All right, I've let the other list lapse so its time for a new one.
War, a set piece battle between two combating states or enemies where brilliant generals move pieces around on the map in hopes of exploiting their enemies weakness and winning the day.
But what happens when that General isn't so brilliant, or maybe he drank to much the night before, or he took the day off from war college when they lectured on the advantages of higher ground.
These are the battles that are mucked up, screwed up and blundered badly
1) Changpin - July 260, the Chinese state of Qin had been besieging the Zhao fortress for three years. Zhao Kuo became obsessed with breaking the deadlock and led an army of a half million men to break the siege. The Qin army was a lot smaller and retreated. Kuo decided that speed was important and raced in pursuit leaving his supply train behind. This allowed the Qin Cavalry to cut behind the pursing army and destroy the supply train.
Short on food, Kuo retreated to Shangdang but there was no food to be found and he lead a desperate attempt to break out. His whole army surrendered and Kuo was killed. His surviving starving army was ordered to be executed.
2) Trasimene - June 217 BC - The Carthaginian Army under Hannibal marched his army through Italy during his war with Rome. The Roman Commander Nepos wanted to force an engagement and ordered pursuit. Nepos's advanced guard caught up with Hannibal's rear guard on the shores of Lake Trasimene.
Eager to engage the Carthaginian's Nepos ordered his entire army forward to join the fighting without sending scouts to check the wooded hills on his flanks. Hannibal sprang his trap leading the rest of his army out of the hills to crash into the Roman Flank. Nepos was killed and out of his army of 30,000 men only 5,000 survived.
3) Carrhae - 53 BC - Roman General Crassus invaded the Parthian empire with an army of 45,000 Legionaries and about 4000 cavalry and another 12,000 allies. Learning that the main Parthian army was attacking Armenia, Crassus turned his sites on Mesopotamia. To get there he had to speed march his army across the desert.
Arriving at Carrhae, Crassus found 10,00 Parthian Cavalry blocking his path. Crassus decided to immediately attack not allowing his men to rest after marching across the desert.
As a result the Roman's fought poorly and Crassus was encircled. The Parthian leader offered to negotiate a peaceful surrender but instead murdered Crassus and then pursued the exhausted Roman Army back into the desert where half were killed and the captives were sold into slavery
4) Hattan - 1187 - The Muslim leader Saladin lay siege to the Crusader fortress of Tiberias. King Guy of Jerusalem bought forth a large Crusader army at Acre. Some of Guy's commanders wanted to take the army to the fortress of La Saphorie so they could raid Saladin's supply line. King Guy scorned this strategy as cowardly and beneath his dignity as King.
Instead he marched his army across the desert direct to Tiberias (sound familiar). Saladin used his light cavalry to exhaust and wear down the advancing crusaders, while using his army to block access to water and burned anything that could be valuable to the Crusaders. Finally when he saw the Crusaders were sufficiently weakened he attacked and crushed King Guys army.
5) Agincourt - 1415 - The English Army under Henry V invaded France and advanced unto confronted by a larger French Army under Charles D'Albret. The English had been on a long campaing and were short of food, they were also sick from having been camping outside in Autumn weather. The prudent French Strategy would have been to block the route s to English held territory.
Instead Henry advanced with Flags flying and men chanting and probably a few creative Yer Mamma jokes. D'albret took that as an insult and attacked leading his armored men across a field of Clay mud made worse by Autumn rain. The French Solders had trouble navigating the mud and their advanced became a crawl. Henry then opened fired with his archers and by the time the French got to combat range they were exhausted and disorganized. Several thousand French Soldiers died including D'albret, on the other hand the English lost less then 100 men.
6) The Charge of the Light Brigade - 1854 - The British, French and Turkish forces were laying siege to the Russian port of Sevastopol. The Russians counter attacked the allies supply base at Balaklava. The Turks broke and retreated leaving their valuable artillary to the Russians.
The British Commander Lord Raglan send an order to his Cavalry Commander Lord Cardigan to charge to prevent the Russians from carrying off the guns. From his position Cardigan could not see the redoubts, but could see Russian Artillary in the Valley ahead of him so he charged the Russian Guns instead of the Turkish captured guns. Cardigan being given unclear orders charged the wrong target and lost nearly half of his force of Cavalry and Horses.
7) Little Big Horn - 1876 - Lt George Custer lead his force of 650 men of the 7th Cavalry Regiment against an alliance of Sioux, Cheyenne and others at Big Horn River. Custer decided to split his men and launch attacks from different directions hoping to take the Tribes by surprise and prevent them from forming up. Unfortunately the Tribes knew Custer was coming and were waiting for it.
Custers own detachment of 200 men were isolated and then overwhelmed. The other two detachments did mange to link up and hold up for 24 hours. Custer foolishly split his forces and didn't scout properly which cost him his life.
10) Stalingrad - 1942 - The German's attacked the southern part of the Eastern Front in an effort to seize the Caucasus oil fields and the Western Resource Area around the Don and Volga River. They also wanted to seize Stalingrad to secure their flank.
The first part of the plan went well and Hitler's army advanced quickly until Hitler diverted the 4th Panzer Army to link up with the 6th Army to take Stalingrad. Without the 4th Panzer the main advanced slowed and Hitler lost the initiative. Determined to crush Stalingrad the city named after his rival, Hitler poured resources into the city, but a determined Russian Counter offensive surrounded the 6th army and forced its surrender.
So what was the failure? Hitler concentrated his efforts on the secondary objective which was Stalingrad, and then continued to poor resources into failure. In the end the primary objective which were the key oil fields were never taken nor was Stalingrad.
9) The Battle of Midway - 1942 - At this point in the war its been argued that the Japanese Imperial Navy had victory fever and they were about to pay for it. Both sides saw Midway as a key strategic Island, The American's needed it as an airfield and to resupply American Navy Assets. The Japanese needed it to secure the pacific and keep the American's away from Japan.
Yamamoto plan was extremely complex. He was going to coordinate multiple battlegroups over a large patch of open ocean. It was also designed around the faulty intelligence that the only carriers available to the American's were the Enterprise and the Hornet. However the American's through clever deception knew the Japanese were coming for Midway and decided to put the fate of the entire war on the outcome of Midway. The American's also had a ace in the hole as they had hastily fixed the USS Yorkton and sortied it along with the other two carriers.
Yamamoto made a few fatal errors that day. He split his forces so he could conceal his battleships and cruisers and they were trailing the Japanese carrier force but were too far back and too slow to be of further use. As well, he didn't realize that the American's were willing to have Midway soak up the first waves of Japanese Bombers and fighters.
The American's also had the advantage of a better scouting plan so they were able to find the Japanese Carrier Forces before Yamamoto could find the American Carriers.
The other factor was that Yamamoto knew Bull Halsey but he didn't know Admiral Spruace who had replaced Halsey due to Shingles.
Once the American's pin pointed the Japanese Carriers they attacked using dive bombers and torpedo bombers. The Japanese were caught with their pants down as they had to re-arm their bombers with Torpedoes to deal with the threat of American carrier plans. The other issue was that the Dive Bombers pulled Japanese air cover away from their carriers. The Japanese were caught in a no win situation with little to no intelligence of where the attacks were coming from.
Within 14 hours the Japanese Imperial Navy had been savaged by the American Carrier Group, four fleet carriers, the Akagi, the Kaga, the Hiryu and the Soryu were sank. One heavy cruiser was sunk and one badly damaged. The tradeoff was that the Japanese had sunk one American Carrier and one destroyer. But the Japanese Navy at that point had lost too many experienced pilots, planes and carriers to be an effective fighting force.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
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As an addon the Battle of Midway showed several failures in terms of both carrier design and damage control.
They learned that American carriers could take several hits and keep on fighting because of how the US carriers were designed and how their crews were trained in fire fighting and damage control, meanwhile once the Japanese carriers were hit they were usually lost.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
meanwhile once the Japanese carriers were hit they were usually lost.
Which really is a massive oversight. You'd think, when building one of the largest ships that's going to be a high priority target, you'd design it to take a hit or two.
But then again, this is the same country that employed kamikaze pilots.
I watched a documentary on Japanese Naval architecture a long time ago. They didn't have a lot of safety systems in their carriers, probably because you were expected to basically die if you lost. So what's the point.
But one naval architech said that the biggest difference beyond the fire fighting capabilities on a US carrier were 2x4's. The American's carried tons of 2x4's and they could use them for a lot of damage control functions. It was such a minute detail that it shocked me to think about it.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Which really is a massive oversight. You'd think, when building one of the largest ships that's going to be a high priority target, you'd design it to take a hit or two.
But then again, this is the same country that employed kamikaze pilots.
Less bamboo and rice paper in the construction would have helped.
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Captain James P. DeCOSTE, CD, 18 Sep 1993
Corporal Jean-Marc H. BECHARD, 6 Aug 1993
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the 'battle' of the Teutoburg Forest, more of a massacre really, started the downfall of the western roman empire
That was a great defeat for the Romans but it happened early in the Imperial era when Augustus was still Emperor. The Roman Empire would be strong for a couple more centuries before decline and difficulty in management led to the split into east and west.
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During the three day battle of Gettysburg - possibly the bloodiest ever battle - General Lee tried to build on the recent successes of the Confederates by launching a foray north into Union territory. After a series of small victories for the Confederates, the Union army had dug in on a steep hill above Gettysburg in a “U” formation. Believing victory to be imminent, a cavalry assault was led by General Pickett up a steep hill on the center of the Union position. 12,500 cavalry charged into a hail of cannon, artillery, and gun fire leading to almost 12,000 dead Confederate cavalry and fewer than 1,000 dead Union soldiers. Although there was some fierce hand-to-hand fighting on the ridge, riding horses up a steep incline into heavy artillery has never made much sense since.
The failed assault led to Lee retreating and ultimately a complete reversal of fortunes in the Civil War.
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The Civil War Battle of Antietam featured blunders from both sides.
During the Maryland Campaign a copy of General Lee's battle plan was lost and later found by Union soldiers wrapped around 3 cigars. These showed he was about to divide the army into individual sections which would be vulnerable. The Union then returned the blunder as General McClellan failed to take advantage waiting 18 hours before deciding to act on the intelligence.
These blunders lead to the deadliest one day battle in American history with over 22,000 casualties. The Confederates retreated from Maryland and the Union wasted an opportunity for a decisive victory.
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WW2 Battle of Kursk, AKA "Greatest Land Battle in History" is a sad example of pure military waste.
Germans threw away essentially the remains of their land army on an attack against a massive, well entrenched, well informed enemy that they knew had had all the time they could ever need to prepare, for a goal of relatively little real military significance.
The battles relative obscurity relative to it's size is telling of just how pointless it all was. There's no real speculation among military enthusiasts about possible alternate histories had the Germans won in Kursk, simply because there's no reason to think it would have mattered much. The loss in men and material was always going to be more than anything the Germans could possibly have hoped to achieve.
Dieppe, though it was lost in the planning, before the actual battle. A daylight raid on a fortified port with little to no air or naval support. They never had a chance.
Some say it was intentional but I’m not going there.
History List -Greatest Battlefield Blunders
