Military & Aerospace

Liberation of Bangladesh: War in Northern Sector - I
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Progress on the containment axes was to be deliberately retarded to facilitate the fall of Jamalpur earlier than Mymensingh to allow each garrison to be defeated in detail one after the other. But there was a snag. After its fall there was a possibility that the Mymensingh garrison might not wait in situ to fight but might withdraw instead towards Tangail and Dacca. Gurbux Singh therefore rightly calculated that he should rush for Tangail after the fall of Jamalpur instead of working towards Mymensingh. Tangail formed a critical bottleneck as all approches from Jamalpur and Mymensingh towards Dacca passed through it. Once this bottleneck was effectively choked, no force could fall back on Dacca, at least not as a cohesive fighting unit. The countryside around Tangail was completely dominated by Siddigi and his gallant Freedom Fighters, who could be relied upon to deal properly with stragglers making their way cross-country.

“¦it was decided that the Kamalpur post should be captured as a preliminary operation by the Mukti Bahini with the support of regular troops. The post was accordingly first attacked after saturated artillery bombardment”¦The attack had to be called off because of heavy casualties.

The quickest means of choking Tangail was by vertical envelopment. Since the required number of helicopters were not available to Gurbux Singh, he projected the use of paratroopers for the task. The importance of a timely linkup by the advancing troops necessitated a paradrop to coincide with the development of his land thrust lines approaching the bottleneck of Tangail. This meant speeding to Tangail after clearing Jamalpur or Mymensingh towns rather than waiting for them to be destroyed. On his insistence, the scope of the offensive was enhanced to capture Jamalpur in seven days, Tangail in eight and, depending upon the situation, to contact the Dacca fortress defences within 14 days of the outbreak of hostilities. The last task was considered feasible once the Pakistani forces deployed in Tangail and Mymensingh districts were either captured or destroyed.

Kamalpur lay on the main thrust line no more than 1,000 yards from the international border. The Pakistani forces had developed it into a fortified locality of considerable defence potential, with concrete pillboxes covering all the approaches leading to it. The total perimeter, approximately 600 square yards, was reportedly occupied by one company of 31 Baluch augmented by paramilitary elements.

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