What were some of the most brilliantly designed but ultimately massivelly failed battle plans or innovations? No Market Garden or Battle of Big Bethel.
Biggest military catastrophes
What were some of the most brilliantly designed but ultimately massivelly failed battle plans or innovations? No Market Garden or Battle of Big Bethel.
The GWOT. We should have leveled both countries and then left. Frick being *nice.*
Iraq recently signed with the rest of the U.S.-aligned countries during the Ukraine Peace Summit, further evidencing it's a friendly regime to U.S. interests. I think the GWOT wasn't THAT big of a military catastrophe.
this
the bongs crushed the argies and left. the argies still cope and seethe to this day, but their armed forces has also never been rebuilt. 40 years of peace, bought fairly cheaply.
Was the Argentinian invasion really that bad, though? They achieved all of their objectives. They assumed Britain would back down after taking the island, and that was their misstep.
I mean the initial invasion was fine, I guess, but it was more the clapback were shit started to fall apart in extremely quick fashion for them. It's ironic because really if they did 2 things differently there is a high chance the whole thing would have been successful. A) Just wait like 2 years for the RN to get even smaller, as was already planned and negotiated and public knowledge and B) actually remove the safety arming interlock on your A-4 ordnance (like the wing commander ordered) so when they come in at 0.0001' AGL, those 17 direct centerline hits are converted to 17 damaging/ship killing hits instead of just considerately giving the Brits a bunch of nice new portholes to examine the scenery through. Also probably should have tried to acquire more Exocets and have done work to try to get them integrated into the US equipment, not just the French jets, and keep your big ass cruiser, which can't do shit anyway, in port so it doesn't get posterized by that RN submarine (HMS Conqueror? Can't remember which).
>They achieved all of their objectives
That's like saying France achieved all its objectives in WW2, for six months
Thanks israelites.
Operation Micheal and the Kaiserschlacht as a whole were incredibly impressive for Germany to pull off after suffering from such a long war of attrition. They saw the writing on the wall and said frick it, we ball.
Unfortunately you can't feed your troops sawdust and expect them to perform well in combat, but props that they tried.
we're not going to know until real books are written in 15 years, but i think the ukraine invasion probably looked great on paper
>No Market Garden or Battle of Big Bethel.
russian invasion of ukraine
>russian invasion of ukraine
>brilliantly designed
homie, ziggers don't even have a valid topographic maps and got hopelessly lost while looking for detours on their march to Kiev, because they forget to check load-bearing capacity of the bridges along the way and can't move heavy vehicles through them
this, plus I don't think they accounted for how willing the Ukranian government was to just hand out C4 and rocket launchers to passing civilians and telling them to go drop bridges
It still amazes me that in 2022 they were using maps from fricking Soviet Ukraine for intel and planning.
this tho
seven years to prep, and they did not task their photo recon satellites to get updated intel, nor even make use of readily available (and sometimes superior) Maxar imagery
the way these things are nowadays, if your intel packet isn't at least as current as Google Maps, bare minimum, you're not even trying
not really just "civilians"
what happened is that former servicemen joined their old units or used their old boy networks to wangle a place in hurriedly formed citizen militia
there's a fine account somewhere I lost of a fella in Kyiv who picked up a shotgun on February 24th, looked for old friends still in the army, headed north, and ended up with special forces teams in Sumy ambushing 4th Guards T-80s
not exactly a formal government initiative
Midway
Gaudalcanal
Leyte Gulf
midway was just a feint
Midway was a Catastrophe for the japs.
Guadalcanal was just a knock down drag out slugging match that they lost due mostly to logistics. They actually inflicted a catastrophe on the Americans during the Campaign at Savo Island, arguably the worst naval defeat in American history, not counting Pearl Harbor itself. If the IJN Admiral in charge at Savo Island had pressed on and destroyed the transport fleet after mauling the Allied cruiser force the Japs probably would have taken Henderson Field back, exterminated the Marines there and that *might* have ended the War since Japs in full possession of the Island with a working airfield could have driven the US fleet (quite weak and thinned out at the time) out of the area and cut supplies to Australia, possibly forcing a negotiated peace to prevent invasion. The whole Guadalcanal campaign was close and swung back and forth a few times. Obviously the US could, and did, the USN lost a LOT of shit in the area, replace any losses suffered but a crushing defeat there with a Marine unit eradicated and the fleet mauled and sent running might have broken American will to fight. Its as close at the japs came to winning the war and once they lost those Islands it was all over for them, just a matter of time.
Leyte wasn't even a catastrophe it was a "Literally what was your plan?" Only huge mistakes by Halsey made it vaguely possible and even if it managed to shell the leyte landings the entire center force would have been lost soon after. Leyte was like half hearted spiteful gesture. They didn't los anything that really matter there because everything that could have swung the war in their favor was long gone. They lost a giant boondoggle of a battleship, a couple ancient Dreadnoughts, referred to often as the best WW1 ships to fight in WW2 and some cruisers that were basically out of fuel and sent on 1 way trips. To call it a catastrophe implies that it had serious consequences. It didn't. It changed Nothing
>might have broken American will to fight.
nah
they lost more in the Huertgen Forest, and they were extremely fired up over Pearl, they wouldn't have given up
>Midway
This one counts for the Japs. It was a fairly decent plan. They were let down by relatively mistakes in the scouting plan, carrier design, and CAP deployment.
It was 1,000,000 Polish mercenaries you hohol homosexual
Battle of the Crater.
Petersburg, July, 1864.
Basically a study into why racism is not competitive in a military.
>...Burnside agreed to a plan suggested by a regiment of former coal miners in his corps, the 48th Pennsylvania: to dig a mine under a fort named Elliot's Salient in the Confederate entrenchments and ignite explosives there to achieve a surprise breakthrough.
>The fort was destroyed on July 30 in what is known as the Battle of the Crater.
>Because of interference from Meade, Burnside was ordered, only hours before the infantry attack, not to use his division of black troops, which had been specially trained for the assault: instead, he was forced to use untrained white troops.
>He could not decide which division to choose as a replacement, so he had his three subordinate commanders draw lots.
>The division chosen by chance was that commanded by Brig. Gen. James H. Ledlie, who had failed to brief the men on what was expected of them, and was observed to be drinking liquor with Brig. Gen Edward Ferrero in a bombproof shelter well behind the lines during the battle, providing no leadership at all.
>As a result, Ledlie's men entered the huge crater instead of going around it, became trapped, and were subjected to heavy fire from Confederates around the rim, resulting in high casualties.
>As a result of the Crater fiasco, Burnside was relieved of command on August 14 and sent on "extended leave" by Grant.
>He was never recalled to duty for the remainder of the war.
>A court of inquiry later placed the blame for the defeat on Burnside, Ledlie and Ferrero.
>In December, Burnside met with President Lincoln and General Grant about his future.
>He was contemplating resignation, but Lincoln and Grant requested that he remain in the Army.
>At the end of the interview, Burnside wrote, "I was not informed of any duty upon which I am to be placed."
>He finally resigned his commission on April 15, 1865, after Lee's surrender at Appomattox.
>What were some of the most brilliantly designed but ultimately massivelly failed battle plans or innovations?
The disastrous Ukrainian counteroffensive of 2023
>100,000 Ukrainians died for nothing and Russia already took back the small villages captured during the counter-offensive
SAAR
Saaaaaar 10.000.000 ukies died saaaar