Great military blunders

192 Pages·2000·98.795 MB·English

by  Regan, Geoffrey

Throughout history warfare has been littered with
appalling blunders leading to humiliating defeats
and unnecessary loss of life. We are all familiar with
the Charge of the Light Brigade and the horrors
of the Somme, but we are less familiar with more
recent blunders such as the failure of the Patriot
missile during the Gulf War and the long-term
effects of Agent Orange, used in the Vietnam War.
In this ground-breaking account of thirty such
military blunders, acclaimed expert Geoffrey
Regan considers why they occur. Sometimes the
responsibility lies with leaders: some, like Redvers
Buller the most incompetent general of the Boer
War are simply promoted beyond their abilities;
others such as Field Marshal Montgomery fail as a
result of their ambition. Despite Montgomery's
belief that he, along with Napoleon and Alexander
the Great, was one of the greatest military leaders
in history, 70 per cent of his troops were either
killed or captured at Arnhem in 1944.
Failure can also be the result of poor planning.
The Schlieffen Plan, devised in the 1890s, seemed
fine on paper but was impossible in practice, as
the Germans were to discover in 1914. Another
common mistake is to underestimate the enemy.
Perhaps the most famous instance of this is the
Battle of Isandhlwana when the Zulus defeated
Lord Chelmsford's troops in a bloody massacre.
Technology is another cause, the most recent such
blunder being the Nato bombing of the Chinese
Embassy in Kosovo. Inevitably politics also play a
part, for example when the Americans attacked
Grenada in 1983 they were consumed by Cold
War paranoia and believed that Cubans on the
island were building a runway for Soviet planes.
Geoffrey Regan's Great Military Blunders is a
powerful account of many such mistakes — from
the Crusades to Kosovo. It is fully illustrated and
accompanies the Channel 4 series of the same
name, created by Darlow Smithson.
GREAT
MILITARY
BLUNDERS
GREAT
MILITARY
BLUNDERS
GEOFFREY REGAN
First published in 2000 by Channel 4 Books,
an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Ltd
25 Eccleston Place London SW1W 9NF
and Basingstoke.
www.macmillan.co.uk
Associated companies throughout the world.
ISBN 0 7522 1844 1
Copyright © Geoffrey Regan, 2000.
The right of Geoffrey Regan to be identified as the author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the
publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this
publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for
damages.
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library.
Designed by Dan Newman/Perfect Bound Design
Colour reproduction by Aylesbury Studios Ltd, Kent
Printed by New Interlitho, Spa, Milan
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of
trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated
without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover
other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This book accompanies the television series Great Military Blunders
made by Darlow Smithson for Channel 4.
Executive Producer: David Darlow
DEDICATION
For Andy May
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To say that this book is a joint effort is an understatement. Over 200 experts contributed to the
television programme and I was allowed to use the transcripts of their interviews for this book. As
a result I had a veritable mountain of material from which to choose, literally a pile of historical
wisdom of biblical proportions which drowned my own puny efforts as Pharaoh's army in the
Red Sea (an early blunder).
Although I have written extensively on the subject of military blunders myself — probably a
million words of my own — there were times in this project when I felt like a very greedy 'Little
Jack Horner' sitting in the corner and pulling out plums by some of the legends of the profession,
like Richard Holmes, Max Hastings, Martin Middlebrook and . . . my pen is petrified with
embarrassment and does not know when to stop.Thank you all, ladies and gentlemen, for helping
with the programme and with the book.
Thanks also go to Charlie Carman, Emma Tait and Kate Aaron at Channel 4 Books for tolerating
my 'blunderbuss' approach to writing.
I would also like to thank the good folk at Darlow Smithson who helped flavour me as 'meat
in the sandwich' displayed in the canteens of two different worlds: one, as Series Consultant for a
television documentary series and second, as an author in the world of book publishing. Particular
thanks go to David Darlow and John Smithson for taking up the idea of'blunders' in the first place
and next to the four directors, Kate English, Peter Bate, Jeremy Lovering and Heenan Bhatti who
translated an idea into the reality of a successful television series.
My thanks go in addition to the members of the four teams who worked on the programmes,
including Tim Altman, Erika Dodd, Dominic Sutherland, Kate Shepherd, Emma Jessop, Frederic
Casella and Helen Britton. Coping with the demands of an insatiable author was handled with
supreme diplomacy by Maxine Carlisle and by her assistants Madeline Eaton, Jane Macaulay and
Alison Moody. Finally, I cannot miss the opportunity to thank the indefatigable Daphne Walsh
who typed thousands of pages of transcript and as a result could make a fair case for being Series
Consultant for any future series of Military Blunders.
C O N T E N TS
Introduction 8
CHAPTER ONE: UNFIT TO LEAD 10
Twilight of the 'God of Battles' 12
Goering's Flight of Fancy 19
Not Making Waves 25
Pristina - Starting World War Three 29
CHAPTERTWO: PLANNING 32
Operation Fuller and the Channel Dash 34
The Schlieffen Plan 42
Operation Eagle Claw 51
CHAPTER THREE: UNDERESTIMATING THE ENEMY 60
Isandhlwana, 1879 62
The Balangiga Massacre, 1901 72
The Fall of Fortress Singapore, 1942 76
The Battle for Dien Bien Phu, 1954 85
CHAPTER FOUR: HUBRIS AND NEMESIS 94
Townshend of Kut 96
Montgomery of Alamein 103
Mac Arthur of the Yalu 113
CHAPTER FIVE: POLITICS 122
Military Neurosis in Grenada 124
The Fall of the Roman Empire . 133
Fall Guy at the Battle of Hattin 137
Churchill and the Writing of Greek Tragedy 144
CHAPTER SIX: TECHNOLOGY 150
The Patriot Missile 152
Kosovo 161
The British Artillery on The Somme, 1 July 1916 165
The Bomber Dream and the Butt Report 170
Agent Orange 177
References 184
Bibliography 185
Index 186
Picture credits 190
I N T R O D U C T I ON
I
n an age where selection for military command is more careful and scientific than ever before,
where hi-tech weapons have allegedly given soldiers far greater precision in target selection, and
where professional training has made the average soldier far more efficient, it is frightening to
find that military blunders occur as frequently as ever. Ironically, it is in the field of'friendly fire' that
the graph rises most rapidly, and in the infliction of unintended civilian casualties by smart weapons
and precision bombing.'Smart','precision' and 'clinical' are the modern buzz words, but they are
merely words with no greater guarantee of helping soldiers do their jobs properly than the orders
previously barked at them by their NCOs. Today one would hardly expect to encounter senior
command officers who believed they were pregnant with elephants or who could not rise from their
beds because they believed their legs had turned to glass. Nor would one find officers who were
too fat, old, myopic, rheumatic or decrepit to ride their horses, as was not uncommon in the past.
While such a parade of freaks, blimps and noodles might once have filled a book of blunders to the
amusement of the uninitiated and the despair of the professionals, they do so no more. Today they
have been replaced by managers, penpushers and specialists in everything but handling soldiers and
8
INTRODUCTION
their weapons. Promotion by weight, length of teeth, notori- called the Atlantic Conveyor. I was sitting in my command post
ety and bribery has long since gone, but there are now far too putting the final touches to the plan when a man thrust his head
many chiefs and not enough Indians, in the opinion of Colonel through the flap and said: 'Atlantic Conveyor's ^o/ie to the bottom
David Hackworth: taking all the helicopters with her.' So it was tear it up and start again.
The number of people that are back in the rear has consistently grown The outcome was the phrase beloved of British tabloids -
larger and larger, and so America is in a position today where they 'yomping'.The British 'yomped' to Port Stanley. Flexibility won
have more colonels than they have machine gunners; they have more the day.
computer operators than they have anti-tank warriors. If America were The third chapter covers painting the wrong picture by
to go to war, they would find themselves having to gum the enemy to underestimating the enemy, often a product of ethnocentrism
death because it's virtually toothless, because it's got this great huge and much associated with colonial warfare. The following
logistics tail. chapter looks at the way in which hubris on the part of great
commanders can undermine their efficiency and often wreck
In the first chapter of the book we examine the problem that what had hitherto been a glittering career. Julian Thompson
the 'Peter Principle' has brought to the military profession, reflects on the dangers of too much ego on the part of such
namely unfitness to command as a result of over-promotion. senior officers:
Professor John Potter has described what happens in battle
when stress levels overcome a commander: I think the worst thing that you can ever do is imagine that the
whole thing's been laid on for your benefit and that this is going to
One of the first signs of somebody getting under pressure and not man- give you a step up into some higher rank. What you actually should
aging effectively in a situation is when they lose the ability to handle be thinking about is the people yon command and how you're going
the big picture. They focus on little details; they lose emotional contact to defeat the enemy, and not be worrying about Iww you're going to
with the reality of what's happening at the front line, and almost work present yourself.
in a world of tlieir own.
War may be the continuation of politics by other means, as
The most famous example of this happened to the French the German military strategist Clausewitz tells us, but once a
Marshal Achille Bazaine at the Battle ofVionville in 1870. military solution is undertaken, the politicians must take a
Bazaine, a man promoted to supreme command through his back seat and leave the operation to the experts. In the twen-
renowned courage in the lower ranks, could not cope with tieth century there have been more meddling ministers,
the burden of responsibility, left his staff and went AWOL for backseat drivers and sawdust Caesars than ever before, and
an hour, leaving the whole army without direction. When at a time when the conduct of war has become more
found by his staff officers, he was quietly siting a field gun and complex. As a result, blunders on a hitherto undreamed-of
commanding its crew. Professor Potter records a more modern scale have flowed from the minds of such pseudo-soldiers as
example: Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and
Margaret Thatcher.
I can recall a very senior officer who was managing a terrorist situa- In the final chapter, we see that military technology has
tion, and the demands grew and the pressure came on that commander, offered warriors false gods, and the opportunities for new
and all lie could do was to concentrate on tidying his desk. forms of military incompetence. We see that unjustified belief
in the effectiveness of a piece of technology, as with the Patriot
The second chapter examines the problems of military plan- missile in the GulfWar and the precision-bombing campaign
ning, which attempts to place an inflexible order on what is in Kosovo, can result in avoidable disasters. In other cases, tech-
essentially a chaotic activity: war. Major-General Julian nology emboldens a commander into taking risks he otherwise
Thompson experienced an example of the friction of war that would shun, as with the first-day assault on the Somme in
would have taxed a lesser man. 1916, which resulted from a presumed successful artillery
bombardment. The unexpected side effects of military tech-
I can remember, for example, in the Falklands War planning to do a nology are examined in the use of the herbicide Agent Orange
move by helicopter, and the helicopters were being brought in a ship in Vietnam.
9