5 Screw-Ups on the Battlefield That Accidentally Won the War
Life is full of happy little accidents, mistakes that wind up working out in the end. They're the best part of, say, painting a picture or baking a pie. But where you don't find happy accidents is on the battlefield, where brilliant commanders will use the slightest misstep against you. In war, you do it right, or you die.
That's what you'd think, anyway. Sometimes, even in war, a little stupidity can work to your advantage.
#5. The British Accidentally Announce Their Surprise Attack on the News
In 1982, Great Britain and Argentina were fighting over a small island grouping called the Falklands, and Britain was losing. In need of a quick victory to reinvigorate the campaign, operational planners closed their eyes, took out a map and (we can only assume) played pin the tail on the Falklands to decide where to attack.
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We attack here, at "Cow Pasture City."
The selected town was called Goose Green. To prepare, 690 Royal Marines stealthily broke off from the main contingent and moved down to set up the attack. It was all ready to go for May 28, but then ...
The Screw-Up:
... the BBC announced the upcoming attack on their worldwide news, and yes, you guessed it, the Argentinians were watching.
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"Look, we're on the news! Oh ... crap ..."
The British commander of the Royal Marines in the upcoming battle was furious, threatening to sue the BBC for ruining their plan of attack and spoiling their element of surprise.
But It Turned Out ...
The Argentinian commanders saw the broadcast and concluded that no attack would ever come, under the assumption that only total arrogant idiots would announce their plans via worldwide news service. The British, however, continued with their plans anyway. Did they know the Argentinians had let their guard down? Or did they just decide that if they had already gone through all this trouble, they might as well follow through?
Century
We didn't drag this flag all the way here for nothing ...
When the British actually attacked the following day, the Argentinians were caught by an even more complete surprise, and the British easily won the battle, retaking Goose Green, reinvigorating the Falklands campaign and ultimately earning a victory.
#4. Unauthorized Invasion of France Leads to Victory on D-Day
On one morning in 1942, the British Lord Louis Mountbatten up and decided to invade France. Normally an easy task for anyone to accomplish, this time there were a few key differences. One, this was in the middle of World War II, so France was being occupied by the Nazis. And two, he did it without bothering to tell anyone on his side.
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Mountbatten can be seen here with his medal for the smuggest-looking face ever.
He literally launched an invasion and didn't bother to let his superiors or just about any of the Allied command know what he was about to do. He ordered thousands of Canadian, British and American troops to capture the French coastal town of Dieppe and create a beachhead. What could honestly go wrong with this?
The Screw-Up:
Since Mountbatten didn't bother to tell anyone about his plans, the force was sent in lacking many things a normal invasion force would have, such as proper resources, intelligence and also the backing of the British Home Command. Generally speaking, half-assed attacks without any support never really end well, and the Dieppe Raid was no exception.
"OK, here's the plan, run up that beach and shoot. That's it, really."
To start things off, Mountbatten's "plan" relied heavily on surprise, of which the British had none since SPOILER ALERT: the Germans knew they were coming.
From the moment the troops hit the beaches, the whole operation was screwed. Mountbatten had set his "plans" up like dominoes; if one thing went wrong, everything else failed. Sure enough, mere minutes after leaving for the beaches, boats began to get disoriented in the early morning darkness. When the Allied troops hit the beaches, all hell broke loose.
German Federal Archive
"Stop hogging all the kills, Hans."
They suffered a mind-blowing 73 percent loss rate. A whopping 100 percent of the equipment (tanks, jeeps, etc.) that landed on the beach was lost. After several hours of fighting, what was left of the Allied troops ran back for the boats in the most unorganized retreat imaginable, leaving the Nazis with a huge victory, and left Mountbatten as pretty much the most hated military figure in Canada.
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He would go on to cup the Prince of Wales' man-breasts.
But It Turned Out ...
It's comforting to know that your disastrous failure could at least show somebody smarter than you how to succeed. That's exactly what happened here -- that clusterfuck of an invasion attempt gave the Allies precious info on how to handle an amphibious invasion in the future, particularly on D-Day.
German Federal Archive
"We should have brought floaties."
They now knew they'd need a large artillery barrage beforehand, paratroopers to land behind enemy lines and a far more flexible plan to account for conditions on the shore. It even led to the creation of a special tank just for D-Day, after every tank that landed at Dieppe was destroyed.
After the war, many military commanders remarked at the importance of the Dieppe invasion toward the victory at D-Day, with Winston Churchill himself saying that Dieppe was "an indispensable preliminary to full-scale operations."
But the most important lesson was never put this man in charge.
#3. Stalin's Disaster in Finland Helps Him Beat Hitler
When World War II broke out, Germany invaded Poland. Very soon thereafter, Soviet Russia decided to get in on the action and flex their muscle by attacking Finland. And what a laughably easy attack it would be -- Soviet tanks outnumbered Finland's by a ratio of 200 to 1. In aircraft, it was 34 to 1. The Soviets had triple the number of troops. Shit, wars like this shouldn't even be legal.
"Comrades, we vill be home in time for borscht and unsatisfying sex with our dour wives!"
The Screw-Up:
The problem was that at the time, most of the Soviet military was kind of a joke. This made itself obvious when six months after attacking, Stalin had a few miles of territory in Finland and two great big buckets of casualties to show for it. The overwhelming Russian force inflicted 70,000 casualties on the Finnish military ... and suffered over 300,000 for the effort. More than 3,500 of their tanks and a few hundred aircraft were left in burning chunks of twisted metal at the hands of the tiny Finnish force. Eventually Stalin decided to settle with the Finns and end the embarrassment they were causing him.
But Hitler was watching the whole thing.
"Holy balls, Finnish people are terrifying."
Hitler already had his eye on Russia, and was just waiting for a sign that he could feasibly take them on. A sign like Russia invading a country of semi-frozen sardine-eaters and suffering a disastrous loss.
But It Turned Out ...
Stalin's fuck-up made Hitler so over-confident that he said, "We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down." We can't blame him. We mean, if we were watching this happen, it'd be easy to come to the same conclusion.
But if you know even a tiny amount about WWII history, you know what came next.
German Federal Archive
Germany won and the whole world was Nazis.
In 1941, Germany launched Operation Barbarossa and, sure enough, made huge gains into the Soviet Union. By the time Stalin got his act together, Hitler's forces weren't too far from Moscow. But, it turned out the Soviets just needed time to get the production of war materials really rolling, and to get reinforcements from Old Man Winter.
The Soviets pushed back, and the Nazis eventually had to retreat, until Hitler demanded the city of Stalingrad be held at all costs. That decision ended up costing several hundred thousand men that Hitler couldn't afford to lose and gained him exactly zero Stalingrads. From then on, it was downhill for the Third Reich. Stalin's fuck-up in Finland wound up being the perfect bait for his Hitler trap.
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He wasn't the sharpest Hitler-Jugend-Fahrtenmesser in the gruppe.
Thought Goose green was the paras, like in the picture (maroon berets bit of a giveaway). No metion of the American mercenaries who got executed by being tied down and having a WP grenade shoved underneath them. Don't piss off the paras!
ReplyDieppe was not in any way, shape or form an invasion. It was a raid and was only ever intended to be a raid. The "thousands" of invading Canadians, British and American troops were in fact just 5,000 Canadian infantry and one tank regiment and 1,000 Royal Marines with 50 US Army Rangers attached as observers.
Replymeh, #3 is more bullshit than true.
ReplySomewhat. Number 3 is kind of ironic. As it was Stalin's military purges that made it suffer so many losses to Finland in the first place.
Those same purges probably helped Hitler's confidence. And the casualties of the Winter War probably inspired Stalin to re-form his army once more.
this is why I love Cracked. I mean, seriously.
ReplyThe article forgets to mention that the Soviets got the ideas for snipers, PPsH submachine guns, ski troops, infiltration tactics and winter camouflage from the Finns.
ReplyReally funny article =)) , now i wonder what the screw-up at operation Market Garden turned out to be.
Reply*checks email just in case*
ReplyHitler's getting photobombed.
ReplyI'm pretty sure the Germans didn't have to retreat until after they lost Stalingrad...
ReplyI'm very offended by you calling Finland "a country of semi-frozen sardine-eaters" when it clearly should be "a country of semi-frozen herring-eaters". Check your facts, Cracked!
ReplyI will not be offended if you are Finnish.
Don't try to fight Canada, it doesn't end well for the opposing forces.
ReplyI know someone's going to make a joke about this, but let me just say this - what we lack in coolness, we Canadians make up for in our battle record throughout history.
@mikemusiak & @gregniblett
f**k yeah!
"For the price of just three airplanes and 18 men, the Japanese sunk both ships, with a total loss of over 800 hundred men for the Allies" - That's a lot of people in two ships. ;)
ReplyFour hundred in each ship? They were pretty big ships.
Well, yes about 840 people died. Very few considering that the Prince had about 1500 crewmen
Regardless of the accuracy of the article I thought it was great. Really enjoyed it. I come here for comedy and interesting reading and I had chuckles and wikipedia tabs galore during this one. Quality writing
ReplyAnyone else notice the photobomb in Hitler's photo?
ReplyI don't think your treatment of the Yom Kippur War is quite fair for the Arabs. Israel would likely have not been nearly as successful were it not for a massive influx of supplies and military aid from the United States during the war. Furthermore, the Yom Kippur War is regarded by many historians to be a political victory for the Egyptians, as it gave them the political leverage to take back the Sinai from Israel.
Reply Hide All See All 11 RepliesAddendum: Also, the Brits were hardly losing the Falklands war prior to their attack on Goose Green. Unless you count Argentina capturing the Falklands and South Georgia as a major victory. Anyway, that's just a matter of perception.
Oh, and just FYI, the Royal Marines weren't the only Brit soldiers to fight in the Falklands. They had help from the Parachute Regiment (incidentally the soldiers pictured in this article).
When I wrote this I was thinking from a tactical standpoint at this stage in the war. The Argentinians had taken the Falklands, and sunk six Royal Navy ships, compared to the loss of only one of their own, Tactically thats hard to call winning, but yeah, it could be a matter of perception.
way I remember it, Israel had intel that the invasion was coming about 48 hours prior, asked the US for help, and Kissinger told Nixon to tell Israel to suck it. Anyone have a source for this or did I just dream it up?
Thing is, Egypt didn't take back the Sinai so much as they agreed to leave Israel the hell alone in exchange for it. (Taking back, to me, would've meant forcing Israel out without agreeing to any conditions.)
The Syrians got the same offer in exchange for the Golan Heights and they said no. That's why Israel has them today, if Egypt had said no I personally think Israel would've returned the army and kept the Sinai.
(P.S. I also think the resupply from us did indeed help, because Israel knew it could afford to use the weapons they had less sparingly. I, uh, also think this impressed the hell out of Egypt, and was a reason why they decided to get closer to us after the war.)
Not to mention that Israel only sealed the gap AFTER both sides had agreed to a UN sanctioned cease fire which Israel promptly violated. If it hadn't been for operation "nickel grass" where the U.S. instantly resupplied Israel with all the tanks and planes it lost in real time (unheard of until this moment of history), Egypt and Syria would have taken Tel Aviv. Yes, this article is indeed very misinforming, but I guess they had to conveniently neglect the facts to make the story fit their narrative. I like cracked, and that's why I'm criticizing them. Entertaining articles are important, but so is historical accuracy.
you really are a tard, 6 ships? try 1. Bellend.
Try six. Read something every once and a while.
HMS Coventry
HMS Ardent
RFA Sir Galahad
HMS Sheffield
HMS Antelope
And one LSL
Thanks for clearing that bit up Skuzbucket.
tl;dr - Israel is badass.
As opposed to the massive influx of supplies and military aid the Arabs received from the Russians?
Face it: both sides where armed to the teeth by 2 giant armies that couldn't afford to openly fight each other. The USA and Soviet Union must have been thrilled to find a few suckers they could use as their proxy soldiers.
Yeaaaahhhh...I'm going to join the "check your facts" chorus here. Dieppe-everyone in the UK from Churchill on down knew about Dieppe. Montbatten didn't just cook this up and do it without permission. Pearl Harbor wasn't a failure because the Japanese missed the fuel reserves or only destroyed 2 battleships. It was because they missed the US carriers, which were more capable than battleships to take the war to the Japanese. Finland-Russia actually broke through the Finnish defenses and Finland had to negotiate a peace settlement (Robert Edwards-The Winter War).
Reply Hide All See All 9 RepliesReally-Wikipedia is probably a better source of historical facts than the entertainment this writer cooked up. And that in itself is sad. Want to learn the truths? Read a book or two.
We did check our facts. If you don't believe us you are welcome to click those bluefangled things called hyperlinks we writers so lovingly provide for you wonderful critics.
Check them again.
To quote the Google Books source on Dieppe. "Churchill briefed the House of Commons, taking full responsibility, and saying that 'Dieppe had been a reconnaissance in force - to which I gave my sanction' But he had not and he knew it. This was made quite clear in a private note dated December 1942 to General Ismay" It goes on to show that Churchill had no idea about just about anything on the mission.
Also it says "(General) Montgomery's staff at GHQ were ignored as Mountbatten dealt directly and secretly with the Canadian Army's Chain of Command. Most dangerous of all, neither Mountbatten's Chief of Staff nor the high level intelligence liaison officer and his official deputy, Major General Haydon were informed that Dieppe was back on." In other words, he didn't bother to tell anyone about it.
And also, "For in one vital aspect, Dieppe is unique: it seems to have been the only major assault mounted by imperial forces without official authorization from the Combined Chiefs of Staff. It was the only unrecorded major Allied operation decision of the Second World War."
Is following a hyperlink what you call fact checking or did you confirm with a drunk at a bar & a guy wearing a sombrero feeding rats in a park?
No that's what I call sourcing, Cracked has a hired fact-checker doing the fact checking.
You cannot really call Soviet's attack to Finland a success. Their plan was to occupy Helsinki in two weeks. After 3½ months of fighting, they had advanced like 50 km in Karelia.
Apparently Russia didn't send their best of the best to Finland. Strategically their fighting sucked badly - like when their troops got surrounded by Finns and got all shot, the commanders just sent more men there to get shot.
If Finns were "semi-frozen" some soviets were totally frozen, like the 44th division from Ukraine (with no previous experience of really cold weather) that lost at the infamous Raatteentie battle with 4674 men dead, wounded or disappeared.
We "sardine-eaters" used to say "One Finn matches ten Russians", which was actually pretty much the rate of casualties there were.
Huffax, very few of the Russian soldiers were well-trained, and the officers DID send them into slaughters, repeatedly. They were expendable. But in regards to you saying that the Finland invasion can't be considered a victory due to its failure, you missed the point entirely. It was indeed a failure, but Hitler seeing the Russians suck so bad caused him to greatly underestimate them. That worked in the Russians' favour later during more important battles.
no one disputed that mikesmusiak. no one at all.
@Jonman122 - Huffax seems to be disputing it. He sees to think that the article is suggesting that the Soviet attack on Finland was a success. What the article is actually saying is that the attack was a failure, but set the stage for Soviet success against Germany by causing Hitler to see the USSR as weaker than it was.
You can argue that point, but the author's clearly not saying that the attack on Finland went well.
Not enough dick jokes, guys.
Replyi concur.
jesus, hitler looks so f*****g cheerful in that picture i mean what the s**t, does being able to hide the insane that well make him more insane or what, just man, IT'S A PICTURE OF HITLER LOOKING CHEERFUL AND IT'S SO DAMN WRONG.
ReplyHitler was a person too. It's people like you who make people like Hitler.
@Venator Argh, that's too damn creepy to think about.
Visited Dieppe earlier this year. It's now a semi-nude beach, except the only people who actually get naked are above the age of 65.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesSo is Omaha Beach, in Normandy. Except its the young people who are nude there.
I'll see you guys at Omaha. But hopefully also girls.
Nude people at Omaha beach? Not when I was there... just a museum and some bunkers. And lots of ammo in the sand.
I've the pleasure of being acquainted with a Dieppe veteran, Lt-Col David Hart (ret), who was a signals sergeant at the time. At risk to himself, he delayed his departure to relay the evacuation order and was on the last ship out. He told me, after a Dieppe reunion in 2007, that he met two men who remembered hearing that message. One got out and returned to England. One didn't, and was a guest of the Germans for the remainder of the war.
Reply