Longewala

Longewala
border town
Longewala Location in Rajasthan, India
Coordinates:
Country	India
State	Rajasthan
District	Jaisalmer
Languages
• Official	Hindi
Time zone	IST (UTC+5:30)

Longewala (Hindi: लोंगेवाला) is a region in western India that is most famous for being the site of a battle that occurred during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 in the Indian state of Rajasthan. 120 indian military personals of punjab regiment stop the fully armed pakistani army with their extraordinary courage and determination.

The "A" company (reinforced) of the 23rd Battalion, Punjab Regiment,[7] under the Indian Army's 30th Infantry, commanded by Major Kuldip Singh Chandpuri, was left with the choice of either attempting to hold out until reinforced, or fleeing on foot from a mechanised infantry Pakistani force. Choosing the former, Major Kuldip Singh Chandpuri ensured that all his assets were correctly employed, and made the most use of his strong defensive position, and weaknesses created by errors in enemy tactics. He was also fortunate in that an Indian Air Force forward air controller was able to secure and direct aircraft in support of the post's defence until reinforcements arrived six hours later.

The Pakistani commanders made several questionable decisions, including a failure of their strategic intelligence to foresee availability of Indian strike aircraft in the Longewala area, exercising operational mobility with little or no route reconnaissance, and conducting a tactical frontal assault with no engineer reconnaissance. This led to the Pakistani brigade group being left extremely vulnerable to air attack, vehicles becoming bogged in terrain not suitable for the movement of armoured vehicles as they tried to deploy off a single track, these being more susceptible to enemy fire by using external fuel storage in tactical combat, attempting to execute a night attack over unfamiliar terrain, and infantry being surprised by obstacles to troop movement causing confusion and stalling the attack during the crucial hours of darkness, when the assaulting infantry still had a measure of concealment from Indian small arms and infantry support weapon fire.

The Battle of Longewala was depicted in the 1997 Hindi film Border, which was directed by J.P. Dutta and starred Sunny Deol as the Major Kuldip Singh Chandpuri, Jackie Shroff as the Wing Commander M.S. Bawa, Sunil Shetty as the Rajput Border Security Force Captain Bhairon Singh, and then the teen idol Akshaye Khanna as Lt. Dharam Veer Bhan.[27] The main criticism of the movie was that it showed Indian forces being in a terrible position before any sort of help came from the Indian Air Force. The movie also exaggerates the casualties of Indian soldiers for dramatic purposes.[28] This was not the case in the real incident as Indian forces had defended a position on a height that commanded the area, and were able to defend it effectively due to tactical mistakes made by the Pakistani commanders. This resulted in only two jawan casualties before combat ceased. Indian troops were later able to capture damaged or abandoned Pakistani tanks.[29]

See also

List of military disasters

A Pakistani tank at Longewala from the 1971 war.