Bad ideas in military history

[HansMustermann]

This isn't necessarily about just equipment designs (since we already have some old threads about the worstest warships/tanks/whatever), but general brainfarts by someone at the top.

My (first) nomination would be the WW2 Volksjäger program. By the end of the second world war, Germany had this idea to
A. produce the cheapest jet aircraft, out of the cheapest possible stuff, with the most unskilled labour (often slaves), and
B. give Hitler Youth children a few hours of training on a glider, and throw them at the enemy bombers.

Each of those ideas failed spectacularly on its own. The cheap plywood often came unglued in mid air, control surfaces could break if you didn't know how far you can push them (e.g., on the He 162), etc. And that's if you were lucky and it was put together decently, which most often wasn't the case. The combination even more so, as some guy who's only been trained on a glider would definitely not know how far he can push the rudder.

To add to the problem, since the USAF and RAF had switched to bombing the refineries and railways, the Luftwaffe was pretty much running on fumes, and the industry was running short on resources.

Yet someone thought it's a great idea to throw a full fuel tank and a perfectly good jet engine into the great thrash can in the sky, by putting them in a poorly made plane, piloted by an unqualified pilot. Not a whole lot came back, is all I'm saying. While hundreds examples were captured after the war, it was more like in the factories.

 

[Mojo]

See also the Komet.

 

[theprestige]

I don't think anyone thought it was a great idea. I think everyone involved agreed it was a desperate idea. I think the blunder was not in choosing marginal strategies in extremis, but rather in refusing to recognize that no desperate measures would be enough, and that the time to surrender had come.

Like I bet if NATO* had been slower to respond, and Ukraine had resorted to similarly desperate measures in the interim between the outbreak of hostilities and the arrival of NATO support, you wouldn't be pointing and laughing at Zelensky and Zaluzhnyy for their foolish strategies. You'd be crossing your fingers and hoping it worked long enough for western Europe to get its act together and save the day. For Nazi Germany, the foolishness wasn't in the strategies, but in the lack of hope for any possible salvation.

 

[Trebuchet]

The US Navy's recent warship programs, DDG1000 and the Littoral Combat Ships, are both abject and very expensive failures.

 

[theprestige]

The US Navy's recent warship programs, DDG1000 and the Littoral Combat Ships, are both abject and very expensive failures.

DDG1000 got ambushed by the end of the Cold War, and the diminished economies of scale that made it a waste of money in limited numbers.

The LCS program was just a clownshow, even taking into account the military's long-established pattern of "inconclusive prototype compettion, inconclusive prototype competition, new weapon based on incremental improvements lifted from the preceding competitions".

At least it looks like we'll finally be getting a modern frigate from the LCS mess, though.

 

[theprestige]

Let's see... Bad ideas...

Iraqi Republican Guard digging in south of Kuwait City, to meet the Coalition counteroffensive head-on, without properly considering the implications of:

* The Coalition cutting off access to supplies and reinforcements across the river to their rear.

* The absolute shooting gallery of the one road back to Baghdad.

* The willingness of the coalition troops to their front to just bulldozer-bury them in their trenches.

* The vast desert on their right flank, and the capability of Coalition logistics to exploit that wasteland for an overwhelming encirclement.

I can kind of forgive them that last one, though. I think it's very hard to really grasp just how deep the US military rolls.

 

[Mojo]

Another WWII-era bad idea: Anti-tank dogs.

The Russians trained dogs to associate the underside of tanks with food, strapped mines to them and released them on the front lines. Unfortunately they had trained the dogs using their own tanks, which had Diesel engines. The German tanks ran on petrol and therefore smelled different, so the dogs only associated food with the underside of Russian tanks…

 

[Carlotta]

Another WWII-era bad idea: Anti-tank dogs.

The Russians trained dogs to associate the underside of tanks with food, strapped mines to them and released them on the front lines. Unfortunately they had trained the dogs using their own tanks, which had Diesel engines. The German tanks ran on petrol and therefore smelled different, so the dogs only associated food with the underside of Russian tanks…

Serves them right!

 

[8enotto]

No matter how good your arms and tactics were the last war, someone has learned from you and can counter it.

Some tactics first used by British commando units in North Africa have just been used again by Ukraine and worked great. Once. Doing it again might be the greatest blunder of the war.
Or not. It's all about changing up details and keeping very quiet before doing it.

Hindsight is 20/20, in war it's more than a sincere oops and people die. If you were wrong it was your people.

The Iraqi forces knew the deserts were impossible to navigate. They always got lost and confused. GPS changed that. In one battle and one war.
After that near every idiot with a cellphone has GPS.
Including the Iraqi army.

 

[TheGoldcountry]

Another WWII-era bad idea: Anti-tank dogs.

The Russians trained dogs to associate the underside of tanks with food, strapped mines to them and released them on the front lines. Unfortunately they had trained the dogs using their own tanks, which had Diesel engines. The German tanks ran on petrol and therefore smelled different, so the dogs only associated food with the underside of Russian tanks…

It sounds like a Looney Tunes cartoon meets Stephen King.

 

[HansMustermann]

I don't think anyone thought it was a great idea. I think everyone involved agreed it was a desperate idea.

Most likely, yes. I still maintain that it was also a counter-productive idea.

I think the blunder was not in choosing marginal strategies in extremis, but rather in refusing to recognize that no desperate measures would be enough, and that the time to surrender had come.

Like I bet if NATO* had been slower to respond, and Ukraine had resorted to similarly desperate measures in the interim between the outbreak of hostilities and the arrival of NATO support, you wouldn't be pointing and laughing at Zelensky and Zaluzhnyy for their foolish strategies. You'd be crossing your fingers and hoping it worked long enough for western Europe to get its act together and save the day. For Nazi Germany, the foolishness wasn't in the strategies, but in the lack of hope for any possible salvation.

Well, as they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Ukraine's plans worked, while some of Germany's WW2 plans were downright counter-productive. Not just inefficient, but literally worse than nothing. As in, they not only achieved virtually nothing, but actually also wasted resources that could have been better used elsewhere.

Sometimes the options aren't just 1. do dumb thing X, or 2. just surrender. Sometimes you can do Y or Z instead, which would help more.


As a side-note: You also have to understand that a lot of the Nazi decisions were not just because they thought it would help (even a little) in actual battle. Some, like the Vergeltungswaffen (vengeance weapons) were for example approved because Hitler thought it would have propaganda value. Hell, switching the Battle Of Britain towards bombing London was just because of propaganda value, even though it was a thoroughly losing move. Or pursuing some of the giant tank concepts were just so his best buddy Porsche would have some of the government pork pie.

So you can't even always assume that something was actually thought of as an actual solution to an actual military problem. In fact, some were greenlit AGAINST the wishes of the actual military. Sometimes the problem to solve was just keeping Hitler in power. Is all I'm saying.

 

[Wudang]

I know I keep on about this: Russia not having a professional NCO system. They are key to getting recruits ready asap. I've heard it said the cruellest thing an NCO can do is follow his officers orders to the letter.

 

[sackett]

In WW2, the kamikaze was the most effective guided missile in history. It's been surpassed for accuracy since then, and of course for speed, but as a cheap, flexible means of delivering a helluva payload you couldn't beat it today.

It was a bad, a very bad idea. Special Attack used up planes and especially pilots prodigally. It damaged the morale of both naval and army air forces. The Allies were so dismayed by this demonstration of alienness that they grew vicious enough to rejoice at the firebombing campaign, and at the advent of the atomic bomb.

Japan could have withdrawn to the home archipelago and hoarded its planes while training aircrew, and just possibly might have avoided the catastrophic destruction that occurred.

 

[Doubt]

See also the Komet.

I raise you the Bachem Natter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachem_Ba_349_Natter

 

[SkepticScott]

Another WWII-era bad idea: Anti-tank dogs.

Memorably detailed in a tongue-in-cheek article with rules (and errata) for ASL in ASL Annual '90. The problem with training with friendly vehicles was covered in errata included with the original article:
C13.1011 ADD "Should there be two equidistant vehicles in Motion, the MD will move toward whichever of the two is friendly; if neither/both are friendly, use Random Selection to determine the MD's target."

 

[Doubt]

Might be a good idea to separate desperation weapons from those where there was adequate time and resources and you still get crappy results anyway. There are many bad ideas in many categories.

A few that may not be the worst ever.

Operational stupidity. Custer at the Little Big Horn. Ignores orders and charges in a day early. Gets himself and many others dead.

Waste of resources. British battleships at Gallipoli provided fire support for the ground troops. Only thing is, they only had armor piercing shells and no high explosive ones. Many shells buried themselves in the dirt and did not deliver the damage needed. Instead of starting a program to develop new HE rounds for existing ships, the royal navy decided to build a new class of battle cruiser to carry short barreled 18" guns that would only fire HE rounds and no armor piercing making them useless against ships. It gets dumber from there. Those ships with the 18" guns did become the first aircraft carriers. But they then decided to put the 18" guns on submarines. A follow on issue to the original problem showed up again at the start of WW 2 when the British army decided tanks should fight tanks and have guns that only fired armor piercing rounds and not HE. They had other infantry support tanks that only fired HE and no armor piercing.

Desperation stupidity. I'm going to go with the Russian mobilization effort. Some of them appear to be headed to Belorussia, which signals something even dumber may happen.

 

[Doubt]

https://www.defenceview.in/w54-how-...t-nuclear-bomb-that-can-be-put-in-a-backpack/

The Davy Crockett. M28 launcher maximum range: 4 Km. Blast radius of the W54 warhead: 5 Km.

 

[erwinl]

Might be a good idea to separate desperation weapons from those where there was adequate time and resources and you still get crappy results anyway. There are many bad ideas in many categories.

A few that may not be the worst ever.

Operational stupidity. Custer at the Little Big Horn. Ignores orders and charges in a day early. Gets himself and many others dead.

Waste of resources. British battleships at Gallipoli provided fire support for the ground troops. Only thing is, they only had armor piercing shells and no high explosive ones. Many shells buried themselves in the dirt and did not deliver the damage needed. Instead of starting a program to develop new HE rounds for existing ships, the royal navy decided to build a new class of battle cruiser to carry short barreled 18" guns that would only fire HE rounds and no armor piercing making them useless against ships. It gets dumber from there. Those ships with the 18" guns did become the first aircraft carriers. But they then decided to put the 18" guns on submarines. A follow on issue to the original problem showed up again at the start of WW 2 when the British army decided tanks should fight tanks and have guns that only fired armor piercing rounds and not HE. They had other infantry support tanks that only fired HE and no armor piercing.

Desperation stupidity. I'm going to go with the Russian mobilization effort. Some of them appear to be headed to Belorussia, which signals something even dumber may happen.

There’s so much wrong concerning the statements of the British ships and tanks that only a [citation needed] could save it.
But to help you.
British battleships did always carry high explosive rounds. Besides, armour piercing round did also carry an explosive charge, if not as big as of the he rounds. You would not want to be anywhere near them if these armour rounds went bang!
The battleships used in Gallipoli were the older ones that had no place in the line of battle but still could be used for something useful here. Those and some newer ships that used that spell there as a kind of working up period.
There was ever only one large light cruiser with a single 18” gun (HMS Furious) and the best thing that ever happened with her was being changed into an aircraft carrier.
No submarine ever carried an 18” gun. This is pure nonsense. The M class submarine carried a 12” gun. The guns made for Furious in the end were used on monitors.

British tanks were indeed hampered by their use of the 40 mm gun (an excellent AT gun for the day), but not as you say.
The stupidity was that the infantry support tanks were the ones that had said at gun and thus had no usable HE performance.

The first sentence of your post is a good one though.

 

[theprestige]

https://www.defenceview.in/w54-how-...t-nuclear-bomb-that-can-be-put-in-a-backpack/

The Davy Crockett. M28 launcher maximum range: 4 Km. Blast radius of the W54 warhead: 5 Km.

Come on. You know better than this.

 

[Doubt]

My memory is not entierly correct. But you are not doing any better.

There’s so much wrong concerning the statements of the British ships and tanks that only a [citation needed] could save it.
But to help you.
British battleships did always carry high explosive rounds. Besides, armour piercing round did also carry an explosive charge, if not as big as of the he rounds. You would not want to be anywhere near them if these armour rounds went bang!

"Moreover, naval armor-piercing ammunition intended to sink ships in sea battles was poorly suited to dealing with land targets where a higher explosive content was desirable. Often, messages from forward observers took too long to reach the ships."

https://roadstothegreatwar-ww1.blogspot.com/2021/09/naval-gunfire-support-at-gallipoli.html

Yes, I was aware that AP rounds are explosive. They are still a poor choice for shore bombardment. They have smaller explosive charges and tail mounted delay fuses. The ground ends up absorbing most of the blast after they bury themselves. Couple that with the poor firing angles and they are not doing nearly what is needed. The end result you get bad ideas like the 18" gun instead of what they really needed.

And yes, you don't want to be where an AP shell hits. But the area of effect ends up being way smaller than what you get from the proper HE shells. Do you have a source stating they actually had HE rounds?

The battleships used in Gallipoli were the older ones that had no place in the line of battle but still could be used for something useful here. Those and some newer ships that used that spell there as a kind of working up period.
There was ever only one large light cruiser with a single 18” gun (HMS Furious) and the best thing that ever happened with her was being changed into an aircraft carrier.
No submarine ever carried an 18” gun. This is pure nonsense. The M class submarine carried a 12” gun. The guns made for Furious in the end were used on monitors.

You are correct about the sub and the monitors. I was wrong on those points. But Furious was supposed to be a battle cruiser and not a light cruiser.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Furious_(47)

"HMS Furious was a modified Courageous-class battlecruiser built for the Royal Navy (RN) during the First World War."

British tanks were indeed hampered by their use of the 40 mm gun (an excellent AT gun for the day), but not as you say.

Oh really?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusader_tank

"While the 2-pounder gun had good performance when the tank was introduced, ammunition supply was focused on solid armour-piercing (AP) rounds."

The cruiser tanks had the guns. But the army thought they did not need those HE rounds. The Germans did not play by those rules so again, no HE when they needed them.

The stupidity was that the infantry support tanks were the ones that had said at gun and thus had no usable HE performance.

You are less wrong on that than I am. Matilda I had a heavy machine gun. No HE so I am wrong on that But no AP gun either. Matilda II had the 40 mm gun and no He rounds so you are right on that part.

The first sentence of your post is a good one though.

No worse of a post then your correction.