Does anything in the annals of US diplomatic/political/military history top P.H. for sheer incompetence and ineptitude?
shareOr in losses of ships the rout of British/Commonwealth Army out of Greece, might be comparable.
shareThe Penobscot Expedition of 1779. Among other things it included the worst American naval defeat before Pearl Harbor.
shareOr Savo Island.
Live long and prosper.
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Seems to have been conveniently forgotten by all the Documentary channels as well.
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Still, it's amazing how much luridness they can squeeze out of a case of bureaucratic inertia.
shareSavo Island seems more humiliating to me. Losses were more significant as well.
Live long and prosper.
Wasn't some twit on here sometime in the past always trying to make a case that the Aussie cruiser Canberra was sunk by 'friendly fire'? Turns out that it had to be scuttled by an American torp but that was about it. Sad tale about the Officer who was left in charge of the picket force, though.
shareI doubt Canberra was even hit by any torpedo during the battle. It seems numerous Japanese armor-piercing shells hit the poorly armored Canberra, mostly above the waterline on the engaged side, but many of them exited below the waterline on the far side, causing her list. Some may have exploded as they exited.
Mark 15 torpedoes scored zero hits in 1942, except in some scuttlings. It was terribly unreliable.
Live long and prosper.
Precisely...but there was a tool troll who kept insisting Canberra was hit by friendly fire.
shareWorst military humiliation ever? Not if you consider how we made out in Vietnam...
shareAgree with the Battle of Savo Island in August of 1942 being a greater humiliation. The most one-sided naval battle of the Second World War. A couple of interesting points about it:
1) The Japanese had greater losses at Pearl Harbor than they did at Savo Island.
2) Oddly enough, the admiral who was actually in command of the cruiser screening force that was obliterated at Savo Island was...British. Rear Admiral Victor A.C. Crutchley, Royal Navy, to be precise. However, that should not take the American admirals Turner and Fletcher off the hook for their own failures in the engagement.
3) The primary reason why the battle is not more famous is because the Japanese, even after their incredible victory, turned away before they accomplished the primary purpose of their attack - the destruction of the American transports still in the process of unloading the American force at Guadalcanal. Even though the transports retreated anyway the next day, leaving the Americans on Guadalcanal desperately unsupplied for an extended period, if the Japanese had actually sunk them (which they easily could have done, making the American losses even more one-sided) it could very well have resulted in the failure of the first American offensive of the Pacific War at Guadalcanal, greatly delaying the American effort to drive the Japanese back to their home island.
Worst military humiliation ever? Not if you consider how we made out in Vietnam...
Dolchstoss? Behave, it was a war of attrition and the Americans lost.
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.
You're right, but that doesn't change the fact that it was a stupid, wasteful, pointless war that accomplished nothing but lining the pockets of the military industrial complex. Don't ever think I'm knocking the men that were there, I don't have an unkind word to say about them or their sacrifices. The problem is like you said. Politicians made the whole thing an embarrassing debacle.
shareAgreed. We never should have gotten involved. But after the McCarthy years it was bad politics to appear weak on communism. Then the political objective was always to play for a draw in the near term, while the enemy played to win in the long term. While America was not defeated, her grand strategy failed.
If North Korea ever topples South Korea, that one would go into the history books as a political defeat of American policy, too.
Live long and prosper.
You're right, but that doesn't change the fact that it was a stupid, wasteful, pointless war that accomplished nothing but...
What about Operation Cottage? 34500 american and canadian soldiers, 95 warships and 150 planes against... nobody! Result: Kiska Island recovered and 200 casualties. Perhaps more of an embarrasement than an humiliation, but....
shareVietnam was a war lost by the politicians, not the military. The military did everything asked of them and more, and won.
I'd say the incompetence shown in the defense, and eventual surrender of the Philippines was far more humiliating, than the attack on Pearl Harbor.
In a world where a carpenter can be resurrected, anything is possible.
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Does anything in the annals of US diplomatic/political/military history top P.H. for sheer incompetence and ineptitude?