Real life crazy desperation military actions that worked

Duckk wrote:http://www.cracked.com/article_18765_the-6-most-insane-underdog-stories-in-history-battle.html

Some of these are good, some are ignorant. For instance, the surprising battle of the Zulu War was not Isandlwana, where 1700 (NOT 8000!) mixed regular & colonial auxiliary British troops, overconfident, unprepared, recon & intelligence blind, and, especially, ill-led, were overwhelmed by ~20,000 of the finest, most disciplined, sword and shield warriors in the history of the world.
The colonial contingent was ill-supplied with ammo and even firearms, the ammo reserve was locked up and too far from the troops, the battle line set by the British commander was too long and too far out, and there had been no defensive or fall back positions prepared.

The proper example from that war is Rourke's Drift, where 139 superbly well-led British (and Boer auxiliary) troops stood off ~4000 Zulu soldiers from the reserve of the Isandlwana attack force. Tactically the attackers are generally considered to have done everything RIGHT! The defenders were just that much "righter" at what they did in the defense.

The citation of the Vikings in Newfoundland is also similarly flawed, ignoring the tiny numbers and extreme isolation of the Viking outpost, and the fact that withdrawal in the face of indigent resistance was in fact a standard Viking war practice.

The other examples are OK, though.

dreamrider

Lord Skimper wrote:Charge of the light brigade. While ultimately a failure it was spectacular and while the initial assault succeed it was the following retreat that ended the rest of the brigade.

The successful and offensive Attack of the Heavy Brigade is a far better parallel to the situation that the SLN is about to contend with.

Another situation with even more similarities to the Kingsford Plan is the series of U.S. carrier raids in early 1942, and the U.S. Pacific submarine offensive of the first half of that year.


dreamrider

dreamrider wrote:Another situation with even more similarities to the Kingsford Plan is the series of U.S. carrier raids in early 1942, and the U.S. Pacific submarine offensive of the first half of that year.


dreamrider

Nice parallel, dreamrider, albeit I would remind you that the submarine attacks didn't really accomplish as much as they could have (the Mark XIV torpedo had a number of flaws that took almost two years to correct, but once corrected, was a most effective weapon--see this article: http://www.historynet.com/us-torpedo-tr ... war-ii.htm)

A Doolittle-type raid on the SEM/GA? I don't see how the SLN could pull it off against any reasonable defended planet, but then again, doing the unexpected/insane is what this thread is about.

Ensign Re-read wrote:*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Nazaire_Raid

I re-watched the Clarkson documentary on this (a friend here at work pointed me at it a year ago), and I agree, friend Re-read, that is something just crazy enough to work--and in the Honorverse.

We know about Duendas grabbing Manty freighters, and I would speculate that at least some others would have also been 'confiscated' while at port in the SL. Not to mention that there may have been MMM ships with impeller or hyper generator issues undergoing maintenance in Solarian ports and were unable to move.

So could a SLN commander, using the codes and signals from that ship, do a 'Honor Harrington at Casamir' to conduct a raid? Have several DDs-LC's tractored on, LAC's in the holds (so you rip out systems and blow out walls--the ship is on a one-way voyage, you're not worried about cosmetics). Hyper in to a lesser port (let's pick on Idaho, since it is an ally and has a wormhole that probably has a number of merchant ships sitting around hoping for an OK to trade again (you don't want every merchant ship crowding the Manticore system, I would think)). Sail up as someone who just got away but was late due to engine failures (the Halie Solwie gambit), then lauch everything at the freighters and any infrastructure you can hit.

Yeah, you probably lose your force to whatever defenders there are, but you at least have a chance to do damage to the GA and let them know that there are still military people in the SL with genius, determination, and courage.

We shall see...eventually.

Hutch wrote:

dreamrider wrote:Another situation with even more similarities to the Kingsford Plan is the series of U.S. carrier raids in early 1942, and the U.S. Pacific submarine offensive of the first half of that year.


dreamrider

Nice parallel, dreamrider, albeit I would remind you that the submarine attacks didn't really accomplish as much as they could have (the Mark XIV torpedo had a number of flaws that took almost two years to correct, but once corrected, was a most effective weapon--see this article: http://www.historynet.com/us-torpedo-tr ... war-ii.htm)

A Doolittle-type raid on the SEM/GA? I don't see how the SLN could pull it off against any reasonable defended planet, but then again, doing the unexpected/insane is what this thread is about.

The reason why it took two years for the problems to be corrected was that BuOrd flat out refused to believe the submariners. The BuOrd blamed the US submariners for just about every thing you could imagine. IIRC ComSubPac was doing ad hoc refits to get the things to work. IIRC he disconnected the magnetic exploder and rebuilt the firing mechanism with parts manufactured from crashed aircraft propellers.

saber964 wrote: The reason why it took two years for the problems to be corrected was that BuOrd flat out refused to believe the submariners. The BuOrd blamed the US submariners for just about every thing you could imagine. IIRC ComSubPac was doing ad hoc refits to get the things to work. IIRC he disconnected the magnetic exploder and rebuilt the firing mechanism with parts manufactured from crashed aircraft propellers.

Yeah, saber964, that echoes the article I linked....and also shows that the mindset of the ISLN pre-Spindle was probably very much the same. For that matter, there may well be Havenites and Manties in the loop who have blocked improvements to their ships over the years by 'not believing' the folks using them.

Just an aside, I was in Cleveland, Ohio this Memorial Day and visited the USS Cod (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Cod_%28SS-224%29). Amazing that you could get 60 men into that space. I can pretty well guarantee that the average submariner was about 5"8" and 140lbs--anyone bigger would never had been able to get around.

saber964 wrote:The reason why it took two years for the problems to be corrected was that BuOrd flat out refused to believe the submariners. The BuOrd blamed the US submariners for just about every thing you could imagine. IIRC ComSubPac was doing ad hoc refits to get the things to work. IIRC he disconnected the magnetic exploder and rebuilt the firing mechanism with parts manufactured from crashed aircraft propellers.

One minor complicating factor was that the torpedo had so many flaws that they sometimes partially masked each other; making determining what went wrong hard.

One weird example I remember from a more detailed write-up of the various attempts at troubleshooting and workarounds was an early field experiment with disabling the magnetic exploders. Bizarrely (given how flaky they were) when going for shallow running contact hits torpedoes with the magnetic exploder disabled were less likely to sink ships that ones fired on identical profiles with the mag exploder left enabled.

The contact exploder was so bad (well, so underdesigned; it apparently worked fine on the older slower torpedo it was designed and originally tested on) that there was a better chance of the magnetic exploder prematuring close enough to still damage the ship than there was of the contact exploder working when it hit dead on.

If just one thing had been wrong there should have been more consistent results from the various captain's field expedient modification; and that might have lit a more effective fire under BuOrd.


Of course if the Torpedo Factory was doing their job they'd have done a full comprehensive retest once significant reports of problems rolled in. (But they were both sure their design was right and didn't want to divert still scare torpedoes from the fleet to expend in testing)

Hutch wrote:Just an aside, I was in Cleveland, Ohio this Memorial Day and visited the USS Cod (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Cod_%28SS-224%29). Amazing that you could get 60 men into that space. I can pretty well guarantee that the average submariner was about 5"8" and 140lbs--anyone bigger would never had been able to get around.

Have you ever toured the U-505 in Chicago? It makes the Gato class subs seem downright roomy.

dreamrider wrote:

Duckk wrote:http://www.cracked.com/article_18765_the-6-most-insane-underdog-stories-in-history-battle.html

Some of these are good, some are ignorant. For instance, the surprising battle of the Zulu War was not Isandlwana, where 1700 (NOT 8000!) mixed regular & colonial auxiliary British troops, overconfident, unprepared, recon & intelligence blind, and, especially, ill-led, were overwhelmed by ~20,000 of the finest, most disciplined, sword and shield warriors in the history of the world.
The colonial contingent was ill-supplied with ammo and even firearms, the ammo reserve was locked up and too far from the troops, the battle line set by the British commander was too long and too far out, and there had been no defensive or fall back positions prepared.

The proper example from that war is Rourke's Drift, where 139 superbly well-led British (and Boer auxiliary) troops stood off ~4000 Zulu soldiers from the reserve of the Isandlwana attack force. Tactically the attackers are generally considered to have done everything RIGHT! The defenders were just that much "righter" at what they did in the defense.

The citation of the Vikings in Newfoundland is also similarly flawed, ignoring the tiny numbers and extreme isolation of the Viking outpost, and the fact that withdrawal in the face of indigent resistance was in fact a standard Viking war practice.

The other examples are OK, though.

dreamrider

I think the 6000 romans who defeated 240,000 Britons might have been considered better sword and shield troops. Although the Spartans might have been in contention vs the Persians. But then they didn't do very well against the Romans.

Funny how all these great armies and warriors no longer are great warriors and armies. The Solarian League was once the mighty Romans but is now just the Italian Army. Who is next the royal Manties becoming the Imperial Manties?

While we discuss men taking limpets into harbors,
let us remember that the Italians had great success
with them against the Brits in the Mediterranian.
Two or three BBs in Alexandria Harbor, IfIRC.

HTM

jtg452 wrote:
Then there was the British officer that attacked shipping in Singapore Harbor- using kayaks and limpet mines. I just can't remember his name right off the top of my head. He had a tattoo of a tiger's head on this chest.

jtg452 wrote:Agincourt was lost by the French a lot more than it was won by the British.

Minor nit - English, not British. British doesn't really apply until 1603 or 1707 depending on what you wish to interpret.

Mike.