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Bad ideas in military history

crescent said:
I thought I read somewhere once that jet fuel was not in such short supply. All the prop-driven aircraft of the era used gasoline, as did the German trucks and tanks. There was less demand for the heavier fuels and as such they remained more available.
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Not exactly. The jet fuel they used was a mix of gasoline and diesel, so even just that limited the supply of either for other uses. They were also very limited in production capacity. They could make about 1000 barrels a day in 1944 at the best capacity -- which meant about half a percent of the total synthetic fuel production -- and this declined over the year as the RAF and USAF were mercilessly bombing refineries. We're talking two orders of magnitude down by February 1945.

So no, they didn't have ample supplies of it.

crescent said:
But poor metallurgy in the jet engines limited flight training time anyway.
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Well... sorta, and sorta not. It's a mix of actual limitations in available materials (you're not going to make the turbines from tungsten when you need it for AP ammo AND industrial tools, and you don't have enough for either), and bad decisions by Speer.

See, Speer was only obsessed with increasing production numbers to show to Hitler.

This included a lot of counter-productive decisions like nearly stopping production of spare parts, since those didn't show up in the numbers of complete tanks. Sure, half those tanks would be sitting broken instead of fighting, but he could brag to Hitler that he increased tank production numbers.

Other decisions were about using slave labour even where it was utterly unqualified. This resulted in stuff like the Type XXI electroboot subs not having a single one fit for duty after they had been put together that way.

And in the case of both jet engines AND the much maligned final drive on late German tanks, it was his decisions to go with a cheaper version even if it severely limited its life expectancy. I mean, at least for the jet engine he was saving some materials, but for those final drives, simply he could produce them in a shorter time per unit by going with the most simplified design that could get the job done. And, again, see that crucial goal: showing Hitler some great production numbers.
 
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Delvo said:
Something seems to be missing about this idea of it being impossible to get around in the desert without getting lost. Before GPS, and even if we imagine a place with no landmarks of any kind at all so it's essentially like an ocean with sand instead of water, and even if we throw compasses out because there's so much other metal sitting around in a military environment, they still had reliable speedometers, odometers, clocks, the sun, and understanding of geometry (for using the sun to determine direction based on time of day & time of year). And that's without making people learn to use the stars.
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Infantry magazine, a publication for the US military, had articles being written during the early stages of Desert Shield talking about how the army needed to train people on the use of sextants. It is possible to do this but it is time consuming. I don't think the author knew GPS was about to hit the big time.

To use a naval sextant on land you need to use an artificial horizon, which is basically a container of water used to reflect the sun into the lower view of the sextant. You then have to take half the angle (which they call altitude) of the sighting to calculate your position. It only gets you, at best, within 2 km of your position and you need a fair amount of open ground to do it. (I have a cheap sextant and and have yet to try this out for myself.) I am fairly sure the author of the article did not know about what it took to do this.

Around the same time they were also publishing articles from people claiming the blitzkrieg was a myth. So the credibility of this professional publication was a bit in doubt.
 
William Parcher said:
How about George Armstrong Custer at the Little Big Horn.
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Post #16
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Surely, the German decision not to press home their advantage at Dunkirk - for whatever the reason was - counts as one of the more spectacular failures.
 
theprestige said:
Literally everyone. To this day, steam power remains one of two major competing solutions for submarine propulsion, and is considered to be the superior option for many applications, by some of the most advanced civilizations on the planet.
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I hope you're making a clever joke. Yes many submarines in today's navies are steam powered, with some uranium heating the water. The others are all diesel-electrics.

Looking up this class of submarine they were oil fired steam AND diesel-electric.

This sentence on wiki alone sums up their boneheaded design:

A dive from steam-powered surface operation normally required 30 minutes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_K-class_submarine
 
lobosrul5 said:
I hope you're making a clever joke. Yes many submarines in today's navies are steam powered, with some uranium heating the water. The others are all diesel-electrics.

Looking up this class of submarine they were oil fired steam AND diesel-electric.

This sentence on wiki alone sums up their boneheaded design:

A dive from steam-powered surface operation normally required 30 minutes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_K-class_submarine
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Yeah, they were trying to solve a difficult problem, that pushed the technological limits of the time. That's not a bad idea in my book, even if the effort is ultimately unsuccessful.
 
theprestige said:
Yeah, they were trying to solve a difficult problem, that pushed the technological limits of the time. That's not a bad idea in my book, even if the effort is ultimately unsuccessful.
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That would pretty much make it an early equivalent of the LCS. And in both cases, they kept building them even after they knew they were not working out.
 
One bad idea at least in modern military history, seems to be bombing civilians rather than military targets, in an effort to undermine civilian support for the war.

We see Russia trying this strategy on Ukraine right now, expending its rapidly-dwindling supply of guided munitions on playgrounds and apartment blocks, rather than saving them for decisive strikes on enemy troop concentrations and other high-value military targets.

Presumably this is some sort of terror tactic to demoralize the Ukrainian people and put them in a more receptive frame of mind for peace talks. But as might be expected, it seems to be stoking the fires of their resolve instead. Even if Russia cuts off their power, Ukrainians are likely to survive the winter from the heat of their hatred for Russians.
 
Well, the saying that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it comes to mind.

It was actually known since the Spanish Civil War that yes, bombing civilians only strengthens their resolve. It was discovered by the Germans, of all people, and the report was filed. It's doubtful how far up the totem pole it made; presumably not all the way to the top. (Or we wouldn't have seen them actually expect bombing London to achieve anything.)

But anyway, yeah, we're about 80 years too late for that to be news to anyone but Putin.
 
HansMustermann said:
Well, the saying that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it comes to mind.

It was actually known since the Spanish Civil War that yes, bombing civilians only strengthens their resolve. It was discovered by the Germans, of all people, and the report was filed. It's doubtful how far up the totem pole it made; presumably not all the way to the top. (Or we wouldn't have seen them actually expect bombing London to achieve anything.)

But anyway, yeah, we're about 80 years too late for that to be news to anyone but Putin.
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Terror bombing seemed to have worked for them in forcing Holland to surrender. That's the only instance that I know of that it worked.
 
I don't believe Putin's purpose for it is to get them to surrender. They're non-Russians occupying the original Russian homeland and getting in the way of the Russians reclaiming it. He wants to either punish them for existing or end their existence.
 
Arguably it worked on Japan. Sure, Hiroshima and Nagasaki had legitimate military targets, but let's not kid ourselves. The real strategic objective was to convince the enemy to Just. Give. Up.

So maybe that's the answer. Terror bombing works when it really is a demonstration of absolute dominance of the battlefield.

Anything less gets interpreted as a sign of weakness, and only serves to strengthen the defender's resolve.

So maybe that's the lesson. Don't resort to gratuitous atrocities, if they won't actually convince the enemy of your inevitable victory.
 
@theprestige

That's... debatable.

Japan was holding out in the hope that Stalin would mediate a peace between them and the USA. Not sure exactly on what basis they had that hope. (Especially after Khalkhin Gol and how long Stalin held grudges.) They held to that conviction even though the USSR was even refusing to talk to the Japanese ambassadors and didn't answer to any letters. But nope, just you see, any day now, the USSR will intervene in Japan's favour. That's the constant theme in the correspondence between Tokyo and their embassy in Moskow.

The sphincter clenching moment however came when the USSR honoured their alliance obligations and declared war on Japan instead of supporting it. And they quickly blitzed through Manchuria and half of Korea.

Worse yet, at the request of the USA, the Soviets actually stopped half-way through Korea. Why is that bad? Well, after Germany being partitioned, now Korea had been partitioned. You can guess who was next in line for the chopping block.

So, anyway, I submit the idea that the nuclear bombing was more like a good enough excuse to surrender while it was still in one piece. It had a much more major existential terror than the nukes.

Mind you, the nukes may have helped hammer the point home that all is lost and they're about to lose horribly more if they continue. But it was probably the combination rather than just the nukes, really.
 
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HansMustermann said:
Well, the saying that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it comes to mind.

It was actually known since the Spanish Civil War that yes, bombing civilians only strengthens their resolve. It was discovered by the Germans, of all people, and the report was filed. It's doubtful how far up the totem pole it made; presumably not all the way to the top. (Or we wouldn't have seen them actually expect bombing London to achieve anything.)

But anyway, yeah, we're about 80 years too late for that to be news to anyone but Putin.
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What about starting an armoured offensive in the region that is now Ukraine in the mud season? And without adequate logistics.

Followed by the leader micro managing the campaign whilst several independent forces are supposedly operating on your side in the said region that is now Ukraine.

And having sent your experienced troops and trainers to the front line?
 
jimbob said:
What about starting an armoured offensive in the region that is now Ukraine in the mud season? And without adequate logistics.

Followed by the leader micro managing the campaign whilst several independent forces are supposedly operating on your side in the said region that is now Ukraine.

And having sent your experienced troops and trainers to the front line?
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I guess we'll see if Russia A) actually launches a new offensive from Belarus, B) whether the Belarus Army joins, and C) how quickly they get slaughtered.
 
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.

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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.
 
lobosrul5 said:
I guess we'll see if Russia A) actually launches a new offensive from Belarus, B) whether the Belarus Army joins, and C) how quickly they get slaughtered.
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When the failing Belerussian army needed Russian army help to quell civil unrest, sending the Belerussian army off to help the failing Russian army may seem like quid pro quo for Lukashenko - but I suspect it'd turn out to be a "bad idea in military history". (i.e. it may not need to be the Ukranians that defeat them.)
 
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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.

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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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People have mentioned the LCS, which looked flawed from the start.

The M-class submarine was pretty dumb too.
 
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