Indian Defence Review

The CIA recently declassified a new series of documents on the history of the U-2 surveillance planes.

In their “The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: The U-2 and OXCART Programs, 1954-1974”, Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach mentioned the U-2s operations in India.

[I quote from pages 231 to 233]

In October 1962, the People’s Republic of China launched a series of massive surprise attacks against India’s frontier forces in the western provinces of Jammu and Kashmir and in the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA). The Chinese overran all Indian fortifications north of the Brahmaputra Valley before halting their operations.

The Indian Government appealed to the United States for military aid. In the negotiations that followed, it became apparent that Indian claims concerning the extent of the Chinese incursions could not be reliably evaluated. US Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith, therefore, suggested to the Indian Government that US aerial reconnaissance of the disputed areas would provide both governments with a more accurate picture of the Communist Chinese incursions.

On 11 November 1962, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru consented to the proposed operation and gave the United States permission to refuel the reconnaissance aircraft (U-2s) in Indian airspace.

In late November, Detachment G [1] to Ta Khli, [2] to carry out the overflights of the Sino-Indian border area. Since the U-2s were not authorized to overfly Burma, they had to reach the target area via the Bay of Bengal and eastern India and, therefore, required midair refueling.

Because of severe winter weather conditions, the first flight did not take place until 5 December. Poor weather and air turbulence hampered the mission, and only 40 percent of the target area could be photographed. A second mission on 10 December was more successful, but the U-2 experienced rough engine performance because of icing of the fuel lines.

Detachment G U-2s made four more overflights of the Sino-Indian border areas in January 1963, which led to a PRC protest to India. Photography from these missions was used in January and again in March 1963 to brief Prime Minister Nehru, who then informed the Indian Parliament about Communist Chinese troop movements along the border. Although Nehru did not reveal the source of his intelligence, a UPI wire story surmised that the information had been obtained by U-2s.

The United States had provided photographic coverage of the border area to India for two reasons. First of all, US policymakers wanted a clear picture of the area under dispute. In addition, the intelligence community wanted to establish a precedent for overflights from India, which could lead to obtaining a permanent staging base in India for electronic reconnaissance missions against the Soviet ABM [Anti-Ballistic Missile] site at Saryshagan and photographic missions against those portions of western China that were out of range of Detachment H.

In April 1963, Ambassador Galbraith and the Chief of Station at New Delhi made the first official request to India for a base. The following month, President Kennedy agreed to DCI [Director Central Intelligence] McCone’s suggestion to raise the question of a U-2 base in India when he met with India’s President Savepalli Radhakrishnan on 3 June. This meeting resulted in an Indian offer of an abandoned World War II base at Charbatia, south of Calcutta [near Cuttack in Odisha].

The Charbatia base was in poor condition and needed considerable renovation before it could be used for U-2 operations. Work on the base by the Indians took much longer than expected, so Detachment G continued to use Ta Khli when it staged four sorties over Tibet from 29 September to 10 November 1963. In addition to the coverage of the Sino-Indian border during this series of flights, the U-2s also photographed all of Thailand to produce a photomap of the border regions as a quid pro quo for the Thai Government. During one of these photomapping missions, a U-2 pilot conducted the longest mission ever recorded in this aircraft- 11 hours and 45 minutes.

At the end of this flight on 10 November 1963, the pilot was in such poor physical condition that project managers prohibited the scheduling of future missions longer than 10 hours.

Charbatia was still not ready in early 1964, so on 31 March 1964 Detachment G staged another mission from Ta Khli. The first mission out of Charbatia did not take place until 24 May 1964. Three days later Prime Minister Nehru died, and further operations were postponed.

The pilots and aircraft left Charbatia, but other equipment remained in place to save staging costs. In December 1964, when Sino-Indian tensions increased along the border, Detachment G returned to Charbatia and conducted three highly successful missions, satisfying all of COMOR’s requirements for the Sino-Indian border region. By this time, however, Ta Khli had become the main base for Detachment G’s Asian operations, and Charbatia served merely as a forward staging base. Charbatia was closed out in July 1967.

[1] Elsewhere, the U-2 report says that Detachment C could not have stayed in Nevada much longer. In June 1957, the entire facility had to be evacuated because the Atomic Energy Commission was about to conduct a series of nuclear tests whose fallout was expected to contaminate the Groom Lake facility. All remaining CIA personnel, materiel, and aircraft were transferred to Edwards Air Force Base in California, and became known as Detachment G.

[2] Takhli Royal Thai Air Force Base is today a Royal Thai Air Force facility, located in Central Thailand, approximately 144 miles northwest of Bangkok

What is surprising in this story is that the beginning of the collaboration between the CIA and the Indian Government for reconnaissance of the Himalayan borders, is given as November 11, 1962.

It is the day Nehru is supposed to have allowed the U-2s to ‘refuel’ during their reconnaissance flights.

To understand the context, it is necessary to look at The Foreign Relations of the United States (1961–1963 Volume XIX, South Asia), which publishes several telegrams from the Department of State to the US Embassy in India.

One of these cables is sent from Washington on November 20, 1962 (at 12:50 a.m. U.S. time) by the US Secretary of State Dean Rusk to the US Ambassador in India, John Kenneth Galbraith.

Marked ‘Eyes Only for Ambassador from Secretary’, the cable says of Nehru’s request for assistance: “We have just forwarded to you second letter from Nehru today anticipated in your [cable] 1889. As we read this message it amounts to a request for an active and practically speaking unlimited military partnership between the United States and India to take on Chinese invasion India. This involves for us the most far-reaching political and strategic issues and we are not at all [emphasis mine] convinced that Indians are prepared to face the situation in the same terms. I recall that more than once in past two years I have expressed to various Indian representatives my concern that their policy would lead to a situation where they would call upon us for assistance when it is too late rather than give their and free world policy any opportunity for preventive effectiveness.”

This new development relates to the two panicky letterssent by the Indian Prime Minister on November 19, 1962, which were brought to the Indian public’s notice by the veteran journalist Inder Malhotra a few years ago.

Another telegram (also classified ‘Eyes Only for the Ambassador’) from Dean Rusk was sent the same day at 22:31 p.m. US time; it tells the US Ambassador: “Unless you think it inappropriate, please deliver the following message to Prime Minister Nehru as soon as feasible.”

The letter to Jawaharlal Nehru reads thus:

Dear Mr. Prime Minister:

I was on the point of responding to your two urgent letters when we received news of the Chinese statements on a cease-fire. I, of course, wish your assessment of whether it makes any change in your situation. I had planned to write you that we are ready to be as responsive as possible to your needs, in association with the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. We remain prepared to do so.

We had already organized a small group of top U.S. officials [headed by Ambassador Averell Harriman, it included Paul Nitze, Carl Kaysen, Roger Hilsman, and General Paul D. Adams], who would arrive in New Delhi Friday [November 22], to help Ambassador Galbraith in concerting with your government how we can best help. It seems useful to go ahead with this effort as planned and we will do so unless you think it inadvisable.

It is signed Dean Rusk, who told his Ambassador: “You might suggest to Nehru that even under changed circumstances the team would be useful as a tangible gesture of US support.”

In the earlier quoted telegram, the State Department had informed the US Ambassador: “Latest message from PriMin [Nehru] in effect proposes not only a military alliance between India and the United States but complete commitment by us to a fighting war. We recognized this might be immediate reaction of a Government in a desperate position but it is a proposal which cannot be reconciled with any further pretense of non-alignment. If this is what Nehru has in mind, he should be entirely clear about it before we even consider our own decision.”

The problem was that Washington (and Delhi as well) had little information about the Chinese intentions and even less on the dispositions of the PLA in Tibet. It was most urgent for both Washington and Delhi to get proper and reliable information; this probably justified the use of the U-2 surveillance planes.

This lack of information was admitted by Rusk when he cabled Galbraith on November 19 (at 11:06 p.m.): “We acutely feel lack of information regarding GOI [Government of India] plans and capacity to meet this new situation. Accordingly, we are sending a small high-level team to arrive New Delhi approximately Friday [November 22] to assess whole situation along with Indian plans and capability for meeting it and return with action recommendations as soon as possible. They may wish to visit scene of action on frontier. Team will include high ranking military officers both Army and Air with appropriate representation from State and CIA. Arranging best coordination we can with UK directly, but not waiting on them.”

This was what Ambassador Averell Harriman was sent to Delhi for: to ascertain Nehru’s long term intentions and India’s real needs.