Here is a beautiful First Day Cover (FDC) from Pakistan. The FDC was issued on 28 December 2001 on the eve of 50th Anniversary of Pakistan Ordnance Factories, Wah, Pakistan. The beautiful stamp falls into the military stamps category depicting charging infantry, moving tanks and various products of Pakistan Ordnance Factories including arms andammunition ofvarious calibres and weapons.
The beautiful postmark used to cancel the FDC shows the monograms of three services of Pakistan namely Pakistan Army, Pakistan Air Force and Pakistan Navy. The top centre monogram is of Pakistan Army. It shows two crossed swords with an increasing crescent and a star onthe top. The bottom right monogram is of Pakistan Air Force depicting a flying falcon and a star on top; where as on the bottom left is the monogram of Pakistan Navy featuring an anchor in the middle and a crescent and a star on top.
Brief History Of Pakistan Ordnance Factories:-
During their colonial rule in India, the British raised 16 Ordnance Factories. At the time of creation of Pakistan in 1947, we were unlucky that all the sixteen factories fell to Indian share. Newly created Pakistan with fragile state apparatus and fragmented armed forces had absolutely no arms and ammunition manufacturing facility to meet the security challenges to its sovereignty.
The first Prime Minister of Pakistan, Khan Liaqat Ali Khan immediately realized this imbalance and issued directive within four months of creation of Pakistan to establish an ordnance factory to manufacture 303 rifle and its ammunition in Rawalpindi. Subsequently, the foundation stone of four workshops was laid by the second Prime Minister of Pakistan Khawaja Nazim ud din in the small town of Wah in December 1951. This was the first step towards the establishment of mother defence industry in Pakistan.
Today by the grace of God Almighty, Pakistan has fourteen big factories at Wah which are taking care of almost 100% requirements of our armed forces. This modern defence industrial complex, which is the oldest & largest in Pakistan defence production industrial system, later helped many other sister defence production setups to flourish. Resultantly today Pakistan has a reasonably good defence production potential in which Pakistan Ordnance Factories occupy the central position.
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