Relatively unknown military blunders.
What about a thread to present, discuss and ridicule the blunders of any army from any time-frame or continent.
Just for fun, nothing inflammatory or degrading towards any country’s “heroes”. :grin *tongue*
Please try and post relatively unknown episodes!
I’ll start with two examples from the eternal feuding Greeks and Turks:
1. During the 1st Balkan war, just after the battle at Sarantoporous and while the Greek army was advancing towards Salonica and Ioannina a small group of about 20 Turkish soldiers was stranded behind the Greek lines. Rather than surrendering they raided an isolated post-relay station, one of the postmen escaped and reached the headquarters of a Greek division whereas he informed its commander of a the incident. The idiotic general in question believed that thousands of Turkish soldiers were behind his line ready to attack him and ordered the division initially to halt its advance and after a few hours to start retreating, at this point he decided to underline the importance of his last command by personal example and abandoned his HQ. Seeing his reactions his reactions he immediate subordinates followed suit, having lost any communication with the divisional HQ the regimental commanders feared the worse and sped up the retreat which by the end of the day was an all out route…. 20 men routed a whole division in a single day…………..
2. During the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1973 the Turkish army feared that the Greek army may try and re-enforce the island’s Greek-Cypriots, to counter such a threat they dispatched a flotilla of 3 destroyers to intercept any possible Greek convoy. In the event the Greeks never send any convoys but somehow a few days after the Turkish flotilla was deployed, the Turkish air force was convinced that it spotted the aforementioned convoy. They launched dozens of fighter-bombers to engage and sink it. The Turkish airplanes indeed intercepted a small flotilla of three destroyers and engaged it. Even though the ships sported Turkish flags the pilots were reassured that it was a dirty little trick by the Greek sailors who tried to confuse them. During the rest of the day the Turkish air force HQ received continuous reports of the successful attacks to the three Greek ships while the Turkish Navy HQ received continuous reports of the successful defence of its three ships against Greek planes. By the end of the day two destroyers were sunk and 4-5 airplanes were downed. The two sides fought with such ferocity that even after the ships were sunk the surviving sailors were strafed by the Turkish airplanes! Nice coordination eh? To top it all parts of the Turkish navy and airforce HQ were housed in the same building!