The terrain in Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir was among the most hostile in the world. The main airbase at Leh was at 3,200 metres. Others in the area were equally treacherous. Chushul was at 4,400 metres and Thoise at 3,000. Arrangements had been made to fly in the AN-32 and IL-76 transport aircraft as the only means of keeping these remote bases resupplied, even at night.
Ladakh itself was snowbound for up to nine months of the year and the AN-32 made routine drops to the men defending the Siachen glacier. Helicopters were the only way to get soldiers in and out.
India planned to take control of sections of the L-shaped piece of territory, 700 kilometres long, which stretched west and south from the Karakoram and Ladakh ranges close to the border with China. Dras and Kargil would be reclaimed, and the Indian flag, troops, supply bases and landing strips would be set up at points all the way to the Pakistani town of Muzafarabad, then further south, passing within eighty kilometres of Islamabad to where the LoC began fifty-five kilometres west of Jammu.
It was one of the most audacious airborne campaigns in military history. The attacking forces divided the LoC into five sectors, each identified by a colour. Red sector covered the area from the Chinese border near Gapsham in Indian territory taking in a triangle stretching up to Skardu and down to the Marol inside Pakistani territory, the next town north of Kargil along the Suru River. Yellow sector covered a much smaller, but more heavily fortified area, taking in Kargil and Dras and aiming to capture territory around the villages of Kakshar, Matiyal, Gultari and Karbos. Blue sector ran along a 160-kilometre stretch from Dras to Tithwal close to Muzafarabad. Orange sector covered the more politically sensitive area from Tithwal to Hajira directly east of Islamabad. White sector took in the final southerly stretch to the beginning of the LoC near Jammu.
To secure ground beyond the whole of the LoC would be too bold. The initial plan was to cordon off the area behind Kargil and Dras between Minimarg and Suru/Indus. A safe corridor was to be created in the Neelam Valley and the Haji Pir pass. Once that had been done, the third objective was territory west of Poonch up to Muzafarabad. Once heliborne troops had taken areas, they would be reinforced with a parachute drop from fixed-wing aircraft.
The first assaults were limited to the Yellow and Blue sectors, where most of the fighting had taken place in the battles over Kashmir and where Indians felt most vulnerable. An assault on the Red sector around the Siachen Glacier region of Ladakh would be pointless until the summer, and by then the dispute should be over. The southerly assault on the Orange and White sectors would be limited to artillery barrages. Unni Khrishnan was deterred from striking any harder there for fear that Pakistan would resort to threatening a nuclear strike. He hoped that there would be a ceasefire within forty-eight hours and that a deal could be reached on India’s terms.
The helicopters flew in formations of fifty, keeping to 135 k.p.h., contour flying along the valleys. With each formation was an Mi-26 workhorse, some carrying seventy combat-equipped troops, others up to twenty tonnes of ammunition, weapons, supplies and vehicles. Flanked out from the Mi-26s were the smaller Mi-17 medium transport helicopters. For this first sortie they were mainly carrying troops, with twenty-four in each aircraft. The more versatile assault and anti-armour Mi-25 kept to the outside of the formation, each with an eight-man Special Forces squad, which was to identify and neutralize those Pakistani positions which had survived the airstrikes and shelling.
Flying at 1,000 feet above the formations were four-man Alouette Cheetahs, two in each sector, used for command and control. They also carried high-ranking officers who would command the sectors once they were secured. Others flew with medical crew to evacuate the critically wounded.
Three formations flew low and slow towards Yellow sector, with 1,022 men deployed in the first wave. On dropping them the helicopters returned to bring in another thousand within the hour. The larger helicopters carried platoons of Indian Muslim soldiers, so that there would be one with each landing.
Pakistani resistance was scattered, as if after the overnight battering every man had been left to his own initiative to take out an aircraft. High above, the Indian fighter planes were engaging the few Pakistani pilots who had managed to scramble their warplanes into the air. The Yellow sector helicopter pilots began calling in hits within seconds of crossing the LoC. They were mainly from small-arms and machine-gun fire, but it became clear that this would not be a casualty-free operation.
‘Fuel line severed,’ the pilot of a Mi-25 managed to report before power was lost. He skilfully brought it down in one piece, but straight into the fire of a Pakistani bunker. While the pilot was wrestling with the controls on the way down, the crew fired a Scorpion anti-tank missile blindly, and raked the area with a four-barrel 12.7mm rotary gun, causing mayhem on the ground. The commandos were out of the helicopter when it was still six feet off the ground, storming the bunker. The corporal in charge just managed to raise the Indian flag before they were pinned down and killed against overwhelming odds.
‘Pilot killed,’ said another report from a Mi-17.
‘Secure Ground Yellow, you are off course,’ said the second in command to the leader of a formation, which was trying to get attention with a frantic hand signal that the aircraft’s radio had been knocked out. The Alouette, carrying the sector battalion colonel, took over as command aircraft.
As they got closer to the designated landing zones, the formation bunched up. From the ground, it might have looked like precision flying, but in the air it was like a sudden traffic jam, with everyone bobbing around at different altitudes and pilots pulling back and going forward to avoid collisions. The pilots had to have nerves of ice to get through the landing. One wrong position, one touch of the rotor blades and a dozen aircraft could go down. Yet fear of making a mistake affected judgement, with less experienced pilots overcorrecting until their helicopter got out of control. The orders of the first wave were to avoid population centres, set up secure positions and call in airstrikes and artillery to clear the ground for the next wave. The first landings were to go no further than Kaksar and the Shingo River.
But on the ground, resistance was building, and it would be impossible to reach some of the landing zones (LZ) without inflicting an enormous number of civilian casualties. The orders, though, were clear. If civilians stayed around, they should be treated as sympathizers and participants in the conflict.
For many of the pilots, their assailants from the ground were invisible. Ten aircraft came in at only twenty knots under concentrated fire on the northern side of the Shingo and Dras rivers where the Pakistanis had an artillery command and control centre. All that the Indian troops could see were villagers looking up, shielding their eyes from the sun, with the enemy among them firing up with heavy-calibre machine guns. The crews called in hits every other second. The ships were too high for the soldiers to jump and if they did they would be cut down in a withering field of fire. Then a gunner from a Mi-25 opened up on the villagers with the 12.7mm. Other soldiers from the same craft fired into the crowd and lobbed down grenades, killing women, children, animals and the enemy — any living thing which moved against them. Ten aircraft landed. Ten took off again. The men on the ground secured one of the most strategic areas in Yellow Sector.