List of military disasters

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A military disaster is when one side in a battle or war is unexpectedly and soundly defeated, and often changes the course of history. A battle where two forces meet and one side loses without making a major mistake is not a military disaster, that is simply warfare.

A military disaster can range from an strong army losing a major battle against a clearly inferior force, to a army being surprised and decimated by a clearly superior force, to a seemingly evenly matched conflict with an extremely one sided result. A military disaster could be due to bad planning, bad execution, bad weather, general lack of skill or ability, the failure of a new piece of military technology, a major blunder, a brilliant move on the part of the enemy, or simply the unexpected presence of an overwhelming enemy force.

Contents

1 Ancient era 2 Medieval era 3 18th century 4 19th century 5 20th century 1 Further reading 2 See also

Ancient era

• The Athenian expedition to Syracuse in 415 BC.
• The Battle of Lake Trasimene in 217 BC, where Hannibal destroyed a numerically superior force of 25,000 Roman soldiers.
• The Battle of Teutoburg Forest, where German warriors destroyed three Roman legions
• The Battle of Adrianople, in which the emperor Valens was killed while Gothic heavy cavalry decimated his Roman heavy infantry.

Medieval era

• The Battle of Yarmuk in 636. The Monophysite contingents in the Byzantine army, brutally persecuted by the Orthodox authorities, defected en masse to the Muslim side thus guaranteeing a Muslim victory.
• The Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297. British Earl John de Warenne's well-equipped army were trapped on a narrow bridge by William Wallace's 15,000 unarmored, lightly-armed Scots, bearing long pointed stakes. The bridge had been chosen as the point of engagement by Warenne, even though the river could easily have been forded just a few miles upstream.
• The Battle of Agincourt in 1415 - A large force of French knights could not operate effectively in muddy conditions, and were therefor mown down by English longbowmen.

18th century

• The Battle of Karansebes in 1788. A fight broke out between hussars and infantrymen of the Austrian army campaigning against the Ottomans in Wallachia. An officer shouting "Halt! Halt!" was misheard as "Allah! Allah!" causing a mass panic which ultimately resulted in the death or wounding of over 10,000 Austrian soldiers.

19th century

• The Charge of the Light Brigade. A British officer misinterpreted an order and led a suicidal charge against the Russian guns. ("Not tho' the soldier knew, someone had blunder'd" — Tennyson)
• Battle of the Little Bighorn. For once, General George Custer attacks a superior force of armed Native American warriors rather than a civilian encampment, gets killed and his command wiped out.
• Battle of Isandlwana. A Zulu impi armed mostly with spears destroys two British battalions armed with rifles in a Pyrrhic victory.

20th century

• The Battle of Tsushima - the Russian Baltic fleet was sent halfway around the world in a suicidal attack on the Japanese in the Tsushima Straits.
• The Maginot line - although from a strictly technical viewpoint the line itself functioned as designed, it was emblematic of a deeply flawed defensive strategy.
• The Battle of France in 1940 - the French Army moved to meet the Germans inside Belgium, believing the Maginot Line would force the Germans to rerun the Schlieffen Plan, but was cutoff by a German advance through the Ardennes, which the French had believed was impassible for tanks.
• The Dieppe Raid, an Allied attempt to land on the French coast resulting in 70% of the 5,000 soldiers who made it ashore being killed, wounded or captured.
• The Battle of Dien Bien Phu.
• The Bay of Pigs Invasion, a 1961 attempt to overthrow Cuban President Fidel Castro
• The Vietnam War was a stalemate for the United States, ultimately failing in its aim of preventing Vietnam becoming a communist state. Due to the determination of the communist forces, only conquest of North Vietnam itself would have decisively defeated them, but this was impossible due to the near-certainty of Chinese intervention if North Vietnam were invaded.
• Operation Eagle Claw, a US attempt to rescue hostages in Iran. This operation involved so many opportunities for failure that it was more akin to a Hollywood movie script than an actual military operation.
• Argentinian bombing of Royal Navy ships during the Falklands War. The Argentines flew so low that their bombs hit their targets before the fuses had time to activate. As a result, the bombs almost always failed to detonate.

Further reading

• Military Intelligence Blunders and Cover-Ups, by Colonel Hughes-Wilson John (ISBN 0786713739)
• Geoffrey Regan's Book Of Military Blunders, by Geoffrey Regan (ISBN 0233999779)

See also

• List of incidents that have been considered great blunders

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