Real life crazy desperation military actions that worked

Lord Skimper wrote: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?

Howard T. Map-addict wrote: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

Michael Riddell wrote:IMHO, the Italians redeem their WW2 reputation by being damn good at small unit warfare. They were so succesful that the Royal Navy copied the Maiale concept with the Chariot. Properly led and equipped they were just as good as anyone else.

jtg452 wrote:

saber964 wrote:[
Your facts are a little mixed up.

The attack on Singapore was IIRC an X-craft raid and damaged IJNS Takao. The raid you are referring to was Operation Frankton and was a Commando raid in sea going canoes on merchant ships in the French port of Bordeaux. It was later portrayed in the movie Cockelshell Heroes in 1955

Nope.

I may have Singapore wrong but there was a British officer in the Far East that tried to pull off kayak raids. He succeeded on the first one (blew up/damaged a couple freighters? not a lot of damage but it got the Japanese's attention), tried the second one, failed and I think he was killed during escape and evasion. I had a book about him when I was a kid. My grandmother loved haunting old second hand book stores and always picked up oddball books like this one for me (I also got a 1st edition of Robert Service poetry the same way). The dust cover had a painting of him on it and I remember the chest tattoo. It sounded like a work of fiction to me, too, but there were pictures of him and some of his men inside the book taken during their prep and training for the missions. I remember the formal picture of him in his uniform looked like the quintessential British officer of the era right down to the little garrison mustache and on the next page it showed him wearing nothing but a pair of shorts and shoes with the big tattoo of a tiger head on his chest beside a canvas kayak.

Like I said in the first post, I can't remember his name for the life of me. If I could, I'd do a web search and provide a link. It sounds crazy enough that it has to be either be pure fiction or something one of those crazy British officers of the era would try.

Mobryan wrote:
Army Captain Ivan Lyon, Operations Jaywick and Rimau. They sailed a fishing boat named the "Krait" 2000+ miles and successfully attacked a major anchorage in canvas kayaks...

The best reference I am aware of is the book "Return of the Tiger" by Brian Connelly. (Doubleday, 1960.)

Matt

jtg452 wrote:
I'll get to searching a little later this week and see if there's a picture of the cover of the book by Connelly. I bet it came with yellow dustcover with a painting of Lyon on the front, shirtless with the tiger tattoo on his chest showing and holding a Sten gun at low ready.

Jonathan_S wrote:(But yes, the Italian special ops units were very dangerous opponents; for various reasons the rest of their military was not so well equipped, trained, or led)