Talwar was in nearby Okha Port undergoing repairs and did not intervene.[6] Hiranandani's history of the Indian Navy states that:[6]

Next morning she (INS Talwar) was directed to send a team to Dwarka to assess the damage. The team found that most of the shells had fallen on the soft soil between the temple and the radio station and failed to explode. The air attack damaged a railway engine and destroyed a portion of a railway guesthouse.

A total of 40 unexploded shells were also recovered intact.[2] The shells bore the mark "INDIAN ORDNANCE"; these were dated from the 1940s before the Partition of India into India and Pakistan.[2]

Radio Pakistan, however, transmitted that Dwarka was badly damaged.[2]

The following is the list of commanding officers of the operation:[citation needed]

  • Commodore S.M. Anwar, OTC – Officer Commanding of Operation Dwarka and the Commander of the Pakistan Fleet (COMPAK)
  • Captain MAK Lodhi – Commanding Officer of PNS Babur, the light cruiser.
  • Captain A Hanif – Commanding Officer of PNS Khaibar, the destroyer.
  • Commander IH Malik – Commanding Officer of PNS Badr, the frigate.
  • Commander KM Hussain – Commanding Officer of PNS Jahangir, the destroyer.
  • Commander Iqbal F. Quadir – Commanding Officer of PNS Alamgir, the destroyer.
  • Commander SZ Shamsie – Commanding Officer of PNS Shah Jahan, the destroyer.
  • Commander Amir Aslam – Commanding Officer of PNS Tippu Sultan, the destroyer.
  • Commander Karamat Rahman Niazi – Commanding Officer of PNS Ghazi, the submarine.
  • Commander Muhammad Ismail – Commander Signals, PNS Tippu Sultan, the destroyer.

Aftermath

For some, Operation Dwarka was a significant naval operation of the 1965 war,[5][9] but others considered it a nuisance raid or of little strategic value.[10][11][12] The Indian Ministry of Defence had issued written instructions which ordered the Indian Navy "not to proceed two hundred miles beyond Bombay nor North of the parallel of Porbandar".[13] The lack of response by the Indian Navy to the attack on Dwarka led to questions being asked in the Parliament of India and a challenge to be answered by others.[14][15][16] The Chief of the Naval Staff, Vice Admiral B.S. Soman was restrained from retaliation for the Dwarka raid by the Defence Minister.[13] Of the Indian Navy's 23 ships, ten were under refit in Bombay, including the INS Vikrant, the light cruiser INS Delhi, three destroyers and two frigates.[6][17] An Indian source explained this by saying that the Indian government did not want to get into a naval conflict with Pakistan, but wished to restrict the war to a land-based conflict.[18] The failure of INS Talwar to retaliate, then undergoing repairs to her condensers in Okha,[19] has been lamented by Indian Vice Admiral N. Krishnan who said that no government would blame a warship going into action, if attacked.[15][20] PNS Ghazi continued to patrol Kachchh and Bombay coasts spotting aircraft positions when snorkeling.[21]

The Dwarka raid is considered by Pakistani sources as being a prime reason for the Indian Navy's subsequent post-war modernization and expansion, with an increase in budget from ₹35 crore (equivalent to ₹23 billion or US$280 million in 2023) to ₹115 crore (equivalent to ₹57 billion or US$680 million in 2023).[15] The Dwarka raid, as per an Indian historian G. M Hiranandani, led to the procurement of missile boats by the Indian Navy from the Soviet Union for the Defense of Kutch. These were subsequently used by India in Operation Trident in the 1971 war.[22] However, he attributes the expansion of the Indian Navy in the period 1965 to 1975 to the post-1962 planned expansion of the Indian Navy with many ships being negotiated and purchased from the Soviet Union prior to the war.[23]

In 1998, Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) financed and produced the historical dramatization film of the operation named, Operation Dwarka, 1965, which was based on this incident. The film was directed by Pakistani film director Qasim Jalali and it was written by Hameed Kashmiri.[24]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ The navy was formed in 1947 with the nation's independence from Great Britain, and fighting in the first Indo-Pakistani war was restricted to land and aerial combat missions.[3]

References

  1. ^ "Operation Dwarka". Pakistan Navy. Retrieved 28 October 2024.
  2. ^ a b c d e Madan, Ramesh (Ex-Sgt, IAF). "The Shelling of Dwarka". Bharat Rakshak. Bharat-Rakshak.com. Retrieved 6 September 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. ^ Read, Anthony; Fisher, David (July 1999). The Proudest Day: India's Long Road to Independence. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 474. ISBN 9780393318982.
  4. ^ Mohan, P. V. S. Jagan; Chopra, Samir (May 2005). The India-Pakistan air war of 1965. Manohar. p. 157. ISBN 978-81-7304-641-4.
  5. ^ a b Unspecified. "History". Pakistan Navy. Retrieved 10 November 2011.
  6. ^ a b c d e Hiranandani (2000), pp 34–35.
  7. ^ a b "Operation Dwarka 1965: A golden chapter in naval history". The News International. 6 September 2022. Retrieved 2 March 2024.
  8. ^ Hiranandani (2000), pp 34–35. "FOCIF sailed with his flagship, INS Mysore, and three escorts out of Bombay Harbour and remained on station without encountering any Pakistani naval vessels till 8 September when the Talwar, returning from Okha, joined her."
  9. ^ Kavic, Lorne J. (1967). India's quest for security: defence policies, 1947–1965. University of California Press. p. 190. Retrieved 8 November 2011.
  10. ^ Donohue, H. J. (1989). "Maritime lessons from the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war". Working Paper (192). Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University. ISBN 9780731508068. ISSN 0158-3751.
  11. ^ Ghosh, Anjali (1 September 2009). India's Foreign Policy. Pearson Education India. p. 63. ISBN 978-81-317-1025-8. Retrieved 8 November 2011.
  12. ^ Dittmer, Lowell (2005). South Asia's nuclear security dilemma: India, Pakistan, and China. M.E. Sharpe. p. 77. ISBN 978-0-7656-1419-3.
  13. ^ a b Pradhan, R. D.; Chavan, Yashwantrao Balwantrao (2007). 1965 war, the inside story: Defence Minister Y.B. Chavan's diary of India-Pakistan war. Atlantic Publishers & Dist. p. 117. ISBN 978-81-269-0762-5. The authors were the Defence Minister of India and his Private Secretary from 1962-65 (see pg xiii).
  14. ^ Hiranandani (2000), pg 52.
  15. ^ a b c Sardar FS Lodi, An Agosta Submarine for Pakistan
  16. ^ Roy, Mihir K. (1995). War in the Indian Ocean. Lancer Publishers. p. 84. ISBN 978-1-897829-11-0. 'But the Bombayites failed to understand the lack of success by the Indian fleet, especially with sirens wailing, Jamnagar attacked and Dwarka shelled. But nonetheless, the naval bombardment of Dwarka with the Indian fleet still preparing to sail was an affront to the sailors in white, who could not understand what was holding the fleet back.'
  17. ^ Qadir, Iqbal, Vice Admiral (retd) (1998). "Pakistan and its three wars". defencejournal.com. Retrieved 10 November 2011.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  18. ^ Hiranandani, Vice Adm Gulab, IN (Retd) (Spring 2002). "The Indian End of the Telescope – India and Its Navy". Naval War College Review. LV (2). Archived from the original on 16 September 2006. Retrieved 8 November 2011.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  19. ^ Hiranandani (2000), pg 34. "Talwar encountering contamination of her boilers due to leakage of her condensors put in at Okha for temporary repairs."
  20. ^ Roy (1995), pp 84–85. 'As Vice Admiral N. Krishnan is supposed to have said. "One of our frigates Talwar was at Okha. It is unfortunate that she could not sail forth and seek battle. Even if there was a mandate against the Navy participating in the war, no Government could blame a warship going into action, if attacked. An affront to our national honour is no joke and we cannot laugh it away by saying 'All the Pakistani's did was to kill a cow'. Let us at least create a memorial to the 'unknown cow' who died with her boots on in a battle against the Pakistan Navy."'
  21. ^ Roy (1995), pp 83–85.
  22. ^ Hiranandani (2000), pg 326.
  23. ^ Hiranandani (2000), pp 8–11.
  24. ^ "Operation Dwarka 1965". Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV). Archived from the original on 21 December 2021. Retrieved 5 September 2020 – via YouTube.

Bibliography

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