27. Faulty Intelligence By Valmiki Faleiro valmi...@gmail.com
India mobilised a relatively large war machine that could have led to a massacre in Goa, as happened in Operation Polo in Hyderabad in 1948 though for different reasons. Mercifully, it turned out to be a virtually bloodless walkover, but nothing warranted the large mobilisation. Why did India do it then? The simple answer: Faulty Intelligence! GK Handoo, IPS, was Director of Intelligence sent by the Ministry. As the in-charge of CRP border guards, he had done a formidable job enlisting Indian veterans and Goan freedom fighters, training and arming them to carry out raids and sabotage in Goa -- fomenting hell for the Portuguese in 1960-61. He evidently went overboard. [Handoo was a powerful man, a Kashmiri Saraswat (Pandit), like Nehru. He annoyed the military brass in Belgaum in the run-up to the invasion. He almost wept when the army left him behind in Belgaum and accepted the Portuguese surrender in Goa without him in centrestage. Handoo saw himself as the topnotch executor of defence minister Krishna Menon’s plan to quickly seize Goa and dreamt of hogging the spotlight at the surrender.] As seen, a spinoff of India's 'Economic Blockade' was rampant cross-border smuggling of foreign merchandise. Goan smugglers masquerading as freedom fighters provided exaggerated and false information to Indian intelligence of the Portuguese military disposition in Goa. Handoo relied on their inputs (and may have added some of his own). This was the grist of the dubious intelligence reports churned out by Handoo. Based on such 'intelligence reports' the armed forces had no option but to draw up their plans. The cross-border 'moles' fed false stories of a massive Portuguese military buildup. They spoke of troop reinforcements in Goa when there were reductions over the previous few years, from 12,000 to 3,300 troops. Expecting more or less a brigade strength force in Goa, India mobilised two brigades (a main one from the East and a diversionary one from the North -- with a deceptive feint from the South by 'B' Company of the 4 Rajput Battalion, shored up with Reserve Police personnel to display numbers to the enemy, outrageously dubbed the "20 Infantry Brigade" under Captain DP Nayar, who must have enjoyed acting four ranks higher as a Brigadier!) and a reserve brigade under Brigadier Gurbux Singh, brother of editor-author Khushwant Singh, on the main thrust line from the East). There was just one medium-sized destroyer in Goa, the NRP Afonso de Albuquerque (that the Portuguese called a cruiser, larger than a destroyer). Goan smugglers told Indian intelligence that the enemy had more ... three frigates and three S-class submarines, and that NATO naval forces had already begun arriving at Mormugao, via Karachi. A false apprehension was created that NATO and Pakistan would intervene militarily to support Portugal in the conflict. The Portuguese had a token military presence in Goa. They had no capability to reach within gun range of Banda, the southernmost coastal township of Maharashtra closest to Goa, but Goan smugglers made Handoo's intelligence apparatus believe that the Portuguese were planning to target Bombay. The claims would be laughable had they not been taken seriously. False intelligence of NATO/Pakistan intervention led to the deployment of the Indian Navy's carrier group (of six warships and about 18 carrier borne aircraft) 80 to 50 miles off Goa to thwart external interference. False reports of the presence of frigates and submarines led to the mobilisation of a large number of warships. There was not a single aircraft of the Força Aérea Portuguesa (Portuguese Air Force) in Goa. 'Freedom fighters' made Handoo's men believe that there were transonic jet fighters like US-made F-86 Sabres, a section (four aircraft) of France-made Fouga Magister and some interceptor F-104 Starfighters. Portugal did have Starfighters but none were shifted to Goa. There were no transport aircraft modified to carry bombs. There were only a couple of civilian aircraft in Goa. Faulty intelligence led the IAF to mobilise for any contingency. There was no worthwhile air defence infrastructure in Goa. The moles spoke of an ultra-modern AA battery at Dabolim, perhaps referring to some 1948 vintage, light and largely ineffective 20 mm AA guns. Gunners to man those archaic anti-aircraft guns were smuggled in just a day before the invasion, disguised as footballers on the last TAIP flight -- to no avail: the guns were obsolete and were without adequate ammunition. On 8 December 1961, a DC-4 Skymaster of the local civilian airline TAIP flew over the INS Vikrant and her carrier group, located some 80 to 50 miles seaward off Goa, at a height of 5,000 feet (one-and-half kilometres). This was about the best offensive air action that could be mounted by the Portuguese in Goa. India had no satellite imagery at the time. Imaginary images painted by Goan cross-border smugglers were accepted at face value. They set off alarm bells in Delhi. This suited India's defence minister Krishna Menon -- chief patron of the idea of using force in Goa before India's general elections due in February 1962. Director of Intelligence GK Handoo was part of the grand endeavour. The fabricated prospect of NATO and Pakistan military intervention imparted urgency to the invasion. IAF and carrier-borne naval aircraft undertook probing flights from early December 1961, to draw out Portuguese air fangs and opposition -- when there were none. These baiting flights continued until D-day. From heights just beyond the range of modern ack-ack guns, the IAF flew at sequentially lower altitudes. There was no evidence of anti-aircraft fire. Only on the eve of the invasion, 17 December 1961, IAF's Squadron Leader Ian Loughran, flying a low tactical recce over Dabolim in a Vampire NF54, came under five rounds of Portuguese small arms (not ack-ack) fire, took evasive action, and escaped over the sea unharmed. Seahawks and Alizés took off from the deck of INS Vikrant on combat patrols from early December 1961, dawn to dusk. Lieutenant Commander (later Admiral/Chief of Naval Staff) RH Tahiliani, PVSM, AVSM, then the CO of the carrier borne air squadron INAS 300 of Sea Hawks in 1961 (INAS 300 was later based in Goa) recalled: "...we flew whole day waiting for Portuguese aircraft to come out. As it turned out the Portuguese had no aircraft in Goa although our faulty intelligence had led us to believe that there were some Sabers there" (Goa: White Tigers On The Prowl, 2010, Page 16). Major General DK Palit, Vr.C, then Director Military Operations at Army HQ, as seen, wrote, "I am not certain how much... reported about Goa was true intelligence and how much tendentious fabrication" (Palit, Musings & Memories, Vol II, 2004, Page 420). Major General Randhir Sinh wrote, "... the estimated strength of the Portuguese armed forces and their capability seems to have been misinterpreted....the Indian Intelligence agencies may not have been aware that Portugal had cut down its military strength in Goa in 1960" (Sinh, A Talent For War, 2015, Page 48). Air Vice Marshal Arjun Subramaniam summed it up in his book, India’s Wars: A Military History 1947-1971, "Intelligence gathering about Portuguese force levels was terribly inaccurate.... There were ridiculous inputs about the presence of Portuguese fighter jets in Goa and the possibility of Pakistan supporting Portugal militarily in the conflict" (Subramaniam, 2016, Page 192). Captain Gerald Fernandes (2 Mechanised Infantry, veteran, from Morjim) added a twist to the tail: "Overwhelming force directed towards attaining an objective is kindness in battle! Makes for swift outcomes to the victorious and provides alibi to the overwhelmed!" True, there could also have been more... India's overwhelming force may have been a blessing in disguise for Goa and Goans. Let's save that for the next article in this series! -- Excerpted from revised text of the book, Patriotism In Action: Goans in India’s Defence Services by Valmiki Faleiro, first published in 2010. 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/ *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-