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Biggest military blunder ever.

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This one always struck me as great

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze_(typhoon)

"The latter fleet, composed of "more than four thousand ships bearing nearly 140,000 men"[1] is said to have been the largest attempted naval invasion in history whose scale was only recently eclipsed in modern times by the D-Day invasion of allied forces into Normandy in 1944. According to James McClain, "On each of those two occasions the Mongols gained a toehold on Japanese soil, but then kamikaze, a "divine wind", supposedly stirred up by Japan's protective deities, ravaged the invasion fleets and forced the Mongols back to their continental bases."[2]"
 
ichy said:
If you want blunders by the US in the Pacific in WW2, the Battle of Savo Island was in some ways worse than Pearl Harbor.
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While a devasting loss in terms of men and material it wasn't really a blunder. The failure of the Navy to adopt and train for night battles coupled with inferior weapons allowed Japan to win a tactical victory. However it was a strategic failure as it the Japanese did not destroy the US transports. This allowed the occupation of Guadalcanal to continue and to eventually attrit the Japanese navy severly.
 
Have to go with Hitler invading USSR. Having to fight on 2 fronts is what lost the war for Germany.

Japan wasn't going to defeat the US even if the attack on Pearl had hit the carriers. Merely prolonged it.
 
techs said:
While a devasting loss in terms of men and material it wasn't really a blunder. The failure of the Navy to adopt and train for night battles coupled with inferior weapons allowed Japan to win a tactical victory. However it was a strategic failure as it the Japanese did not destroy the US transports. This allowed the occupation of Guadalcanal to continue and to eventually attrit the Japanese navy severly.
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I'd say it was a blunder because it was a battle that the allies should have won. They had a much stronger force than the Japanese. Strategically though you're right, the IJN completely failed to capitalize on their success. The loss of ships still hurt the Allies a lot though. The fact that the US was sending battleships into the restricted waters off of Guadalcanal by the end of the campaign shows how desperate for assets they were.
 
ichy said:
Actually the US was better off having its old battleships sunk in Pearl Harbor. If they hadn't been & the US had tried to execute War Plan Orange for relieving the Phililpines chances are the Pacific Fleet's battleships would've been sunk in the open ocean instead. Casualties would have been far higher and the ships could have never been salvaged. It also helps that no carriers were hit during the attack on Pearl Harbor.
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I don't believe anyone high up in the Navy ever took Orange seriously. There were not enough oilers or supply ships to deploy the fleet to the Philipines.
Even as the battleships that had been damaged at Pearl Harbor were repaired they were kept on the west coast due to lack of oilers.

Orange had always used hypothetical refueling places and times that were completely unrealistic. The Navy had made plan Orange because they had to have a plan, not a workable plan. Those who knew even more realized that they would have to send the carriers out with the battleships and while there wasn't even enough fuel for the battleships the carriers couldn't have sailed at all.
 
Printer Bandit said:
biggest blunder was the gov't letting pearl harbor happen even though they had advanced knowledge.
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this.. they had intelligence but disregarded it.
And the Japanese miniSub the USS Ward found and sunk before the attack as well.
not to mention the radar operators saw it too.. and command lazily said it must be the B-17 flight coming in early..


blunder after blunder.. and it cost us huge.
 
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Attacking Fort Sumter, for sure. Started a useless and costly war that still has repercussions today.
 
ichy said:
The fact that the US was sending battleships into the restricted waters off of Guadalcanal by the end of the campaign shows how desperate for assets they were.
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It was a smart move. While they may have temporarily been short of assets the Navy was about to receive the first ships from the "two ocean" navy bill. Plus the new fleet oilers were working up.

Sending in the battleships, North Carolina and Washington(iirc), though I may be wrong, was a tactically and strategically sound move. I wouldn't call it so much desperation as risking assets that were soon to be superfluous.

In the end the series of battles for control of the seas around Guadalcanal was pretty much a draw in terms of ships and men. And therefore it was a win for the US as it had far more ships about to join its fleet.
 
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All you had to do was add up the construction facilities of the US and Japan, and look at the production of steel, oil, food and add in the population and it was like Muhammad Ali fighting Pee Wee Herman.
 
techs said:
No. That was a failure of tactics. If the Germans had treated the captured areas well they could have easily won. Also, if they had struck for Moscow the Soviet Union would have disintegrated when it fell. It was an easily winnable war for Germany.
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I came here to say this. Did you read Enemy At The Gates?
 
The War would been much longer if our carriers were parked at Pearl harbor during the attack...luckily they weren't!
 
How about December 11, 1941:

"It has often been said that Hitler's greatest mistakes were his decisions to go to war against the Soviet Union and the United States . Whatever the truth may be, it's worth noting his own detailed justifications for these fateful decisions. On Thursday afternoon, December 11, 1941, four days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler spoke to the Reichstag in Berlin. The 88-minute address, which he had written himself, was broadcast to the nation. In it the German leader recounted the reasons for the outbreak of war in September 1939, explained why he decided to strike against the Soviet Union in June 1941, reviewed the dramatic course of the war thus far, and dealt at length with President Franklin Roosevelt's hostile policies toward Germany. Hitler detailed the increasingly belligerent actions of Roosevelt's government, and then dramatically announced that Germany was now joining Japan in war against the United States."



http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v08/v08p389_Hitler.html
 
Mermaidman said:
Realistically--Who thought that the USA could mobilize and administer an ass-whooping across the vast Pacific Ocean? (While simultaneously fighting the Nazis!)
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Easy to say when you get into Fight, when Fight is over....
US haven't won a war by themselves, US just have changed some regimes with military intervention in some small countries...

Current Status Quo of US Army is unknown, considering a big scandal in US Congress about Pentagon spending $ millions in China - buying counterfeit electronic parts for US military......
 
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