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Bad ideas in war

Another good example I think already mentioned was the stabilised main gun in the Sherman. It was supposed to give the ability to fire accurately while moving, a big advantage.

It was kept so secret that the crews were never trained in it's use as the manuals were secret and the mechanics and fitters weren't given any manuals for it's repair.

So, the crew didn't know how to use it effectively and if it went wrong it couldn't be repaired.

So the result was the crews didn't trust it or realise what it's advantages were and never used it.

The Chieftain has covered it in a couple of his videos on Shermans and US armour doctrine.
 
erwinl said:
All true.
But if you do this you must accept the possibility of the foreign power not exactly reacting completely favorable.

And in the case of the Ottoman Empire, whose first crew was almost ready to embark their shiny new battleship, they did indeed not react favorable.

And then you get to make the choice.
What is more important to you? An extra battleship (or 2) in hand, or an extra active enemy and losing access to a Russian allied port? and losing about 300.000 soldiers, as well as a bunch of, older, battleships?
Now, granted. Not every exact consequence can be known in advance and there's of course no certainty of the Ottoman Empire staying neutral, should they get their battleships.

But if we have to choose. Smart idea, or bad idea?
I go for bad, truly bad idea.
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Can you be sure Turkey would not have joined the Central Powers if the British had given them their battleships?
 
jeremyp said:
Can you be sure Turkey would not have joined the Central Powers if the British had given them their battleships?
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Of course I can't be sure.
Maybe there was an opportunity to use these battleships to help keep Turkey neutral. Maybe there wasn't.
But Churchill deciding and actively pushing them into the Central Powers camp is more than sub-optimal, I'd guess.

Aside from the losses during the Gallipoli campaign, I think the Russian empire would have liked to use those up to 1 million soldiers they ended up using against Turkey on other more important fronts.
And yes. Russia could also have chosen to go on the strategic defense against Turkey. Their offense against Turkey was also less than optimal when seen on a strategic level en in view of the direction where their true danger was coming from.
 
Andy_Ross said:
Another good example I think already mentioned was the stabilised main gun in the Sherman. It was supposed to give the ability to fire accurately while moving, a big advantage.
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I see your stabilizer and raise you the Char B1 lubricant. The French were so scared of anyone copying their design, that they both kept the lubricant secret and ran pretty much a psy-op of over-emphasizing the tank's unreliability.

The troops AT BEST knew that it used Castor oil for lubrication, but not what type of it. They actually needed a special automotive one, that was thicker, and would be used at 80C for pretty much everything, not just lubing, but also hydraulics for the steering system.

Troops had no idea, so there are stories of them emptying out pharmacies of Castor oil to put in their tanks. That one didn't work well at 80C and soon-ish (but not immediately) thereafter resulted in the whole tank becoming unusable.

And, hey, since everyone had heard that they're unreliable from the press, nobody gave it a second thought. Meh, just write off another tank as poor reliability, and nobody is any wiser. Not even the next tank in the company that goes empty out a pharmacy :p
 
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Isn't this part of a wider issue with openness Vs secrecy? You can react quicker if there is more open communication and probably have better intelligence analysis and only the most important things kept secret but risk inadvertently helping your enemies.

With the Sherman gyro stabilization, the Germans wouldn't have had the industrial capacity to make much use of it if they knew about it
 
What about bad ideas that succeeded, but were still bad ideas? It's easy enough to clown on ideas that would have been considered good if they hadn't failed.

And no, I'm not talking about the sudden application of insane aggression by infantry in the assault. Don't come at me with your bagpipes or longbows or lone machine gunners or that Gurkha who did that thing that time.
 
Well, there is something to be said, though, about actually training your troops to properly operate their equipment.
 
theprestige said:
What about bad ideas that succeeded, but were still bad ideas? It's easy enough to clown on ideas that would have been considered good if they hadn't failed.

And no, I'm not talking about the sudden application of insane aggression by infantry in the assault. Don't come at me with your bagpipes or longbows or lone machine gunners or that Gurkha who did that thing that time.
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Sudden application of aggression is the mainstay of the British Army.

Example, Stanley Hollis D-Day.
 
Enjoying the irony of Ukraine launching a sucessful raid into Russia proper, in, of all places, Kursk province.....
 
theprestige said:
What about bad ideas that succeeded, but were still bad ideas? It's easy enough to clown on ideas that would have been considered good if they hadn't failed.

And no, I'm not talking about the sudden application of insane aggression by infantry in the assault. Don't come at me with your bagpipes or longbows or lone machine gunners or that Gurkha who did that thing that time.
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Well, that's an easy one. For example Erwin Rommel's "Ghost Division" stunt. In which not only his own HQ had no idea where he is (during the whole war, Rommel had this "problem" where his radios to HQ mysteriously stopped working when he was disobeying orders), but he even forgot to tell half his division that they're supposed to move, and generally they too had no idea where their newly minted general is and what he's up to. It was a debatable success as a raid, or at least not a failure, but it's like bad ideas on top of bad ideas.
 
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HansMustermann said:
Well, that's an easy one. For example Erwin Rommel's "Ghost Division" stunt. In which not only his own HQ had no idea where he is (during the whole war, Rommel had this "problem" where his radios to HQ mysteriously stopped working when he was disobeying orders), but he even forgot to tell half his division that they're supposed to move, and generally they too had no idea where their newly minted general is and what he's up to. It was a debatable success as a raid, or at least not a failure, but it's like bad ideas on top of bad ideas.
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Rommel was promoted beyond his skill level.
He was a very good battalion leader, maybe even a brigade leader
But as a division, or corps leader, he was more than lacking. Let alone as an army leader.
He did know how to motivate his troops though and that proved to be enough that his troops managed to be successful. But that was despite his abilities As a general, not because of it.
 
Back to the wonder weapons, though... I think the bad idea isn't to try to develop a better weapon, but to waste those resources on purely propaganda purposes. Which is what Germany did with its Vergeltungswaffen (literally "revenge weapons".) There was NO attempt or even concept of using them against strategic targets. (Not that, as I wrote before, the German army had the concept of a strategic target.) In fact, Adolf actually stopped potentially more useful ideas, like von Braun's idea to make the first ground-to-air missile, in favour of continuing the "vengeance" thing. Their role, starting with the name, was mostly just as propaganda tools within Germany.

And that kind of massive waste of resources just for propaganda is what I'd call a bad idea in war.
 
Fortunately the guidance and accuracy of the V weapons meant they were only of use against city sized targets.
They would have been better further developing the glide bombs and other guided air to surface weapons. They had some success with those against allied shipping. There was a window of a few months before jamming was developed and if the Germans had pushed development they could have stayed ahead of countermeasures for a lot longer.
 
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Well, we're not disagreeing there. But as you too say, those resources could have been instead been put into something more useful.
 
HansMustermann said:
There was NO attempt or even concept of using [V weapons] against strategic targets...
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Well, I woudn't quite say no attempt. More V2s were launched against the vital port of Antwerp than were fired at London. They just didn't have the accuracy to have the hoped-for effect.
... those resources could have been instead been put into something more useful.
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Definitely.
 
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