Bad ideas in war

lobosrul5 said:
Yes, and had even one fewer carrier been available we could not have taken advantage of our intelligence advantage to crush the Kido Butai at Midway.
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That's a pretty big claim. I'm not convinced.
lobosrul5 said:
With hindsght that is true, there was no way Japan was going to win. Hell, even during the war I think the flag officers in command were confident of this. But, their goal was to defeat Japan as quickly and with the fewest casualties as was possible.
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Even Churchill knew it with foresight. Hell, even Lincoln knew it.

ETA: My point being, more or less, that you're weighing pre-Midway decisions to not risk the carriers in the light of how those decisions made for a stronger fleet at Midway. That, too, is a lot of hindsight.

One of the most colossal bad ideas in war is to hold back your strength just in case the Real Decisive Battle happens later on.
 
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theprestige said:
That's exactly the position I'm taking, the one you said is silly, right before taking the exact same position yourself!


Agreed. I'm dissenting from the view, implied by steenkh, that all failed military operations are stupid, and should be considered bad ideas. My position (and yours), is that sometimes a failed operation is the result of a bad idea, and sometimes it's the result of a good idea and bad luck.

The concept of a good idea that didn't bear fruit for reasons outside the commander's control is woefully overlooked in this thread, I think.


The Ardennes Offensive is a good example of what I mean.

Nazi Germany was in dire straits in 1944. There was little they could do, other than what they did. Is a last stand always a bad idea? Is a final, desperate sortie, when no other options remain, always a bad idea? I don't think so. Obviously one could argue that German should have just surrendered at that point, and that surrender was the only good idea left to them. But surrender, or fight to the bitter end, is always a difficult choice.
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I misunderstood. I thought you meant it was a mistake to class any failed military operation as a bad idea, when I think you meant it is a bad idea to class all failed military operations as a bad idea.

In which case we are agreeing. I still say that for something to be a gamble, there has to be a chance of success. The airborne assault on Hostomel airport probably had a chance of success, for example.

Operation Market Garden was unfortunate in running into a far stronger force than anticipated, but requiring 100km advance in 24 hours was probably also very unlikely.
 
theprestige said:
The Midway attack was certainly bold, and very little about it was stupid.* But the Japanese lost anyway, because that's what happens to sometimes, even to intelligent commanders with good battle plans.
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I would say rigging and altering the wargames they did to test the battle shows it wasn't all that great a plan.
 
theprestige said:
That's a pretty big claim. I'm not convinced.

Even Churchill knew it with foresight. Hell, even Lincoln knew it.

ETA: My point being, more or less, that you're weighing pre-Midway decisions to not risk the carriers in the light of how those decisions made for a stronger fleet at Midway. That, too, is a lot of hindsight.

One of the most colossal bad ideas in war is to hold back your strength just in case the Real Decisive Battle happens later on.
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You could say we held back back until such time that we could make a calculated risk in our favor. Although, tbh, and from what I can recall, it wasn't really that. It was more a lack of clear command, indecisiveness, fog of war, still shocked that Japan was so successful attacking Pearl Harbor that caused us not to intervene. But, the knock on effects if we had loss more than Japan had such an action in December 1942 may have been very costly.

Say, Yorktown is lost in December 1942. Game out what would've happened at Midway with just Enterprise and Hornet versus Kido Butai. We sink 2, they counterattack with 2 carriers, and we lose 2. Thats likely, but not 100%. Now Nimitz may have accepted that, although his orders to Spruance and Fletcher were to fight within the principals of calculated risk. So, maybe they don't attack at all?
 
lobosrul5 said:
You could say we held back back until such time that we could make a calculated risk in our favor. Although, tbh, and from what I can recall, it wasn't really that. It was more a lack of clear command, indecisiveness, fog of war, still shocked that Japan was so successful attacking Pearl Harbor that caused us not to intervene. But, the knock on effects if we had loss more than Japan had such an action in December 1942 may have been very costly.
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What I am saying, with regard to Wake, is that Kimmel and Halsey were in a good position to make a calculated risk in America's favor, given the information and resources available at the time. It's unfortunate that Pye was much more risk-averse. Perhaps the bad idea there was removing Kimmel from command before Nimitz had actually arrived in theater. Lashing out at our own commanders because the Japanese weren't available for immediate retribution seems to have been... counter-productive.
 
The US Navy borrowed the British Illustrious class aircraft carrier HMS Victorious in 1943, renamed as USS Robin as a cover name. It retained its RN crew but was fitted with standard US radio and radar .
It operated as a dedicated fighter carrier as the RN had more advanced and sophisticated fighter control procedures and systems than the US Navy was using.
Lessons learned from these systems were incorporated in to future US Navy operations.

It served from March to September when two more Essex class carries became available and damaged ships returned to service and after having the US equipment removed returned to the Atlantic.

After the Italian surrender RN ships were reassigned to the Far East and by the end of the war there were 16 RN carriers operating in the Pacific.
 
jimbob said:
I misunderstood. I thought you meant it was a mistake to class any failed military operation as a bad idea, when I think you meant it is a bad idea to class all failed military operations as a bad idea.

In which case we are agreeing. I still say that for something to be a gamble, there has to be a chance of success. The airborne assault on Hostomel airport probably had a chance of success, for example.

Operation Market Garden was unfortunate in running into a far stronger force than anticipated, but requiring 100km advance in 24 hours was probably also very unlikely.
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Problem with Monty's plan for Market Garden is in order for to suceed everything had to go according to plan, and in war everything going according to plan is almost impossible.
If you are looking for one major error in planning, I think the decision to place the drop zones for the British First Airborne Division so far away from the main target..the Arnhem Bridge....is it.
One piece of trivia about Market Garden involves Audrey Hepburn but that is a story for another time.
 
dudalb said:
Problem with Monty's plan for Market Garden is in order for to suceed everything had to go according to plan, and in war everything going according to plan is almost impossible.
If you are looking for one major error in planning, I think the decision to place the drop zones for the British First Airborne Division so far away from the main target..the Arnhem Bridge....is it.
One piece of trivia about Market Garden involves Audrey Hepburn but that is a story for another time.
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Yes, that's what I meant by the 100km advance

I hadn't considered the drop zone location as well.
 
dudalb said:
Problem with Monty's plan for Market Garden is in order for to suceed everything had to go according to plan, and in war everything going according to plan is almost impossible.
If you are looking for one major error in planning, I think the decision to place the drop zones for the British First Airborne Division so far away from the main target..the Arnhem Bridge....is it.
One piece of trivia about Market Garden involves Audrey Hepburn but that is a story for another time.
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Plus you need more than one road to advance a force of that size.

I recommend Al Murray's recent book on Market Garden.
It's the best one I have read and lays some of the myths surrounding it that keep getting repeated.
 
Andy_Ross said:
Plus you need more than one road to advance a force of that size.

I recommend Al Murray's recent book on Market Garden.
It's the best one I have read and lays some of the myths surrounding it that keep getting repeated.
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It's getting to be a bit more than a "high risk, high reward gamble" and onto the "even if it did succeed, it wouldn't allow what it was intending" level, which is where I think is where "bad ideas" often fit. A bad concept.
 
jimbob said:
It's getting to be a bit more than a "high risk, high reward gamble" and onto the "even if it did succeed, it wouldn't allow what it was intending" level, which is where I think is where "bad ideas" often fit. A bad concept.
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I think some of the bad hardware ideas are where the requirement speciation is poorly thought out or falling into the "ask for everything, get nothing" problem. See the USN's recent attempts at getting new surface combat ships. There might be explanations for the failures but that doesn't mean the requirement specifications weren't poor.

For example,

The Zumwalt's requirement for artillery support in a way that pushed it towards a stupidly expensive round.

The LCS. Two completely different designs to fulfil the same role. Also with a very high speed, which implies a noisy engine, yet with the ability to add an anti submarine component, which tends to imply a quiet engine. Then add in quite a long range requirement for something cheap intended for coastal waters. I would suspect that the range is very infrequently required, and could be dealt with differently for those few occasions.

The Constellation class. The exemplar that I was thinking of for "ask for everything, and you get nothing". A frigate supposed to be a low-risk update on an established, successful, frigate design. But where the USN, couldn't bear to reduce any of its requirements, ending up with something like a slightly small and a slightly lame destroyer, and so expensive that the replacement for it looks to have almost none of the capabilities the USN required in the first place, and certainly less capable than the parent design in the requirements the USN itself wanted.

The FF(X) seems to have no sonar, and no VLS cells. And in fact seems to have similar (possibly less) air defence capabilities to the LCS.

Then there's the Defiant class. Which is intended to have at least two key weapon systems that don't exist yet (and in the case of the railgun, one that had been abandoned due to the technical problems). Also a ship with a hypersonic strike capability literally anywhere on Earth has a suite of far shorter-range weapons. It wants to be a sniper that gets into melee fights.
 
The harshness of the Treaty of Versailles comes to mind (if that fits under the terms of "war" for this thread...maybe not as it wasn't about things happening in a war itself).
 
jimbob said:
I think some of the bad hardware ideas are where the requirement speciation is poorly thought out or falling into the "ask for everything, get nothing" problem. See the USN's recent attempts at getting new surface combat ships. There might be explanations for the failures but that doesn't mean the requirement specifications weren't poor.

For example,

The Zumwalt's requirement for artillery support in a way that pushed it towards a stupidly expensive round.
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The round was only so expensive because the Z and its gun were canceled, meaning only a few rounds were ever procured. Cost per unit would have gone down if the USN had gone on to make bulk orders. There's a lot not to like about the Zumwalt program, without making stuff up.
 
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