1st Armoured Division (India)

The 1st Armoured Division is an armoured division of the Indian Army. It is part of II Corps and is headquartered at Patiala, Punjab. It is part of the Indian Army's Western Command.

The division was formed by the redesignation of 31st Indian Armoured Division on 1 September 1945.

1st Armoured Division was one of the two divisional headquarters transferred from the British Indian Army to the Indian Army upon the Partition of British India in August 1947. At the time it had its divisional headquarters at Secunderabad, 1st Armoured Brigade under command, and the 43rd Lorried Infantry Brigade away with the Punjab Boundary Force. The wartime 255th Indian Tank Brigade had previously been redesignated in June 1946 as 1st Armoured Brigade and assigned to 1st Armoured Division. (Renaldi and Rikhye, 2011, 166)

The division played a major role in Operation Polo, the integration of Hyderabad into the Indian Union in 1948. During this time Major General Joyanto Nath Chaudhuri was serving as the division's commander, and he served as Military Governor of the state in the immediate aftermath of the invasion. For the Hyderabad operation, the division controlled the 1st Armoured Brigade and the 7th and 9th Infantry Brigades.

The 1st Armoured Division played an important role in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. The Division, also nicknamed the 'Black Elephant' or 'Airawat' Division, consisted in 1965 of the 17th Cavalry, The Poona Horse, the 4th Hodson's Horse, the 16th 'Black Elephant' Cavalry, the 7th Light Cavalry, the 2nd Royal Lancers, the 18th Cavalry and the 62nd Cavalry, the two first named being equipped with Centurion tanks. During the war Major General Rajinder Singh Sparrow was GOC of the Division, he won the Mahavir Chakra for his role.

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