AFOVA New Letter 2 of Year 2021

Section 7 – Panorama CV 2 No. 02 / 2021 Page 235 of 332 their formal transformation into the deadly form Special Forces have taken today, started with the birth of the SEALS of USA during the Vietnam war in 1962. The events that led the US to this was their sporadic actions in this field during WW II and the Korean War. Similarly, it is the covert action during the 1971 war in what was to become Bangladesh, using Bengali sailors who had defected from the Pakistan Navy as well as our own divers that gave India the experience, confidence and resolve, to ultimately raise the lethal MARCOS. This unknown effort, waged in absolute secrecy, by a Commander and a few Lieutenant Commanders and Lieutenants of various branches, drawn on temporary duty from various units, is a stupendous story. A full version is available in an excellent book ‘Operation X’ published in 2018, by Commander Samant (the person who actually planned and executed the entire covert war. He was a Submariner, with no previous experience in covert action) and Mr Sandeep Unnithan, based on freshly de-classified papers. A related action by the same team was the use of cleverly armed small civilian riverine craft, which took disruption and destruction right inside enemy strongholds, where larger Indian ships couldn’t have gone. The East Bengali human core that formed a part of this team ultimately became the core of the future Bangladesh Navy. Taking it on the Chin No war experience is complete without the taste of taking a few blows to the chin. The Indian Navy took one big blow, from the loss of INS Khukri to torpedoes fired by a Pakistani submarine, off the coast of Saurashtra. But this incident had its important operational lessons. The Navy personally experienced the great power of submarines, the limitations of surface ships in Anti-Submarine Warfare with integral sonars in our warm waters and the need for aircraft based ASW, the surest hedge against submarines then. We also learnt a few lessons about the pulls and pressures our allies and allies of the enemy could bring. These were important lessons for a large, yet young democracy, which had taken a justifiably laudable decision to stay non-aligned in a post WW II world, which was fast dividing itself into two blocs. Our choice was not to stay aloof, but to align with whoever mattered, at our will, when it mattered. This decision stood vindicated at the end of the 1971 war. MARCOS – Special Forces INS Khukri