In 1965 Pakistan's military dictator General Ayub Khan once again sought to take Indian Kashmir by force. Pakistan chose to send in its special services men in civilian garb as infiltrators into India. Their mandate was to sabotage and instigate violence within Indian Kashmir and keep the Indian Army occupied so that the Pakistani forces could strike the decisive blow to capture Kashmir. This operation failed as the Pakistani paratroopers were rounded up - sometimes with the active help of the local population and at this stage Pakistan launched a proper military attack on Kashmir supported by the Pakistan Air Force (PAF).
The Pakistan Army in 1965 was a far more modern force than the Indian Army, and was equipped with state of the art Patton tanks, while the PAF had F-86 Sabre jets and the supersonic F-104 Starfighters. The Indian army, under intense pressure in Kashmir was on the defensive, and to relieve the pressure India opened another front further south along the international border by launching an attack into Pakistan. This attack caught Pakistan off guard and in a series of decisive battles Indian troops advanced into Pakistan and were at the gates of the Pakistani city of Lahore when a ceasefire took effect. By the time ths fighting stopped, Pakistani tank forces had been decimated by well led and motivated Indian armour in battles of a kind not seen since the days of Gen. Rommel in North Africa. Pakistan sued for peace after Indian forces had occupied some 500 square miles of Pakistani territory.
Pictures from the 1965 war