The Armoured Corps and its regiments

The last mounted parade

The Scinde Horse paraded on its horses for the last time at Rawalpindi on 14 April 1938. On 1 May it began converting to Vickers light tanks and Chevrolet armoured cars, the first Indian cavalry regiment to do so. The Army still keeps that date as Armour Day.

The Indian Armoured Corps was constituted three years later, on 1 May 1941, with its headquarters at Ferozepur. A Fighting Vehicles School was set up at Ahmednagar during the war and became the Armoured Corps Centre and School. Sherman and Stuart tanks arrived in 1943, and 7 Light Cavalry, Deccan Horse and 16 Light Cavalry fought with the Fourteenth Army in Burma. At Partition, twelve regiments stayed in India and six went to Pakistan.

Old names and new numbers

The corps holds two kinds of regiment. The newer ones carry numbers: the 41st to 44th Armoured Regiments, for example, were raised in the early 1980s, and the 60th in 2019. Published counts put the total at about 67, including the President's Bodyguard. The older ones carry the names of British Indian cavalry regiments. Raising years for some of them are:

• 16 Light Cavalry, 1776
• 7 Light Cavalry, 1784
• 8 Light Cavalry, 1787
• Deccan Horse (9 Horse), 1790
• Skinner's Horse (1 Horse), 1803
• Poona Horse (17 Horse), 1817
• Scinde Horse (14 Horse), 1839
• Hodson's Horse (4 Horse), 1857

Stuarts on the Zoji La

The first armoured action after Independence that the corps still celebrates was fought at 11,553 feet.

In 1948 the road to Leh depended on the Zoji La, and an infantry attack by 77 Parachute Brigade had failed. The Stuart light tanks of 7 Cavalry, under Lieutenant Colonel Rajinder Singh "Sparrow", were moved up through Srinagar with their turrets taken off and carried separately, because the bridges could not bear the full weight and the disguise helped conceal what was coming. Sappers cut a track up from Baltal for them. The attack slipped from 20 October to 25 October, then to 29 October, and was finally set for 1 November with an order that it would be abandoned if it did not start that day.

The barrage opened at 10.30 that morning and the tanks went forward through snow, with Major General K. S. Thimayya riding in the front tank according to several accounts. The pass was taken by afternoon and Dras was secured the next day. Tanks were sent up again in 1962, when AMX-13s of 20 Lancers went to Chushul.

Asal Uttar and Phillora

Two armoured battles of September 1965 are the ones most often told. At Asal Uttar in the Khem Karan sector, between 8 and 10 September, Pakistan's 1 Armoured Division ran into a horseshoe defence by 4 Mountain Division with an armoured brigade under Brigadier Thomas Theograj. Indian troops flooded the fields at night, and the Pattons bogged down among the standing sugarcane in the morning. Indian accounts put the Pakistani loss at about 100 tanks. Captured Pattons were displayed near Bhikkiwind, and the place was for a while called Patton Nagar. Lieutenant Colonel A. S. Vaidya of Deccan Horse won the first of his two Maha Vir Chakras in that war and later became Army chief. Company Quartermaster Havildar Abdul Hamid of 4 Grenadiers, an infantryman with a recoilless gun, won the Param Vir Chakra there.

In the Sialkot sector, Lieutenant Colonel Ardeshir Burzorji Tarapore took Poona Horse's Centurions into Phillora from the rear on 11 September. He was wounded and, in the words of his citation, "refused to be evacuated". Wazirali fell on 14 September, and Jassoran and Butur-Dograndi by the 16th. That day his tank was hit and set on fire, and he was killed. The citation credits the regiment with about 60 enemy tanks at a cost of nine. He received the Param Vir Chakra.

Famagusta at Jarpal

Second Lieutenant Arun Khetarpal had held his commission in Poona Horse for six months, since 13 June 1971. On 16 December, at Jarpal in the Shakargarh sector, Pakistani armour counter-attacked B Squadron behind a smokescreen, and he took his troop across the Basantar to reinforce it. He pressed the attack with his Centurion, Famagusta, even after being hit. Ordered by radio to abandon the burning tank, he replied that his main gun was still working. A second hit killed him. He was 21, the youngest man to receive the Param Vir Chakra.

Both of the corps' Param Vir Chakras were won by Poona Horse in the Centurion. Famagusta was restored after the war and is preserved at the Armoured Corps Centre and School in Ahmednagar.

At a glance

• Raised: 1 May 1941 (Indian Armoured Corps constituted); Armour Day, 1 May, marks the mechanisation of the Scinde Horse in 1938
• Regimental centre: Armoured Corps Centre and School, Ahmednagar