25. Mobilisation: Navy & IAF Valmiki Faleiro valmi...@gmail.com
India assembled four naval task forces for the 1961 Goa ops. Led by the newly acquired aircraft carrier INS Vikrant bearing about a dozen-and-half Sea Hawk combat and Alizé antisubmarine aircraft, the carrier group had the Indian Navy’s flagship, cruiser INS Delhi, destroyer INS Rajput and three frigates, INS Kirpan, INS Khukri and INS Kuthar with antisubmarine, torpedo and antiaircraft capabilities. Patrolling some 80 to 50 miles seaward off Goa, the carrier group was deployed to fend off possible external intervention (by NATO and/or Pakistan). The main assault group billed to engage the Portuguese destroyer at Mormugao consisted of three frigates: INS Betwa (lead ship), INS Beas and INS Cauvery (since renamed Kaveri). Two frigates of the carrier group were held in reserve because it was believed that besides the destroyer, the Portuguese had three frigates and three S-class submarines in Goa. There were no such frigates or submarines and the two Indian reserve frigates were not used. There were false reports, though, that the NRP Afonso de Albuquerque disabled two Indian frigates of the assault group and that the two reserve frigates of the carrier group had taken their place. Lieutenant Commander John Eric Gomes (of Margao, lives in Porvorim) was aboard the INS Cauvery during battle. He rubbishes the balderdash. (Lt Cdr Gomes was also part of the landing at Mormugao, and later led Christians in the task force for the midnight Christmas Mass at St. Andrew's Church, Vasco da Gama, 24/25 December 1961. After Mass, Goan Catholics invited the Indian naval party to their homes for cake and coffee.) The task force assigned to storm Anjediva Island comprised of cruiser INS Mysore and destroyer INS Trishul. INS Mysore doubled up as the command ship for the surface action in Anjediva and Mormugao. The fourth task force was the minesweeping flotilla. It had INS Karwar, INS Cannanore, INS Kakinada and INS Bimilipatan. The support vessel was INS Dharini. Admiral Ram Dass Katari, PVSM, AVSM, was the 3rd Chief of Naval Staff (1958-62). Naval ops in Goa, Daman and Diu were under the command of Rear Admiral Bhaskar Soman, FOC-in-C of the then unified Indian Fleet, soon to be the 4th CNS (1962-66). Naval Officer-in-Charge for the Goa ops was Captain HA Agate. Captain (later Commodore) Douglas St. John Cameron was skipper of INS Mysore, command ship for the surface action in Mormugao and Anjediva. The Task Force commander of the assault squadron at Mormugao and skipper of the INS Betwa was Captain (later Vice Admiral) Rustom ("Rusi") Khushro Shapoorjee Gandhi, PVSM, Vr.C, a gallant officer and a thorough Parsi gentleman, the only Indian Naval Officer to command ships in all the naval wars fought by India. Interestingly, he was also the only Naval Officer who, on his passing, as per his wish, was buried at sea ... "I enjoyed fish all my life, now let the fish enjoy me." HQ for Op. Vijay was set up at the Maritime Operations Room, Bombay. Sixteen warships were arrayed against one ageing destroyer and one small patrol vessel in Goa -- and the false intelligence of Portuguese frigates and submarines at Mormugao and NATO and/or Pakistan intervention in favour of Portugal. The Indian Air Force was led by Air Chief Marshal Aspy Merwan Engineer, DFC, one of the famous four flying Parsi brothers of the IAF. He was a bold and adventurous early Indian aviator -- a peer of JRD Tata, Subroto Mukerjee, Biju Patnaik and Karachi-based Edmundo Sequeira (the first Goan aviator, native of Moira) -- though all were junior to the pioneer, Dattu Patwardhan and Indra Lal Roy, Srikrishna Welingkar, Errol Chunder Sen and Hardit Malik who fought in World War I. Air Chief Mshl Aspy Engineer was a pilot at age 17 in 1930 and became the second Chief of Air Staff (1960-64) on the sudden demise of Air Chief Marshal Subroto Mukerjee, OBE on 8 November 1960. Air operations in Goa, Daman and Diu were under the command of Air Vice Marshal Ehrlich Wilmot Pinto, PVSM (posthumous), M-in-D, AOC-in-C of the then unified Operational Command of the IAF responsible for the conduct of air ops throughout India. [Air Vice Mshl EW Pinto was actually a Pinto do Rosario of Porvorim. His older brother in the Navy was known as "Surgeon Rear Admiral DRF Pinto, PVSM" -- DRF for do Rosario Faust. Faust Pinto do Rosario morphed to 'Do Rosario Faust Pinto'! Only the brother in the Indian Army was known by the correct form of the surname, Captain Norman Pinto do Rosario, who later was Dental Surgeon to the President of India and retired as Dental Advisor to the Government of India. They were sons of the early Indian epidemiologist, Dr. Jose Luis Pinto do Rosario (1883-1935). Their sister, Marie Louise, is wife of Brigadier Noel Barretto, one of the famous four 'Barretto Brothers' in the armed forces of India, sons of Dr. Cristovam Filipe Eusebio Francisco Jose Ubaldino da Gama Barreto of Raia-Salcete (1889-1972), personal dentist to Mahatma Gandhi at the Wardha Ashram.] [Another digression: Goan names got gnarled in the services. This author once asked the only Goan-origin chief of the IAF, Air Chief Marshal H. Moolgavkar, PVSM, MVC (now departed, among the first in the IAF to be awarded the Maha Vir Chakra in the 1947/48 J&K Ops and one of only two IAF Goans to be so bestowed, the other being Group Captain Allan D'Costa in the 1971 war, below) why he was known as 'H. Moolgavkar' and not by the full form of his name. The year was 1940 and he was doing B.Sc at St. Xavier's-Bombay when he appeared before the IAF Board. The name in his application was Hrushikesh Shamrao Moolgavkar. "Whose names are those?" the British interviewer asked. The first was his; the second was his father's... The Brit cut him short, "We are interested in you, not your father!" and struck off the middle name. The first name was a tongue-twister for the British Officer. So he struck off that one too, retaining only the initial. That is how an ace pilot who flew a long litany of 56 types of aircraft including fighters, bombers, transports and helicopters came to be abbreviated as 'H. Moolgavkar' in the IAF. His cousin, Sumant Moolgaonkar, founder of Telco (now Tata Motors), fared differently. When he retired, a Tata vehicle was in the final stages of design on the drawing board. To honour the founder, 'Su' was taken from Sumant and 'Mo' from Moolgaonkar and that’s how we had the famed Tata Sumo jeep, after Sumant Moolgaonkar -- not, as commonly believed, after Jap sumo wrestlers (see: https://www.tellyupdates.tv/tata-group-named-this-famous-car-after-him-know-what-work-done-for-tata-motors/) .] From 2 December 1961, the IAF moved two squadrons each of the newly acquired Canberra jet bombers (16 Squadron and 35 Squadron) and Hawker Hunter fighter aircraft (37 Squadron and 17 Squadron less one Section), Vampire NF54 Night Fighters (101 Squadron), four Mystére fighters, some Toofanis (Marcel-Dassault MD-450 Ouragan jet fighters), some B-24 Liberator bomber aircraft of 6 Squadron (still in service!), two IL-14 aircraft (of 1 Comm. Flight) besides some of the 1958-acquired Gnat fighters to the Poona Air Base. Four Hawker Hunter fighter aircraft (one Section of 17 Squadron), three Vampires (of 108 Squadron), two Harvard aircraft (of 122 Squadron), 3 AOP Flight, three Mi-4 helicopters (of 109 Squadron) and two Otter helicopters (of 2 Comm. Flight) were moved to the Air Station at Sambra, Belgaum in addition to the de Havilland Vampires (45 Squadron) already based there. The number of squadrons, however, need not reflect the air power deployed. An IAF fighter squadron (a squadron is the basic air force unit) comprised of four Sections of four aircraft each, or a total of 16 aircraft. A bomber squadron had a total of 12 aircraft plus three in reserve, according to bomber pilot Group Captain Conrad Dalton, VM(G), a Pune-based veteran (of Siolim, founder of The Canberra Bomber Association India). In practice, due to shortages, squadrons often did not have the full complement of aircraft. In the 1965 Indo-Pak war, which was also India's first air war, Wing Commander (later Group Captain) Emanuel Fernandes, AVSM (Fighter Ferdie, of Badem, Salvador do Mundo) commanded 32 Squadron of Mystére fighters at Adampur. (Fighter Ferdie was author of the virtual IAF bible on tactics in aerial dogfighting and, together with latter-day Air Marshal Malcolm Wollen, trained an entire generation of IAF fighter pilots on flying the rather difficult-to-manoeuvre Gnats.) During the 1965 war, 32 Sqn did not have 16 but was allotted a mere eight aircraft, one of them piloted by Flight Lieutenant (later Wing Commander) Raul Rodrigues (of Cavelossim, based in New Delhi after retirement), who in 1961 was posted at Dum Dum to guard the border with then East Pakistan (Pakistan was expected to support Portugal militarily in the conflict). Air casualties were high -- on both sides -- during the 1965 war. [It stands to Fighter Ferdie’s eternal credit that he provided close air support to the army without the loss of any aircraft -- thanks to his ingenuity on how pilots must return after sorties: re-form into battle formation and return to base (pilots from other squadrons returned to base individually and were easy targets for the enemy) -- at the Ichhogil Canal battle, where Captain (later Lieutenant Colonel) Vishwas Bhandare of 2 Parachute Battalion (from Cumbarjua/St. Cruz) was a war hero and Flight Lieutenant (later Squadron Leader) Henry D'Costa -- brother of the 1971 war hero, Group Captain Allan D'Costa, MVC, VM (from Aldona) -- with another squadron, was awarded a M-in-D for gallantry in the same battle.] Counting the Sea Hawk strike interceptors and Alizé antisubmarine warfare squadrons of Naval Aviation borne by the aircraft carrier, it was indeed a very formidable mobilisation of air power pitted against a literally non-existent enemy air force – though it was believed, wrongly again, that the Portuguese had transonic and supersonic fighters and ultra-modern air defence in Goa. 2 TAC Western Air Command in Poona was assigned for the air ops. HQ for Op. Vijay in Poona was later shifted to Belgaum. So confident of a walkover was Air Vice Marshal Pinto that he bet he would drink a Portuguese beer in Panjim the day following the attack. He won the bet, but only partially. As PN Khera (see Bibliography) noted, "When they reached Panjim, all shops were closed and there wasn't a single bottle of beer available." Additional land, naval and air resources were deployed for Daman and Diu. Daman being lightly defended by two companies and one patrol boat was allotted a single battalion, the Jangi Paltan ('fighting battalion'), 1 Maratha Light Infantry, with light artillery (a 25-pounder battery) and air support from Poona and Bombay. A hilarious anecdote recounted by then just commissioned Second Lieutenant (later Lieutenant General and Vice Chief of Army Staff) Vijay Oberoi follows later in this series. Diu was defended by a similar force as Daman but had a well-built sea fort. Two battalions (20 Rajput and 4 Madras) under Brigadier Jaswant Singh (of 112 Infantry Brigade) with artillery, cruiser INS Delhi (shifted from the carrier group in Goa) and air support from Jamnagar were allotted for Diu. -- Excerpted from revised text of the book, Patriotism In Action: Goans in India's Defence Services by Valmiki Faleiro, first published in 2010 by Goa,1556 (ISBN: 978-93-80739-06-9). Revised edition awaits publication. *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*- Join a discussion on Goa-related issues by posting your comments on this or other issues via email to goa...@goanet.org See archives at http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/ *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-