India used United States U-2 spy planes to map the extent of Chinese incursion in the 1962 war, starting a short-lived cooperation which wound down after former Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s death in 1964.
The U-2s flew several times over the India-China border, taking off from a base in Thailand before switching to an unused World War II airfield in Charbatia, south of Kolkata.
According to a declassified Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) document released on Thursday, the US-India cooperation began on Nehru’s request for military aid after China invaded India in October 1962.
“In the negotiations that followed the Indian request, it became apparent that Indian claims concerning the extent of the Chinese incursions could not be reliably evaluated,” said the document.
Indian and US intelligence cooperation was not unusual at the time. Nehru was informed of Dalai Lama’s escape from Tibet in 1959 and his arrival at the Indian border by the CIA.
However, in this instance the US intentions went beyond providing India information on the Chinese invasion. The US wanted to set up a base in India for U-2 flights over the Soviet Union and China. It succeeded and Charbatia was the pay-back base.
At that time, U-2s were single-engine, high-altitude reconnaissance airplanes run by the CIA to photograph military and strategic positions in the Soviet Union and China.
The flights started in 1957 and remained a secret until the shooting down of a U-2 over the Soviet Union and the capture of its pilot Francis Gary Powers in 1960.
In 1962, US Ambassador John Galbraith sold the U-2 to the Indian government saying it would be necessary to provide a more accurate picture of the Chinese incursion.
According to the CIA document, Nehru gave his consent on November 11 and allowed the U-2s to refuel in the Indian airspace.
The flights were to take off from a base in Thailand and had to come in from the Bay of Bengal because they did not have overflight permission from Burma.
The first flight took off on December 5 but the aircraft was able to take photographs of only 40 percent of the target area because of unfavourable weather conditions.
The second flight on December 11 fared better but it also developed engine problems because of the weather. Four more flights would be conducted in January.
Nehru was briefed about the findings of these flights in January and March and he informed the Parliament. The CIA document claimed Nehru did not reveal his source.
The US then rolled the rest of its plan “to establish a precedent for overflights from India which could lead to obtaining a permanent Indian base for electronic reconnaissance missions against the Soviet anti-ballistic missile (ABM) site at Saryshagan and launching photographic missions against parts of western China that were out of the range of Detachment H (Taiwan-based U-2s)”.
Galbraith and CIA station chief raised the issue of a base with India in April 1963. US president John F Kennedy reiterated it in his meeting with Indian president Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan on June 3.
India handed over the abandoned World War II base in Charbatia, which was in a bad shape. As it underwent repairs, U-2s continued to take off from the Thai base.
The first flight from Charbatia took off only on May 24 1964. Nehru died three days later and “further operations were postponed”, stated the CIA document.
Three more U-2 flights took off from Charbatia in December 1964 when Sino-Indian tensions rose.
The US, however, had no use for the base any more, preferring the Thai base instead. Hence, Charbatia was shut down in 1967.
In 1965 India and the US intelligence sent a joint team of climbers to install a nuclear-powered device on Nanda Devi, the highest Indian peak, to monitor Chinese nuclear activities.
The mission failed because of bad weather. The team left the device in a crevice firmly tied to a rock using nylon ropes, pitons and carabineers. The team planned to come back but when it returned the following year, the device was not there.
The secret expedition was first reported by a team leader Captain Mohan Singh Kohli in a 2003 book,“Spies in the Himalayas”.
A monitoring device was later planted on a smaller peak Nanda Kot, which the CIA estimated would be just as good. However, it was closed a year later in 1967.