How Paradrop Became A Game Changer At Tangail During The Bangladesh Liberation War 1971

In the article about Heli Bridges we saw how we used helicopters to cross a river, to speed up our Army¡¯s advance to Dhaka, bypassing a bridge that was well defended by the Pakistani Army.

Bridges are vital, because without a bridge, any river can become a major obstacle for an Army on the ground.

We shall now see another use of Air Power, involving another bridge, that helped achieve our national aim.

The aim was to prevent a Pakistani Brigade, of around 3000 soldiers, from retreating to Dhaka and reinforcing its defences.

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In a country full of rivers and streams, an enemy advance - and retreat - can be easily stopped at a bridge. So, our Army planned to capture and defend the bridge near Tangail.

Blowing up the bridge to delay the Pakistani Army was easily possible, thanks to the close cooperation we had with Mukti Bahini.

But our Army, chasing the retreating Pakistani forces, also was in a hurry to reach and threaten Dhaka.

So, instead of destroying the bridge, attacking the Pakistani troops trying to cross it was a better option.

That required placing a big enough force at the bridge, stealthily and speedily.

How?

By exploiting the characteristics of Air Power, ¡®Speed¡¯ and ¡®Reach¡¯, to drop our paratroopers near that bridge.

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Fifty-two airplanes, which amounted to almost the entire transport fleet of the IAF, took part in this paradrop.

Two of them dropped ¡®dummy¡¯ troops by parachutes far away from the actual Drop Zone (DZ). That¡¯s because, despite all precautions, it is impossible to hide the gathering of so many planes and troops.

With them, the other 50 planes flew towards Tangail.

So many unarmed planes, slow and heavy, over the enemy territory, would be completely indefensible against enemy fighters. But the IAF had already achieved complete Air Superiority.

As the oft repeated tenet of Air Power says, ¡°He who controls the air, controls everything on the surface below.¡±

So, unlike the Pakistani Army at Longewala, the Indian Army had complete freedom of movement, without having to worry about enemy interference from the air.

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You must have noticed a stream of disturbed water behind a boat or a ship. There¡¯s a similar stream behind a flying aircraft, called ¡®wake¡¯. Bigger the plane, bigger is the width of the wake and the degree of disturbance inside. Loss of control of the airplane because of disturbed airflow is also possible if you fly into another plane¡¯s wake. And unlike on the water, this wake in the air is not even visible.

This is the danger we face in commercial flying when we cross the path of a bigger aircraft below it. But we have ways to avoid the wake.

Now imagine you are flying in a formation of 50 transport planes, all big ones, with no way to avoid the turbulence created by the other planes, flying slow and steady, without going too close or too far. That is not easy.

After such a bumpy ride, jumping off a plane inside the enemy territory, with heavy equipment on your back and no certainty of landing on a soft plain surface, while enemy soldiers fire at you, is not easy either.

Painting by Group Captain Deb Gohain

Then touching down on the ground correctly, without injuring yourself, gathering your equipment and taking on the enemy for hours, is very difficult. But our valiant paratroopers attempted it.

This was the biggest paradrop after the World War II. It included some 700 paratroopers, in addition to artillery and engineers.

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The paradrop was planned for 4:30 pm, which was close to sunset time. The reason was to give the paratroopers enough light to touchdown safely and then get together under the cover of darkness.

As per eyewitness reports, parachutes filled the entire sky!

IA Southern Command/Facebook

Our paratroopers assembled hurriedly and captured the bridge after defeating the Pakistani defenders.

After that, they dug in and took defensive positions, awaiting the Pakistani Brigade coming from Jamalpur.

The retreating Pakistani troops reached the bridge at midnight and were shocked to find Indian troops firing at them well inside their territory, barely 70 kilometres from the heart of their defences at Dhaka.

Our paratroopers completely routed the Pakistani Brigade. Many of their soldiers ran away into the fields; some died fighting and we took many prisoners.

And we achieved our aim of preventing reinforcements to Dhaka in a paradrop operation that was swift and shocking - swift for us and shocking for the enemy!

This paradrop was one of the major contributors to the eventual Pakistani surrender in less than a week.

This is the eighth in a series covering the major air actions of the 1971 war on the occasion of its 50th Anniversary. Watch this space.