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Bad ideas in military history

HansMustermann said:
While you do make a good case, I'll tend to give a pass to ideas that existed only on a drawing board or as a test prototype and then cancelled. Sometimes you have to go empirical and actually do the full scale experiment before you know for sure that it doesn't work.

That's why I went with things like the Volksjäger program that actually got put into mass production, and actually got thousands of kids killed when, yeah, it came unglued in the air or some control surface just flew off.
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I'd agree And also class the following as more like a prototype and not a bad idea, because it had the chance of a large effect....at least according to the knowledge available to the Japanese at the time.

jimbob said:
Was that actually that bad an idea, or was it something that used minimal resources and achieved almost nothing?
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HansMustermann said:
It used up resources, and achieved absolutely nothing, is good enough for me to count it as a bad idea. Maybe not as bad as some of the others, but yeah.
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I'm finding it rather amusing that a "new posts" search a few minutes ago resulted in:
Bad Ideas in Military History
The Russian Invasion of Ukraine
in that order.
 
jimbob said:
I'd agree And also class the following as more like a prototype and not a bad idea, because it had the chance of a large effect....at least according to the knowledge available to the Japanese at the time.
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Not really, no. Unless you count wishful thinking as knowledge.

Here's why: even assuming that 100% will land in the western USA (which is unrealistic, but let's file that under "knowledge available" anyway for the scope of the exercise), you only need to look at how much of it is just empty land.

Additionally, let's look at the following factors:

- when were they launched? Basically end of 1944 and 1945. Realistically, is it going to make the USA sue for peace or anything? At that point? And what knowledge would such an expectation be based on, since they already saw first hand that the US doesn't just give up when sucker punched, but just get meaner.

- with what payload? We're not talking block buster bombs there, but tiny charges. We're talking a mix of 11 pound bombs, 26 pound bombs and 33 pound bombs. By way of comparison THE absolute smallest bomb for aircraft use in WW2 was the German 50 kilo (about 110 pounds for you imperial barstards;)) For the US even the Tiny Tim rocket had about 150 pounds worth of warhead. And both of those were supposed to be used by the thousands. Japan's bombs, even if one landed in a town, exactly how much damage was it supposed to DO?

- where did they land? Well, also in Mexico. Do you really want to start an extra diplomatic incident at that point?
 
Also, just to clarify: I will count something as a prototype if you built and tested ONE. Maybe TWO. Hell, even single digits. Something where actually 9000 were built and actually launched as war weapons is no longer a prototype.
 
Trebuchet said:
I'm finding it rather amusing that a "new posts" search a few minutes ago resulted in:
Bad Ideas in Military History
The Russian Invasion of Ukraine
in that order.
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Yeah, well, that invasion definitely counts as such.

Maybe Putin should let the head of the army decide on such things. I mean, he knows how much he stole and if the rest is actually enough to do anything in a war.

Hell, just let the army head in charge.

We could call it a Shoigunate ;)
 
HansMustermann said:
Yeah, well, that invasion definitely counts as such.

Maybe Putin should let the head of the army decide on such things. I mean, he knows how much he stole and if the rest is actually enough to do anything in a war.

Hell, just let the army head in charge.

We could call it a Shoigunate ;)
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<Rolls eyes but reluctantly applauds>

Actually, given that Shoigu seems to be being set up as the fall guy, that would also probably count as a bad idea
 
Another one.

US logistics in the Spanish American war.

Not flashy like a bad weapon. But had much the same result. Sort of like the crappy job Russia has done in Ukraine except the situation was more complex and Spain weak enough that it did not make a difference.

Things that went wrong:

New national guard units from the north sent south to encampments near southern swamps where they got exposed to malaria.

Units created for the war and sent south never getting to Cuba. Those that did get there suffered long delays.

Cavalry units being sent to Cuba and into battle without their horses.

Results:

US army war college gets created so officers are trained on more than tactics.

US army transportation corps starts buying ships. There are still soldiers who are sailors.
 
Doubt said:
Another one.

US logistics in the Spanish American war.

Not flashy like a bad weapon. But had much the same result. Sort of like the crappy job Russia has done in Ukraine except the situation was more complex and Spain weak enough that it did not make a difference.

Things that went wrong:

New national guard units from the north sent south to encampments near southern swamps where they got exposed to malaria.

Units created for the war and sent south never getting to Cuba. Those that did get there suffered long delays.

Cavalry units being sent to Cuba and into battle without their horses.

Results:

US army war college gets created so officers are trained on more than tactics.

US army transportation corps starts buying ships. There are still soldiers who are sailors.
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Yes it laid the grounds for subsequent US military success by painfully demonstrating what happens when you get it wrong
 
Mark 14 torpedoes anyone?
US east coast cities not blacking out, making US cargo ships easy targets for German subs?
 
theprestige said:
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removed moderated content


What's wrong with the Mark 14 torpedo?
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Seriously? Pretty much everything, from 1941 to 1943.
Wouldn't run straight.
Wouldn't hold depth.
Magnetic exploder didn't work.
Neither did the contact exploder.
And most of all, BuOrd's refusal to even consider that there might be a problem. For two years.
Sure, at the end of the war it was working well. But Americans died because of BuOrd stupidity.
And the destroyer version Mk 15 was no better.

Our opponent at the time, Japan, had torpedoes that ran farther, faster, straighter, with a bigger warhead, and actually exploded when they got there.

Edited to add linky.
 
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The torpedo was even worse, in that because it could go in a circle, it could and occasionally did destroy the sub launching it instead of the enemy. Well, assuming that either detonator actually worked. Usually you'd get saved by the other mode of failure.

But really... THE #1 real problem was the insistence that nope, it's working just fine, all those captains are just idiots.

To put it into context, everyone had problems with their torpedoes at first, and ESPECIALLY with the magnetic detonators. Germany had a problem too at first. Plus other problems like battery problems for the German electric torpedoes. The reason being that pretty much everyone tested theirs in one location. (Well... the US never tested theirs at all, but bear with me:p) And then discovered the hard way that when you use them a quarter of the way across the globe, well, the magnetic field is different (which messed with magnetic detonators big time) or the water is much colder (which messed with the Germans' batteries) or generally SOMETHING is different.

And everyone but the USA then just went back to the drawing board to figure out WTH is causing the problems. And fixed their torpedoes.

The USA was the only one that insisted that nope, they work just fine. It really was that stupid.
 
And just to make it clear: how bad an effect this had? I wrote a bit before about it, but basically I would say it prolonged the war by a year. (But, disclaimer: I'm not a real historian, so I might be off.)

Reason being that Japan at first was utterly unprepared to deal with the US submarines, and routinely got caught with their pants down and torpedoed. Even capital ship like those incredibly important carriers occasionally got caught by some sub and... got away because the torpedoes didn't work.

And it wasn't just the sub torpedoes, mind you. All the same problems were also present verbatim in the Mark XIII aerial torpedo. Making torpedo bombers just about useless for a while.

Anyway, the USA had a window of opportunity to inflict some HUGE damage on the IJN with impunity. Again, including those all important carriers. IMHO it could have brought Japan more or less to the same point as it was after Midway, except months before that. The borked torpedoes are THE reason why it failed to exploit this window of opportunity.
 
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If you have half an hour there's a rather good Drachinifel video about the sorry tale of the Mk.14 torpedo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ5Ru7Zu_1I

It's a frustrating story of the high cost and slow rate of production curtailing testing and the heartbreaking consequences of submariners launching attacks with weapons which didn't function and then being attacked in turn by the ships they should have sunk.
 
And again, that's when they didn't outright get sunk by their own torpedo, which went into a circle.
 
Doubt said:
Around the same time they were also publishing articles from people claiming the blitzkrieg was a myth.
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I think there's some defensible version of that statement, anyway. You know, but "every legend has a grain of truth" and that...

As far as military blunders, I would also add...making the ME262 a ground attack aircraft, and then just the allied strategic bombing campaign itself, at least arguably. NB, I am not married to the last one.
 
Axxman300 said:
1. The US Army going to the gray ACU uniforms, and the US Navy's blue berry uniforms. Totally unnecessary, and in the case of the Army, the gray uniforms got guys killed.

2. Operation Iraqi Freedom. Total miscalculation, waste of lives and resources. Destroyed US credibility. The sad thing is Saddam would have either eventually given the world a reason to invade, or there is a good chance he would have been Arab-Springed.

3. Ham & Olive Loaf MREs. War crime in peace time.

4. COP Keating, Afghanistan. Everyone involved with the establishment of this outpost in that location should have been courtsmarshalled, and shot.

5. Operation Anaconda, 2002. Poorly conceived and planned. The US Army made the same mistakes the Soviets did in that same area, but with the knowledge that the Soviets blew it. We did the exact same thing. Only our precision weapons made the difference. Better planning, and less interference from SecDef Rumsfeld might - MIGHT - have resulted in the capture or killing of Bin Laden at Tora Bora, and saved us 19 years, thousands of lives, and billions of dollars.
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Tho Ham and Olive loaf MRE were bad, but the Pork Patties were even worse
It seems like every generation of US soliders has a really bad field ration to endure. In Vietnam, it was Ham and Lima Beans. The soldiers showed how much they liked it by calling it Han and Motherf*****s
 
dudalb said:
Tho Ham and Olive loaf MRE were bad, but the Pork Patties were even worse
It seems like every generation of US soliders has a really bad field ration to endure. In Vietnam, it was Ham and Lima Beans. The soldiers showed how much they liked it by calling it Han and Motherf*****s
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Ham and Olive loaf were after my time. Dehydrated pork patties, beef patties, and potatoes were all in the first issued versions of MREs. They were the finest tasting cardboard ever created by humans. But they did see the introduction of Tabasco sauce in the packages.

That said, the MRE was still a good idea overall. Less weight and overall better cold than a cold C-ration.
 
My son at NNPTC was in the path of hurricane IAN for a while. They closed the galley and issued 'MREs'. He said "They are like imitation MREs. And the MREs are not good. Reports say that they give you explosive diarrhea."
 

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crescent said:
Some mistakes are of the sort that get repeated.

Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld on Iraq in 2003: "We will be welcomed as saviors and the invasion will pay for itself!"

Putin/Shoigu/Gerasimov on Ukraine in 2022: "We will be welcomed as saviors and the invasion will pay for itself!"
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The difference is that Bush and co. actually believed it. I think.

I'll add:

- The F-104. A classic case of the old sports cliche "stats are for losers." (Of course you could add others like the F-102 and the trendy pick is the F-35 but debatable)
- The Alamo.
- The idea that we could install a sustainable democracy in the Middle East.
- Hitler not taking advantage of Dunkirk.
- Germany not taking long-range bombers seriously.
 
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bigred said:
The difference is that Bush and co. actually believed it. I think.

I'll add:

- The F-104. A classic case of the old sports cliche "stats are for losers." (Of course you could add others like the F-102 and the trendy pick is the F-35 but debatable)
- The Alamo.
- The idea that we could install a sustainable democracy in the Middle East.
- Hitler not taking advantage of Dunkirk.
- Germany not taking long-range bombers seriously.
Click to expand...

Dunkirk: likely a lie that von Rundstedt came up with to save face.
Alamo: what do you mean by that? If blunder by Santa Anna, maybe. If by the Texians*... no.

*SIC
 
Yeah, I don't think the German Army actually could crush the Dunkirk pocket. It really needed to wait for reinforcements, supplies, and repairs. People tend to underestimate how much and how early Germany ignored logistics and found itself reaching the end of the chain like the dog in Foghorn Leghorn cartoons.

Also I've argued before that if they somehow could prevent the Brits from evacuating (which, again, they couldn't, but just for hypothetical mental exercise sake,) they'd essentially just activate this condition for them:

Throw your soldiers into positions whence there is no escape, and they will prefer death to flight. If they will face death, there is nothing they may not achieve. Officers and men alike will put forth their uttermost strength.
-- Sun Tzu, "The Art Of War"​

Seriously, especially when it comes to Brits, those just don't give up easily. As Hitler was about to find out in the Battle Of Britain too.
 
Dunno if this was a bad idea or a legitimate case of "we won't know one way or the other unless we actually try it", but in the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the US decided to test the heavy air defenses around Baghdad with the largest F-16 sortie in history - 75 planes total. The sortie was a complete failure. No targets were hit. Miraculously only two of the attacking planes were shot down (both pilots survived). Before the test, only stealth planes and cruise missiles were being used on those targets. After the test, the US opted to continue only using stealth planes and cruise missiles on those targets.

Apparently part of the problem was bad OPSEC, so the defenders knew the sortie was coming and were well prepared. Also, in the early 90s the US lacked the battle management tools necessary to coordinate that many planes all at once. This exacerbated the difficulties they had refueling, and caused the air group to string out and trickle into the target area instead of properly saturating the defenses. Also the Iraqis had more radars than the escort jammers could suppress.

My general view is that everyone makes mistakes in war. I feel like, as long as you're making interesting mistakes, and learning from them, they're not necessarily bad ideas. This wasn't Russian vehicles rolling around the countryside without infantry screens, like we're seeing in Ukraine right now. This was some "who dares wins" type stuff. Bet if we tried it again today, it would go a lot different.

---

Bonus subcategory: Bad ideas in military history that somehow worked or paid off anyway. For example, the Tet offensive. Destroyed the North Vietnamese Army, but also somehow sapped America's political will to continue fighting.
 
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Well, if they only lost two planes and no casualties, I'm guessing it can't have been TOO bad an idea. IMHO.
 
theprestige said:
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Bonus subcategory: Bad ideas in military history that somehow worked or paid off anyway. For example, the Tet offensive. Destroyed the North Vietnamese Army, but also somehow sapped America's political will to continue fighting.
Click to expand...

Somehow?

The metric used to measure progress in the war was the number of dead enemy. These numbers became an outright fraud. Had the number killed been anywhere near accurate, there never would have been a Tet offensive. The existence off the offensive put the lie to what the US army was claiming as progress in the war. The fault for this starts with both Westmorland and Secretary McNamara.

The offensive itself was a tactical failure. It was also a strategic success. The North had been using a dual track strategy between military and political operations. The Tet offensive was a the achievement of their political goals by discrediting the US. Although, at the time, it was not regarded as such by the north.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLF_a...zation_and_structure#/media/File:Dautranh.jpg

The linked graphic is a combination of Mao's military stages for a guerilla war in China. The political part was Giap's extension in Vietnam.
 
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Well, in the bad ideas category, I'd vote for attacking your ally. Multiple examples, actually, but probably the least likely to be controversial is Napoleon's invasion of Spain. Spain had been an ally of France, and had helped him take Portugal and thus secure that possible route for the UK to get into the war.

Napoleon however -- being the unstable psycho we all know and love -- was growing dissatisfied with Spain. Spain had significant social unrest and had somewhat lost its usefulness anyway, after its fleet had been nearly obliterated at Trafalgar. (Yay for Nelson.) Which was also one part of the reason for that unrest. So he thinks, yeah, obviously that's because of a weak ruler. What Spain OBVIOUSLY needs is someone to rule it with an iron fist.

So he attacks his ally by surprise, without any declaration of war. The Spanish government was desperately asking why is their ally attacking their cities and got no answer all the way until... Napoleon forces the king to surrender and installs Napoleon's own brother as a puppet king. Then he starts confiscating wealth and imposes a ridiculous 100 million francs fine on Spain.

Well, needless to say, things didn't go like in his imagination.

One of the first things Spain did while still under attack by France was to pull its troops out of Portugal. You know, because it needed them desperately at home. Portugal was lost just like that, which allowed the UK a foothold that would bog Napoleon royally down.

Once the coup was complete, the Spanish went from unrest to outright rebellion. This would pretty much end up being Napoleon's Vietnam for the next several years. Not the least because, see above, now he would continue to face UK landings in the Iberian peninsula, which he never managed to control enough to stop them. Even when he'd manage to chase an army off, they'd just come back later.

So yeah, one dumb idea that cost thousands of lives and was as counter-productive as it gets.
 
theprestige said:
Dunno if this was a bad idea or a legitimate case of "we won't know one way or the other unless we actually try it", but in the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the US decided to test the heavy air defenses around Baghdad with the largest F-16 sortie in history - 75 planes total. The sortie was a complete failure. No targets were hit. Miraculously only two of the attacking planes were shot down (both pilots survived). Before the test, only stealth planes and cruise missiles were being used on those targets. After the test, the US opted to continue only using stealth planes and cruise missiles on those targets.

Apparently part of the problem was bad OPSEC, so the defenders knew the sortie was coming and were well prepared. Also, in the early 90s the US lacked the battle management tools necessary to coordinate that many planes all at once. This exacerbated the difficulties they had refueling, and caused the air group to string out and trickle into the target area instead of properly saturating the defenses. Also the Iraqis had more radars than the escort jammers could suppress.

My general view is that everyone makes mistakes in war. I feel like, as long as you're making interesting mistakes, and learning from them, they're not necessarily bad ideas. This wasn't Russian vehicles rolling around the countryside without infantry screens, like we're seeing in Ukraine right now. This was some "who dares wins" type stuff. Bet if we tried it again today, it would go a lot different.

---

Bonus subcategory: Bad ideas in military history that somehow worked or paid off anyway. For example, the Tet offensive. Destroyed the North Vietnamese Army, but also somehow sapped America's political will to continue fighting.
Click to expand...
Perhaps worse in that war, the US Army sent a detachment of AH-64 attack helicopters after an elite Iraqi regiment. They had been trained to fire from stationary, for accuracy. Moments after they took off, the entirely functional Iraqi cell phone network lit up, tracking their movements. When they go to the target, they went stationary to fire. Oops. One captured intact, pretty much all seriously damaged. No damage to the foe.
The USMC, relegated to older attack helicopters, trained their pilots to fire on the move.
Then there's the US Air Farce, which has spent the last 35 years trying to get rid of the A-10 because it doesn't look cool. Who cares if it just works?
 
Trebuchet said:
I'm finding it rather amusing that a "new posts" search a few minutes ago resulted in:
Bad Ideas in Military History
The Russian Invasion of Ukraine
in that order.
Click to expand...

It's up there but I can think of a couple that were even more disasterous.
Teutonburg Forest and Little BIg Horn come to mind.
 
Trebuchet said:
Perhaps worse in that war, the US Army sent a detachment of AH-64 attack helicopters after an elite Iraqi regiment. They had been trained to fire from stationary, for accuracy. Moments after they took off, the entirely functional Iraqi cell phone network lit up, tracking their movements. When they go to the target, they went stationary to fire. Oops. One captured intact, pretty much all seriously damaged. No damage to the foe.
The USMC, relegated to older attack helicopters, trained their pilots to fire on the move.
Then there's the US Air Farce, which has spent the last 35 years trying to get rid of the A-10 because it doesn't look cool. Who cares if it just works?
Click to expand...

Close Air Support has always had..until recently..a tough time n the USAF which always been dominating by The feud between the Bomber Barons and the Fighter Mafia with CAS a distant third in beureaucratic war.
 
HansMustermann said:
Well, in the bad ideas category, I'd vote for attacking your ally. Multiple examples, actually, but probably the least likely to be controversial is Napoleon's invasion of Spain. Spain had been an ally of France, and had helped him take Portugal and thus secure that possible route for the UK to get into the war.

Napoleon however -- being the unstable psycho we all know and love -- was growing dissatisfied with Spain. Spain had significant social unrest and had somewhat lost its usefulness anyway, after its fleet had been nearly obliterated at Trafalgar. (Yay for Nelson.) Which was also one part of the reason for that unrest. So he thinks, yeah, obviously that's because of a weak ruler. What Spain OBVIOUSLY needs is someone to rule it with an iron fist.

So he attacks his ally by surprise, without any declaration of war. The Spanish government was desperately asking why is their ally attacking their cities and got no answer all the way until... Napoleon forces the king to surrender and installs Napoleon's own brother as a puppet king. Then he starts confiscating wealth and imposes a ridiculous 100 million francs fine on Spain.

Well, needless to say, things didn't go like in his imagination.

One of the first things Spain did while still under attack by France was to pull its troops out of Portugal. You know, because it needed them desperately at home. Portugal was lost just like that, which allowed the UK a foothold that would bog Napoleon royally down.

Once the coup was complete, the Spanish went from unrest to outright rebellion. This would pretty much end up being Napoleon's Vietnam for the next several years. Not the least because, see above, now he would continue to face UK landings in the Iberian peninsula, which he never managed to control enough to stop them. Even when he'd manage to chase an army off, they'd just come back later.

So yeah, one dumb idea that cost thousands of lives and was as counter-productive as it gets.
Click to expand...

High price to pay to put a incompetent brother on a throne...
 
dudalb said:
Close Air Support has always had..until recently..a tough time n the USAF which always been dominating by The feud between the Bomber Barons and the Fighter Mafia with CAS a distant third in beureaucratic war.
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Which is why I've said for years that the only thing wrong with the A-10 is the writing on the side. It ought to say "US ARMY".
50 years ago, I had that writing on my shirts. Er, "blouses". It means "Uncle Sam Ain't Released Me Yet." 50 years ago, I was getting very short!
 
Galaxie said:
Are battlecruisers still considered a bad idea, or has the thinking shifted to 'they were fine but they used them wrong'?

I recall Beatty's understated line at Jutland: "There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today", after two blew up spectacularly. That seems to have been partly due to design, and partly due to powder handling.

---

Along the same lines, I've never been able to decide if armored cruisers were a bad idea from the start or if I'm just blinded by hindsight.
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From what I have read, Battlecruisers were never supposed to serve in the line fo battle and slug it out with Battleships, but they were so expensive to build that the pressure to put them into the Line Of Battle in major engagements became impossible to resist.
 
dudalb said:
From what I have read, Battlecruisers were never supposed to serve in the line fo battle and slug it out with Battleships, but they were so expensive to build that the pressure to put them into the Line Of Battle in major engagements became impossible to resist.
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The concept of the Battlecruiser was to be able to outfight anything you couldn't outrun, and outrun anything you couldn't outfight. That was demonstrated in the Battle of the Falklands, where the battlecruisers were able to do both against Von Spee's ships, although the outcome might have been different had Von Spee retained some AP ammo, since he scored several hits to one British in the earlier stages.
The gaping hole in the concept was the very real possibliity of BC's coming up against one of their own kind. Especially one that may have been a knot or so slower, had an inch or so smaller guns, but was better armored and better trained. That was what was wrong with Beatty's bloody ships.
 
There may be an alternate explanation: the composition and manufacturing standards of the cordite used at the time, combined with the lax standards in keeping the ship clean. (And at least the British ships tended to explode in battle. The French occasionally just detonated for no obvious reason.)

I'm not a chemist myself, but Drachinifel had a video where a real chemist with expertise in explosives explains that hypothesis.
 
HansMustermann said:
There may be an alternate explanation: the composition and manufacturing standards of the cordite used at the time, combined with the lax standards in keeping the ship clean. (And at least the British ships tended to explode in battle. The French occasionally just detonated for no obvious reason.)

I'm not a chemist myself, but Drachinifel had a video where a real chemist with expertise in explosives explains that hypothesis.
Click to expand...


I don’t remember British BCs exploding without being hit by enemy shells. Are there really such cases?
 
No, that was the French. His argument for the British is that the nitroglycerin powder everywhere, accumulating even before battle as they kept exercising loading and unloading the guns, could create a flash when the turret was hit. And possibly also help it propagate down the shaft.

Also that if some flash or hit did make it to the magazine, it would result in an instant flash that you had effectively zero time to do anything about. By way of comparison, the Germans had the time to flood the magazines even when they caught on fire.

There's also an argument he didn't make, that everyone being SURE that cordite was safe, led many to being lax about which loaded and unloaded charge goes into which tube. It seems that the Admiralty was at least SOMEWHAT aware that there's a problem with very old cordite, since they stamped an expiration date on each tube for those cordite bags, and expired charges were to be replaced with new ones. However it seems that the actual personnel were so sure cordite is safe and that's just some silly regulation, that they just put any bag in any tube when exercising. Repeat that thousands of times as they keep training, and it all becomes completely randomized, when it comes to which old (and thus increasingly unstable) cordite bag is in which new tube and viceversa.

There is at least one documented case where that discovery was made, and it led to replacing every single cordite bag on one ship in a hurry.

But yes, basically it was highly unlikely unless something had already gone *bang* somewhere. But when it did, it could be amplified to a catastrophe in an instant. The French were even less lucky with their Poudre B, though.
 
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