Dedicated to
Those
Who
Helped the Navy to Achieve What It Did
And to Those
Who Had the Vision and the Self Confidence to
Innovate, Persevere and Prevail

  This book is based on over two hundred and fifty tape recorded interviews with people who were directly involved with the events between 1965 and 1975. To a large extent these interviewees are the basic sources for the material in this book. I am grateful to them for having spared time to interact.

    I wish to place on record my indebtedness to the authors, their executors, their publishers and all the other institutions from whose source material I have quoted excerpts to present a holistic overview. These sources have been listed in the "Select Bibliography". The credits have been given in the footnotes.

    The maps have been prepared by the Naval Hydrographic Office. The photographs have been culled from naval archives. Commander S Syal and the Naval History Cell helped in sorting out source material. The credit for typing belongs to Petty Officer Writers Mangal Singh and BR Choudhary. I am grateful to them all and especially to Naval Headquarters for providing all this assistance so graciously.

    To the many who helped and who have not been mentioned individually go my heartfelt thanks.

    My biggest thank you goes to my wife, son and daughter for their encouragement and their guidance to make this volume interesting for a lay person.