An Infantry Company of the Punjab Regiment Held the Longewala Post Through the Night of 4 December 1971. Hunter Jets From Jaisalmer Reached the Pakistani Tanks at First Light

At 10.30 on the morning of 4 December 1971, Lieutenant Dharam Vir took 30 soldiers out of the Longewala post on foot and set off for the international border. Pakistan had opened the war the previous evening with air strikes on Indian airfields. Major Kuldip Singh Chandpuri, who commanded the company at the post, had told him to watch the line, report any movement into Indian territory and shadow whatever crossed. By five in the afternoon the patrol was in position.

A few minutes after midnight, Dharam Vir recalled in 2018, the patrol heard tanks across the border. On the radio he told Chandpuri the tanks were heading for the post and that he should ask for air support by morning. At Jaisalmer, the war diary of the Air Force’s 14 Care and Maintenance Unit records that the company commander passed the report to divisional headquarters and that it “appeared to be discarded”.

A post that was not meant to matter

That week the Indian 12 Infantry Division was planning an offensive of its own. Major General Kuldip Singh Bajwa, writing in the journal of the United Service Institution of India in 2008, says it meant to go from the area of Sadhewala, Tanot and Kishangarh to capture Rahim Yar Khan, a town on the rail and road line from Karachi to Lahore. This was one corner of the 1971 war that created Bangladesh, and Bajwa says both sides believed major operations were not feasible in the Rajasthan and Sindh deserts. Longewala, 18 kilometres inside the border, had been a Border Security Force post. A Company of 23 Punjab moved in when the BSF gave the post up, though a few BSF men stayed.

The company was about 120 soldiers by Bajwa’s count. Colonel James Hattar, writing in The Tribune in 2000, counted 84 Punjabi infantrymen and four BSF men. Meanwhile the remainder of the battalion was at Sadhewala, dealing with a Pakistani outpost as part of the division’s plan.

Besides its rifles, the company had two medium machine guns, two 81 mm mortars and four shoulder-fired rocket launchers. Two jeep-mounted 106 mm recoilless guns, which fire an anti-tank shell from a light mount, reached the post from the battalion at 2.30 on the morning of 5 December. Three AMX light tanks arrived at about eight, after the first fight. In Bajwa’s description the defences were not well developed and no mines had been laid. All the post had was a single strand of wire the BSF had put up to keep its camels from straying. Three strands, says Hattar. Lt Gen Zameer Uddin Shah, who served with the artillery in the sector, wrote in 2019 that it was meant to keep out dogs and stray cattle.

Stay or go

Chandpuri then had a choice. Maj Gen Harvijay Singh, in a 2022 account in Defstrat, writes that headquarters could promise relief only after about six hours and left Chandpuri the option of containing the enemy for as long as he could or pulling back. He chose to stay. Air Marshal M.S. Bawa, who commanded the airfield at Jaisalmer, wrote that Chandpuri was advised to wait for the Air Force at first light.

In Bajwa’s words, Chandpuri “displayed true and sustained courage and determination to hold Longewala, and which he did.” An Army document marked restricted, as Tehelka quoted it in 2008, says the company “also held out tenaciously against heavy odds until reinforcements arrived”.

What was coming

Coming for the post was a force from Pakistan’s 18 Division. Drawing on the memoir of Brigadier Z.A. Khan, who commanded 38 Cavalry, Bajwa lays out the plan. The 51 Infantry Brigade, with 22 Cavalry and its T-59 tanks, was to go round Longewala toward Ramgarh. A second formation, 206 Brigade, was to follow, take Longewala and hold it as a firm base, while 38 Cavalry, with older Sherman tanks, moved with the advance. Emboldened by its experience of the 1965 war, Bawa wrote, Pakistan mounted one of its biggest offensives on the post.

How many men and tanks actually arrived depends on who is counting. Bawa gives about 45 tanks and an infantry brigade, Hattar about 3,000 men and 60 tanks, Defstrat a column of 65 tanks. A Times of India report has around 2,800 troops and 45 tanks. Most of 38 Cavalry’s tanks, Bajwa writes in his summary of Khan, broke down or got stuck in the sand.

No air cover went with the Pakistani attack. Khan wrote that an Air Force liaison officer told the division’s orders group that the Jacobabad airfield had not been activated and that no support was possible, and that the divisional commander said his orders were to go ahead without it in the “national interest”. In February 2021 the Indian Air Force chief, Air Chief Marshal R.K.S. Bhadauria, called the Pakistani plan “brilliant”, said it could have changed the course of the war, and said Pakistan had not allowed for what air power could do against it.

The night of 4 and 5 December

The first attack came at 2.30 in the morning, on a moonlit night, by Hattar’s account. As the tanks came into range the recoilless guns opened up, he writes, and each gun accounted for a tank. Extra fuel rode in drums behind each Pakistani turret, 200 gallons a tank by Khan’s figure, and a tank that was hit went up in flames. Dharam Vir described tanks coming within about 100 yards of the mortar position, where Sepoy Charan Dass of the mortar crew was killed by a direct hit.

Then the attackers met the wire. It fooled them into believing a minefield surrounded the post, Bajwa writes, and in his summary of Khan’s account the infantry were reluctant to assault and nearly three hours before daybreak were lost. Khan’s own account has a squadron and two companies attacking at about seven and meeting anti-tank guns, machine guns and AMX tanks, one of which he says was knocked out, though Bajwa puts the AMX tanks’ arrival at about eight.

Dharam Vir remembered Sepoy Jagjit Singh, a light machine gunner whose bunker was destroyed. Jagjit Singh took a position in the open and refused to fall back, saying he had a very good field of fire. Hit, he kept firing until he collapsed. Shah wrote that Chandpuri, who was not well versed in artillery terms, corrected the fall of shells in Punjabi, calling “400 sajje” and “200 khabbe”, which mean right and left.

A general on an open radio channel

In the early hours of 5 December a radio called the base commander at Jaisalmer, and Bawa recorded the words. “This is Tiger, here,” said Major General R.F. Khambatta, who commanded 12 Division. “I suspect that an enemy armoured column is making rapid headway for Ramgarh.” He asked for the base’s pilots to look. “I want your boys to investigate as early as possible.”

Kukke Suresh, then a young pilot at Jaisalmer, wrote that the divisional commander dropped radio procedure and kept pleading with Bawa on an open channel, “Minhi, Please do something”, and that the calls went on through the night. At first light, Bawa promised him, the aircraft would take on the tanks.

The Hunters could not go sooner. Bharat Kumar, an Air Marshal who wrote a book on the battle, says they had no night capability and the airfield had no runway lighting, so the pilots taxied out in the dark groping their way. Jaisalmer had been activated only that autumn, he writes, and the detachment, No. 122 Squadron, was made up of Hunters and pilots from the training unit at Jamnagar. Bawa armed the Hunters for ground attack in anticipation, Bajwa writes.

Seven o’clock

Two of the detachment’s pilots, D.K. Dass and R.C. Gosain, took off in darkness. Suresh puts them over the target at 7.02. Bharat Kumar writes that the lead pilot counted 32 tanks and stopped counting. One tank was already moving toward the post, and the lead Hunter hit it with rockets, then the wingman hit a second.

Both pilots then had a doubt. They had been briefed that some Indian tanks might be sent to the area, and Kumar calls fratricide the worst thing that can happen. An army air observation aircraft arrived and confirmed the tanks were Pakistani. Kumar credits the pair with 13 more passes, five tanks destroyed and ten damaged, and says the lead aircraft was hit by ground fire, lost its hydraulics and radio, and landed safely. In Bawa’s 1997 article the first pair claimed two tanks destroyed and five damaged.

Flying unarmed light aircraft, Major Atma Singh and Captain P.S. Sangha of No. 12 Air Observation Post Flight acted as airborne forward air controllers, Suresh writes, directing the Hunters onto targets. Atma Singh had to force-land his Krishak near the post that afternoon with a dust-choked engine. Hunters stayed over him to hit any enemy who moved toward the aircraft, and he kept talking on the radio until its battery died. Troops pushed the aircraft to safety after dark, and it was flying again on 6 December.

Khan’s tanks had halted two miles short of Longewala. At about 7.30 he heard explosions and drove toward the smoke. From a ridge over the Longewala to Jaisalmer road he saw five tanks of 22 Cavalry and an Indian tank burning, with four Hunters circling. Hunters stayed over Longewala from seven until sunset, he wrote, and prevented any ground movement. Anti-aircraft machine guns of 22 Cavalry fired all their ammunition without a hit.

Back at Jaisalmer, Bawa writes, every available skilled man was taken off other duties to turn the aircraft round. “Every pilot had to wait for his turn,” he wrote. “This was the only sore point among the aircrew at Jaisalmer.” Suresh remembered Dass and Gosain sitting in their cockpits after landing, saying they were ready to go again, and “They had to be forced out of cockpits” so that others could fly. Bharat Kumar counts 17 sorties on 5 December, with some aircraft flying as many as six.

On one of his own sorties, Suresh wrote, a tank’s main gun fired at him during a gun attack. Flash and dust blinded him. “I hit a sand dune at 420 Knots and I am living to tell the tale,” he wrote, and he flew home with about four feet of the jet pipe missing.

That evening Indian troops intercepted a Pakistani radio message. In Bawa’s translation it said “The enemy air force has been creating havoc.” It went on: “One aircraft leaves and another comes and stays overhead for twenty minutes.” At 10 that night Khambatta sent Bawa a message. “We had excellent cooperation and support today,” it began, and it asked him to pass the appreciation of the division’s troops to the pilots. Major General Shaukat Riza’s history of the Pakistan Army, as Tehelka quotes it, says the Pakistani tanks were in the open without air cover and that “The Indian aircraft had a free run.”

Counting the tanks

On how the Air Force counted, Bawa’s article is plain: “Any tanks set ablaze were claimed as destroyed and those crippled as damaged.” The Army document Tehelka quotes gives 27 tanks destroyed and ten damaged by 6 December. By Bawa’s reckoning 37 of the roughly 45 tanks were accounted for in the end. Bharat Kumar says the Air Force claimed 22 destroyed and 30 damaged on 5 December and that wreckage of 37 tanks was visible at Longewala on the evening of 6 December. Hattar credits 36 to the Hunters and 12 to the company’s own weapons, and Chandpuri’s citation speaks of twelve tanks left behind. Dharam Vir counted about 200 vehicles including 43 tanks. Losses counted in Indian territory came to 37 tanks, 200 vehicles of various kinds and over a hundred dead, Bajwa writes.

Pakistani officers give smaller figures for the first day. Khan wrote that 22 Cavalry lost 17 tanks on 5 December, with 10 men killed and 17 wounded. Major General Fazal Muqeem Khan, whose book Tehelka quotes, wrote that the Indian Air Force was “very active during the day and succeeded in destroying 18 tanks and a number of other vehicles and equipment at his leisure”.

Pakistan’s own inquiry judged the operation harshly. In its supplementary report the Hamoodur Rahman Commission recommended trying Major General B.M. Mustafa, who had commanded 18 Division, for “wilful neglect of duty in that his offensive plan aimed at the capture of the Indian position of Ramgarh in the Rajasthan area (Western Front) was militarily unsound and haphazardly planned, and its execution resulted in severe loss of vehicles and equipment in the desert.” Khan called the report prejudicial and described the operation as “a classical spoiling attack” that achieved the division’s mission. There is some relevance, Bajwa allows, in the claim that it held up 12 Division’s plan, and the Army document in Tehelka says the division’s own offensive was postponed until the position at Longewala was clear.

The citations

Chandpuri received the Maha Vir Chakra, India’s second highest gallantry award. His citation praises his “dynamic leadership in holding his command intact and steadfast” and says he “inspired his men moving from bunker to bunker”. Defstrat lists the other Army awards. Subedar Ratan Singh and Sepoy Jagjit Singh received the Vir Chakra, Jagjit Singh after his death. Mathura Das, the recoilless gunner, and Bishan Dass got the Sena Medal, Bishan Dass after his death, and Bhairon Singh of the BSF got one too. 23 Punjab earned the battle honour Longewala.

Squadron Leader Dilip Kumar Dass’s Vir Chakra citation says he flew three strike missions on 5 December and one on 6 December and destroyed four tanks, adding “His missions had a decisive effect in frustrating the enemy thrust.” Suresh wrote that Major Atma Singh’s Vir Chakra was recommended by Bawa and not by the Army.

Who won it

In February 2008 the Army gave Defence Minister A.K. Antony an account of the battle at Longewala, and the argument over credit came out in public. Major General Atma Singh, by then retired, said “no ground battle was fought” and that the Army had rehearsed it on a sand model afterwards. To the Hindustan Times, Bawa said he had landed at the post on 5 December and found only a handful of infantry in their trenches. Chandpuri replied that “It was virtually due to them that Laungewala was saved and threat to Jaisalmer neutralised”, and sued both officers for one rupee in damages. A Chandigarh court issued notices on 19 July 2008. That autumn Bajwa’s article took a middle line, describing Longewala as “an excellent example of cooperation between troops on the ground and the Air Force”.

The Air Force restated its case in February 2021, when its chief released Bharat Kumar’s book. According to the Times of India, the book says the battle “was not fought the way it has been depicted in the film”, while not belittling “the courageous role played by the Army personnel who faced the enemy at Longewala”.

The film is Border, released in 1997. Chandpuri told a ThePrint reporter in 2002: “Don’t believe everything you see in the movie.” Three weeks after the fighting, Hattar writes, Defence Minister Jagjivan Ram congratulated the people of Punjab at Jalandhar for making a grave for Pakistani tanks at Longewala, and a few weeks after that Field Marshal R.M. Carver, then head of the British Army, came to see the ground for himself. Chandpuri died on 17 November 2018 in a hospital in Mohali.