Wang Xinming | In the 1962 self-defense counterattack against India, the deterrent power of the air force should be mentioned

Written by Wang Xinming

Figure-4 bomber

As soon as the Indian general election ended, Modi was re-elected, although it was expected, but it was also very reluctant, saying that it was reluctantly because Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party boasted before the election that it would win 400 seats, but only won 240 seats, not a majority, which means that he has to govern in coalition with other parties, and once united, he will not be able to work together, and the implementation of policies will be reduced.

It is undeniable that since India's independence, only two people have served three terms, one is the founding prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and the other is Modi.

The most profound lesson of dealing with Indians is that you should never trust their promises, and that you can always turn against them as long as it is advantageous, and Nehru is like that, and Modi is no better.

I put these two people together and say that they both have a dream of making India bigger, and their dreams are sometimes really like sleepwalking, beyond their means, east and west, without discipline. So Chairman Mao said: "I thought about it for ten days and ten nights, but I didn't understand why India was fighting us?" As soon as Chairman Mao's words were finished, the Indian army was defeated, and finally Nehru died of depression due to the defeat.

Now Modi's reputation in India is on par with Nehru's, and his approach is similar, so I wonder if he will also be at war with China as he did in 1962 when his domestic contradictions are stacked.

Let's talk about the causes of the Sino-Indian border counterattack in 1962.

India, a country that has not learned some good things during the British governance period, has learned a lot from the arrogant habits of the British Empire, and during the founding period of Nehru, there was a grand desire to "establish a federation of Greater India" to pull all the countries around India into it, including part of China.

How big is this federation? That is, it includes part of China, India, Myanmar, Sikkim, Afghanistan and several other small countries. This "Greater Indian Federation" is fixed in the Indian Ocean region, but it is not limited to the Indian Ocean region, but also includes Southeast Asia to the east and Central Asia and West Asia to the west, and of course India is the political and economic center of these regions.

Nehru was taught by the West and was more influenced by the Anglo-American bandit culture, he thought that this center could not be dominated by two big countries, I co-opted you, you have to submit to me, he also knew that China would definitely not be convinced, so he wanted to subdue China first to other small countries.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the relationship with it was also handled as a friendly neighbor, and under extremely difficult circumstances in the early days of our founding of the People's Republic of China, it also provided 660,000 tons of rice to India, but the Indian Nehru government did not remember this good, and took advantage of our War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea to encroach on Tawang and the areas south of it, and then changed the map (territory), and actually drew (delineated) most of our greater Tibet, of course we did not do it. At that time, more diplomatic measures were taken.

At this time, Nehru had already been re-elected as prime minister for the second time, and he was bent on pushing out of his circle of "Great Indian Federation", taking China's forbearance as a matter of fear, and continuing to encroach on our territory to the north, directly forcing the line of the Kejilang River Valley, and then we could not bear it anymore, and on October 20, 1962, we began to carry out an all-out counterattack against India from the east and west. The campaign was implemented in two phases.

Phase 1, from October 20 to 28. The main direction of the counterattack was the Kejielang-Tawang area, and after taking these areas in one fell swoop, it continued to advance southward. In the western sector, on the 20th, our army launched a counterattack against the enemy who had invaded the Galwan Valley and Hongshantou, and completely annihilated the enemy. On the 21st, the victory was taken advantage of the victory to expand the results of the battle, and by the 23rd, all 31 Indian strongholds on both sides of Pangong Lake and the area north of it were completely wiped out.

In the second phase, from 16 to 21 November, the main direction of the counterattack was the West Pass-Bomdila area and the Warong area. By the 21st, the combat units had advanced to Samville and Jingudi, approaching the traditional customary line. In the western sector, from November 18 to 20, our army cleared out the six remaining Indian strongholds in the Pangong Lake area and annihilated most of the defenders. The fighting on the entire eastern and western fronts basically ended on 21 November, which lasted more than one month, and basically achieved the goal of punishing India. At 0:00 on November 22, the mainland unilaterally announced a comprehensive ceasefire, and India acquiesced. At this point, all our combat units have withdrawn 20 kilometers from the original Line of Actual Control.

Speaking of that campaign, my original unit participated in the battle from beginning to end (who would have thought that after 25 years of this battle, we would be there again as a formation). There have been many reports on the battle cases of the army part of the Sino-Indian border self-defense counterattack operation, and the "memoirs" of the leaders have been fully supplemented later, so I will not say more.

I just want to talk about the deterrent effect of the Air Force in that campaign.

At this time, our relations with the former Soviet Union had fallen apart, and the head of the Soviet Union at that time was Khrushchev, who was not friendly to us, always calculated us, and began to withdraw experts from the mainland. At this time, the Soviet Union gave India some military support that it had intended to exchange with us, mainly advanced MiG-series fighters. At this time, the United States still remembered the hatred of the Korean battlefield, and it was not good for us, and of course he was happy to see India fighting with us, and in order to support India, he also sold India a lot of advanced fighters. It was in this context that Nehru's dream of a "Greater Indian Federation" became more urgent, and he ordered the first shot of the Sino-Indian border battle to be fired.

At this time, our air force, objectively speaking, except for 12 Tu-4 bombers, other fighters were inferior to India, which was armed with the Soviet Union and the United States.

This incident is related to the use of Tu-4 in 1959 by China to support Tibetan troops to quell the rebellion. At that time, the rebels had been chased south by our counterinsurgency forces, and it was this Tu-4 bomber that came in handy, and it did not use too heavy bombs in the pursuit, but only used a few light bombs or grenades and airborne machine guns to blow up a large number of their casualties. The rebels and their leaders had never seen such a powerful bomber before, and they regarded it as a "sacred bird." ”

As we all know, the fact that the rebels were able to rebel was the result of India's direct support. After these "remnants of the defeated army" who were hit by the Tu-4 ran to India, they did not give much propaganda to the Tu-4 bombers, and told Nehru that the power of the Tu-4 was miraculous in front of Nehru, and Nehru listened to it at that time, anyway, in the subsequent 1962 Sino-Indian border counterattack campaign, the air force was never used to support the front-line battle.

The reason is that the Nehru government learned that once they used their air force to participate in front-line operations, China would directly bomb New Delhi with the Tu-4, and the Soviets also revealed the news that we might develop a large (nuclear) bomb. At this time, the United States and the Soviet Union only had a few fighters in place to support them, and they preferred to constantly beg the United States to send bombers and troops to support them, and they were reluctant to use the few advanced fighters they already had.

In fact, based on the relationship between India and the Soviet Union at that time, India could have obtained much more Tu-4 bombers than ours, but the Indians always did not think about practicality, but wanted to suppress the other side from the heart, so that he did not import the relatively backward Tu-4 of the Soviet Union at that time, and his thinking logic was to buy more advanced fighters to form a relative air superiority.

It was based on such a concern that after weighing the pros and cons, the air force did not move when the battle began, and the only helicopter that moved was to save his Lieutenant General Kaul.

Past experience, if not forgotten, is a guide for the future..

In terms of dealing with change, Modi is not always reassuring, and he is very practical and speculative. Not to mention, just before the election, in order to build momentum, he said that he would talk to China about the border issue, and the Chinese side affirmed his attitude. Who knows that these words are still in our ears, but after the election, they made bets on both sides and immediately expressed their importance to relations with Taiwan.

Of course not.

So at Shigatse Airport, the J-20 went to a bunch, the J-10C also had a dozen, and the air police 500 were waiting to be ordered. We will never forget the ownership of the 125,000 square kilometers of territory between the west and India, and the linkage between the eastern and western theaters and the follow-up of the southern and northern theaters.

If that day comes, I always want to see the moment when the electromagnetic tungsten alloy armor-piercing projectile floats through the Himalayas and penetrates the tanks of all countries, as well as the cruise flight of the plateau eagle from the inside to the outside without landing in the air, the implementation of the point attack scene, and as long as the disc machine is floating in the air, any flying object within 2000 kilometers will be captured once it takes off, and the rest will be handed over to the joint assault array of electronic warfare and stealth aircraft, it should be said that the anti-encroachment campaign 62 years ago their air force is useless, and it is still today!

East and west, we're ready.

2024.6.20 on the high-speed rail back to Chengdu