Tales of Military Idiots

[besilarius]

This is not about an idiot, but sort of fits.

After WWII, King George VI took a trip on the battleship Vanguard to South Africa.
He was a sailor, having been a turret commander on the dread naught Collingwood during Jutland.
One evening he was strolling the deck, enjoying the sea with some aides.  They were on the stern when he asked about a cleat in the center of the open space.  It was too far from the side to have any use with the ropes used to tie up to a pier.
It was too far from anything to serve a purpose they could think of.
Asking some passing sailors, no one had an idea what the cleat was for.  It was always just there.
Hearing about His Majesty's curiosity, the captain of Vanguard realized he didn't know.  He knew that every battleship in the RN had this tie down, but no idea why.
He called all the chiefs.  They agreed that every BB had this lonely cleat, but none could say what it was for.
Finally, one of the ship's cooks came forward.  He had enlisted as a boy in 1880 and was the oldest crew member.
"That's where we tethered the cow."
Before refrigeration, ships would go to sea with chickens (for eggs and an occasional fresh bird) and cows for milk(or a rare feast).
To give the animals sunlight and fresh air, they would be tied to the cleat in fair weather.

[Barthheart]

 

[Staggerwing]

Huh- udderly fascinating... who moo?

[Doctor Quest]

You know we will milk this one for all it's worth.

[Sir Slash]

I knew someone would have a beef with it, I just didn't think it'd be a stampede.

[besilarius]

 The Prussian General Staff pioneered war gaming starting in the
nineteenth century, and by the early twentieth century the practice had spread to other armies as well, though with varying degrees of acceptance.

In a number of armies, the value of wargaming was viewed with a jaundiced eye. In the British Army Gen. Sir Henry Wilson (1864-1922), was a staunch supporter of wargaming, having served as head of the British staff college from 1907 until 1910, when he was appointed Director of Military Operations. An inveterate admirer of the French Army, and a close friend to Ferdinand Foch, Wilson worked hard to insure that Britain would be ready to stand by France when war came with Germany. He developed the mobilization and deployment plans that put the British Expeditionary Force on the French left in August of 1914. But Wilson’s ambitions for a field command went unfulfilled, save for a brief tour at the head of a corps, due to political machinations

Nevertheless, in late 1917 Wilson was appointed the British representative to the newly formed Allied Supreme War Council, headed by his old friend Foch. Pondering the possibilities for the coming year, in January of 1918 Wilson decided to conduct a wargame using the personnel from his staff.

During the game, the German player undertook an offensive with 100 divisions that broke the front along the Somme at the juncture of the Anglo-French armies and led to the loss of some of the Channel ports.

With this grim possibility in mind, this Wilson recommended a number of measures to Field Marshal Douglas Haig, commanding the British Expeditionary Force. Haig chose to dismiss the recommendations, despite the fact that in February Wilson was appointed Chief of the Imperial General Staff.

On March 21st the Germans unleashed “Operation Michel,” the first attack of the “Kaiserschlacht – the Kaiser Battle,” their series of spring offensives intended to end the war. The blow came at precisely the point and in almost the strength predicted in Wilson’s wargame, and very nearly had the prediced outcome, as the British front was ripped open so badly only a desperate “backs to the wall” resistance saved the Channel ports.

[BanzaiCat]

Wilson's "I told you so" is still echoing through the halls there, I imagine.

[besilarius]

In 1944, Japanese Naval Air Force was devastated by the fighting in the Marianas.  Also, the US sub force was annihilating the tanker fleet, so flying hours were being cut to forty hours.  American trainee pilots had at least four hundred.
at the same time imports was cutting into aluminum and steel production.  At the start of the war, 5.5 metric tons of aluminum were allocated for each Zero's Production.  This was now reduced to 4.5.
Ensign Hasegawa knew nothing of these calculations. He worried the war would end before he could get into it. Hasegawa also reached the fatalistic conclusion—perfectly rational, given the JNAF situation—that he would die in the air. At least the Kasumigaura trainers had an internationalist orientation and a sense of humor. Every weekend they would have Western movies shown in the auditorium. One Saturday the duty officer’s order read, “If we are to win the war, we must first know our enemy. Today, the movie "One Hundred Men and a Girl" will be shown. Attack the enemy!”

[besilarius]

During the Second World war, to combat the U boat menace, the navy developed an acoustic torpedo.  Nicknamed Fido, it's official designation was Mk XII Mine.  Due to the issues that the Mark XIV torpedo had, the acoustic torpedo was developed through the Mine warfare authority.
Constant development went forward and in about fifteen years, the Mk 44 torpedo was the high point.
MK-44 was put into production at the Navy's Forrest Park Ordnance plant in the Chicago, Illinois metropolitan area. The torpedoes were proofed at Naval Torpedo Proofing Station-Keyport, Washington and issued to the fleet. There were a few things that could be improved, and GE's Key West Test Station was conducting development runs in the Florida Straits when the next to worst thing that can happen to an acoustic homing torpedo happened. Extraneous noise, that is sound that is not coming from the target or from a noise source on the torpedo or from any expected target, interferes with the torpedo's ability to detect and attack the intended target. This noise had characteristics we had never before observed. It came in spikes just like the echoes expected from the target, but often in two closely spaced spikes where we would expect only one. It varied smoothly in volume as sound would from a radio when you turned the volume up and down. The indicated rate of closure on the sound source varied, but was often much faster than the torpedo could run! Sometimes the closure rate indicated speeds of hundreds of knots. It continued unchanged for a time after the torpedo stopped running and its sonar was turned off.
We spent hours on the telephone between Key West and our home plant in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, puzzling over the cause, suggesting tests, and analyzing results.  No tests revealed what could be causing the noise and the peculiar characteristics, and it couldn't be duplicated in the lab.
Tursiops truncatis, the common dolphin, turned out to be the elusive culprit.

At the next break, the GE engineer asked how they were sure it was porpoise. They replied that the porpoise had followed their transducers right to the surface, talking to them all the way. The GE engineer told them of his own baffling experience with torpedoes that he had now deduced had been caused by those same noisy porpoise. They all agreed that the porpoise had gathered at the transducers to ask when their talkative, silvery, frisky little friends would be coming back to play.

[bayonetbrant]

    

https://twitter.com/TheWTFNation/status/1681339730238251009

[besilarius]

The principal national leaders running World War II all had rather distinctive tastes in alcohol.

Chaing Kai-shek. Unlike most Chinese, the Generalissimo was a teetotaler, and also did not smoke.
Winston S. Churchill. The British prime minister was a major toper, and he held his liquor very well. Churchill's daily intake regularly included scotch (preferably Johnny Walker Black or Red), brandy (Hine), port, and claret, not to mention champagne (Pol Rogers or Cordon Rouge), of which he claimed to average about a bottle a day. William Manchester claimed there was “always some alcohol in his bloodstream, and it reaches its peak late in the evening after he has had two or three Scotches, several glasses of Champagne, at least two brandies, and a highball.”
Hirohito. Much preferred whiskey over the more traditional sake.
Adolph Hitler. Generally a teetotaler, the German Führer did occasionally take a little brandy in warm milk to help him sleep. From time to time he is reported to have sampled beer, though never found one that suited his taste. On celebratory occasions Hitler was sometimes seen with a glass of Moet & Chandon champagne, such as on hearing the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor or upon marrying Eva Braun
Benito Mussolini. Il Duce rarely drank more than an occasional glass of wine, and like Hitler he did not smoke.
Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt often had wine or beer with meals, but his preferred potable was a martini. He considered himself an excellent mixicologist – and made the first legal drinks served the White House on the abolition of Prohibition in 1933 – but his concoctions were reportedly only passable.
Josef Stalin. The Soviet Vozd often drank Georgian red wine or vodka with red pepper, sometimes to excess.
Harry S Truman. In keeping with his Missouri roots, Truman liked bourbon, and greatly preferred Wild Turkey, hardly top shelf stuff.
 

[Sir Slash]

Wild Turkey's a damned-good choice. 

[besilarius]

1928 two seasoned arctic explorers, the Australian George H. Wilkins, and the American Carl B. Eielson were planning a new expedition.

In 1925 Wilkins and Eielson cooperated on a pioneering non-stop flight from Barrow, Alaska, to Spitzbergen, Norway, which was an enormous success. Thereafter they made several other Arctic flights.

This time they had their sights on an Antarctic expedition, using a Lockheed Vega to conduct exploratory flights during the southern summer of 1928-1929. But how to prepare runways on the ice cap? Well, after some hard thinking, one of them had a bright idea; why not use flamethrowers?

Now Germany had introduced flamethrowers to modern warfare in 1915, and had the most extensive experience with their manufacture and use. So Eielson and Wilkins entered into negotiations with the German firm that had produced the weapons, to procure several for use on their expedition. Well, it turned out that there was a little problem. As the Germans pointed out, they were banned from producing flamethrowers by the Treaty of Versailles. Securing permission from the Allies to make any would require extensive diplomatic negotiations.

This seemed an overwhelming obstacle, and stories even circulated in the press that the expedition would probably be scrubbed. But then the assistant U.S. Army Attaché to Germany for Aviation, Maj. George Reinberg, pointed out that the Germans were permitted to produce some modified flamethrowers for use as “insect killers,” designed to burn out large infestations of noxious bugs.

At that, there was considerable joy all ‘round, since Eielson and Wilkins got their flamethrowers, and Germany gained some international recognition as supporting scientific endeavor. Eielson and Wilkins were even feted by President von Hindenburg before leaving the country.

The Wilkins-Eielison Antarctic Expedition was a great success. The first attempt at aerial exploration in the Antarctic, on December 20, 1928, the pair flew a round trip of some 1,300 miles over the Antarctic Peninsula in about 10 hours. As Wilkins summed it up, "We had left at 8:30 in the morning, had covered 1300 miles – nearly a thousand of it over unknown territory – and had returned in time to cover the plane with a storm hood, go to the [base ship] Hektoria, bathe and dress and sit down at eight o'clock to dinner as usual in the comfort of the ship's wardroom".

Oh, and those flamethrowers, they proved useless.

[bayonetbrant]

https://twitter.com/Doctrine_Man/status/1684913629521387520


Holy shit there is so much awesomeness in this thread

[Barthheart]

Well… that first one is from an actual published song

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