- There have been many things that militaries have done
that have been considered mistakes in the past,
but some were bigger than others.
Militaries and armies are only successful
if their intelligence matches their might,
but unfortunately, some militaries have made
some big oopsies in the past that were either embarrassing
or in some cases, actually lost them a war.
So today, we're going to look at exactly
what the biggest mistakes ever made were by militaries
and what they caused.
So let's get right into it.
These are the 10 biggest military screw ups in history.
Number one is Franz Ferdinand's driver.
Did you know that world war one could have been avoided?
Well, that's what some experts believe anyway,
as many historians state that the assassination
of Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie
were what really started it all.
On June 28th, 1914, before the assassination of Ferdinand
took place, there was a previous assassination attempt
in which the driver of the car that the duke was in
managed to dodge a bomb.
The duke later requested to go to the hospital
and visit those who weren't lucky enough
to avoid the explosion,
but the very same driver made a wrong turn.
Instead of going to the hospital, he drove the car
right into the path of 19 year old Gavrilo Princip,
one of the six original assassins.
The shooter took advantage of this and shot
both the duke and the dutchess, killing them both.
Yup, that's right, a wrong turn may have started
one of the deadliest wars of all time.
I'm not sure if the driver survived,
but he might not wanna put that on his resume.
It's a little embarrassing.
Number two is the Fall of Constantinople.
From 1261 to 1453, the city of Constantinople
stood as the capital city of the Roman Byzantine empire.
Named after Emperor Constantine the Great,
the city was the biggest and richest city in Europe
for many years.
Well, that was prior to the mother
of all errors that brought about its downfall.
From April 6th, 1453 until May 29th, 1453,
the Ottoman empire, under the command of 21 year old,
Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror held a siege of the capital,
but due to the high walls and secured entrances,
the Turks had little chance of taking over the city.
The Byzantines within the city were fewer in numbers
but at least they were safe behind the walls.
Or, at least they would have been,
had they not forgotten to close one of the main gates.
John, did you close the gate?
I'm on lunch, I'll do it later.
The Turks ended up discovering the open gate,
and the armies flooded the city, preparing to take it over.
And take it over they did, they raised their flag proudly
and took control of Constantinople while the Byzantines
were left to reflect on their error.
See kids, always close the door behind you.
Number three is the German Submarine U-1206.
When the first submarine was built, many people asked
the important question, how do I go poo poos?
Well, in 1945, builders of the German Sub U-1206
thought that they had found the answer,
a perfect toilet flushing system, using high pressure valves
to allow a flush even when deep under the water.
The only problem with it is that it was so complicated,
that supervision was needed when operating the mechanism.
Sir, I went poop, I'm ready for flushies.
But, being a proud man, Captain Carl Adolf Shlit
refused the supervision and flushed the toilet
after doing his business.
That's when disaster struck, and the toilet backfired,
and Atlantic sea water started quickly rushing
into the submarine.
As the water hit the batteries,
which for some reason were located right under the toilet
a large amount of chlorine gas was released.
That's when they had problems.
At that point, Shlit couldn't do anything
but order the sub to the surface,
which left them 10 miles away from the British coast.
They were then spotted immediately by an English plane
and the sub was bombed,
and all surviving crew members were captured.
Well, that's one destructive poop.
Number four is the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy
and the Central Intelligence Agency set up a secret
military operation to invade Cuba,
and bring down their infamous Prime Minister Fidel Castro.
Forming brigade 2506 a paramilitary group made up
of Cuban exhiles and others that were against
the Cuban leader were trained to become the force
that would change everything.
On April 17th, 1961, the mission was launched
from Guatemala and Nicaragua,
but in just three short days,
all of the brigade 2506 was defeated at the hands
of Castro's Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces.
America's mistake?
The units of Cubans that they sent in
were completely unprepared for the mission,
and their plan fell apart almost immediately.
Yo man, like I got a gun, but what are we doing?
It was this flub that later lead to the Cuban Missile Crisis
just the following year.
If you're going to pull a Trojan horse,
make sure your group is ready for the fight.
This was like gathering a group of six month old puppies
and telling them to jump on that large Doberman over there
that's guarding all the treats, oopsies.
Number five is General Wallace.
Anybody can make a mistake, but it takes a special someone
to lose a battlefield of 25,000 men.
That special someone was General Lew Wallace,
an American lawyer and major general for the Union
in the American Civil War between 1861 and 1865.
During the Battle of Shiloh on April sixth, 1862,
he was ordered by General Grant to bring his men
to the battleground as support for the right flank,
but his knowledge of geography wasn't exactly great.
Without a map, he lead over 58 hundred men
as they marched for hours in the wrong direction.
The Confederates advanced so far that
by the time that Wallace's army reached the battlefield,
they had moved through Union territory.
This was a prime opportunity to flank the enemy
and launch a surprise attack on them from behind,
but controversially, as they approached the rear
of the Confederates, who were already firing at Grant's men,
Wallace ordered his men to turn back
and go to the location that they were
initially ordered to go to by Grant.
Okay everybody, we're gonna play a big game
of let's turn back around where we came from.
Let's get some exercise.
Many hours later, they finally arrived at Grant's position,
only to find that they'd been defeated
with thousands of lives lost and a pissed off Grant.
Number six is the Island of Kiska.
On June sixth, 1942, Japanese forces invaded Kiska,
an American territory island off the coast of Alaska.
Though it was more of a nuisance
to supply and maintain than it was really worth,
the moral impact the invasion had
on the American people was enormous,
and naturally the U.S. needed to take it back.
Bombing beaches, destroying garrisons, and using 35,000 men,
the army destroyed everything that they could find,
and in the end, successfully took over the island,
suffering only 122 causalities.
But something was wrong because once successful,
they realized none of the corpses that they found
belonged to the Japanese.
In fact, what they didn't know was that the Japanese
had actually abandoned the island two weeks prior.
So you're probably thinking,
but wait a minute, the army suffered over 100 causalities,
and there was no enemy fighting back?
Well aside from friendly fire killing 24 soldiers
and a stray mine, which destroyed a ship,
47 soldiers apparently just disappeared into the jungle.
That's right, they successfully defeated themselves.
Choose your battles, friends.
Choose your battles.
Number seven is the Battle of Solway Moss.
This event proves that numbers truly don't matter
if no one's in charge.
On November 24th, 1542, after James V, King of Scots,
refused to separate from the Roman Catholic Church,
his uncle King Henry VIII from England sent about
3,000 men to pillage and destroy the land of Solway Moss,
near the River Esk.
The Scottish obviously intended to fight back,
using nearly 18,000 troops to stage a defense,
and clearly outnumbering the British six to one.
However, the unofficial Scottish commander,
Robert Maxwell, was sick.
So sick in fact that he couldn't give orders,
stepping away from everything
without even appointing someone else to take his place.
I don't know how much you know about armies,
but that's never a good thing.
When the British finally arrived, the Scots stood there,
confused as they didn't have a single order to act on.
They're coming with guns.
They're coming with guns!
What do we do?
Some of the soldiers literally just ran away,
while others watched without charging
or defending themselves at all.
Only a few fought but of course to no avail.
In the end, the small British army captured
12 hundred prisoners out of the 18,000 troop army.
Number eight is Fort Michilimackinac.
All's fair in sports and war.
In 1761, when the British took over Fort Michilimackinac,
which is present day Michigan,
they found themselves next to the Ojibwa tribe.
For months, they live peacefully,
watching as members of the tribe
started playing a game called Begadwe,
which was a precursor to the sport
that we know today as lacrosse.
Now they played this game near the entrance to the fort,
but what the British soldiers did not know
was that the Ojibwa people despised them.
At first, the games were watched from behind the walls,
until the soldiers started feeling more comfortable
with the Ojibwa people and began enjoying the games outside,
next to the matches area.
They would even place bets against the savages.
Then in 1763, a ball accidentally
flew over the fort's walls.
The soldiers left the gates open, allowing the teams,
although made up of warriors, through.
Once inside the walls, the Ojibwa suddenly attacked.
Almost instantly, they seized control of the fort,
killing almost all of the soldiers,
and holding the fort for an entire year.
Damn kids, see once again, always close the door behind you!
Mama telling you what's best baby.
Number nine is the USS William D. Porter.
When you consider all of the accidents,
mistakes that this ship and its crew endured,
it's a miracle that it survived as long as it did.
In 1943, while leaving port,
the USS William D. Porter's crew,
forgot to raise the anchor.
It wound up scraping the sides of a sister ship,
causing a whole lot of damage.
Then only 24 hours later,
a depth charge casually rolled off the deck,
exploding near the Iowa,
a ship that President Roosevelt happened to be on.
Woo, good thing they made it through those mistakes, Matt.
Yeah, I'm not done.
Then while firing fake torpedoes for tests,
a real one was actually launched directly at the same ship.
Now luckily the Iowa was warned in time and evaded it,
sparing the president once again.
Of course, this ship eventually
helped cause its own downfall when, on June 10th, 1945,
it shot down a Japanese kamikaze plane.
The porter managed to evade the falling plane,
only to have it explode under them.
The force of the blast actually lifted the ship
out of the water momentarily,
and after 12 minutes, it sank.
And unbelievably, out of all of that, no lives were lost.
Don't put all of the dumb people on one ship.
They have bombs.
They gonna do stupid stuff.
And number ten is Operation Barbarossa.
Adolf Hitler was a greedy man,
and if you're looking for proof,
look no further than when he tried to invade Russia in 1941.
Though Germany and Russia had signed a political,
economic non-aggressive pact,
in August of 1939, just two years prior,
German high commander and Hitler himself decided,
yeah let's invade Russia anyway.
They launched a force of over 4 million soldiers,
the largest military invasion force
in the history of warfare.
However, no matter how many men your army has,
you need to know your terrain
and the conditions that you'll be marching under.
Yeah, the problem was, Hitler didn't do his research,
and when the winter of 1941 hit, his forces hit an ice wall.
Not only did snow and ice slow the troops down,
but their weapons and equipment froze and became unusable.
Russians however were accustomed to the harsh temperatures
and fought back, pushing much of the German army away.
Interestingly enough, Napoleon Bonaparte
made the exact same mistake
over a century earlier with his army in 1812.
In mother Russia, land invade you.
So those were the 10 biggest military screw-ups in history.
But I wanna know from you,
was there another blunder a military or army has made
that deserves to be on this list?
Leave your response below,
because I'll be reading through them,
and I'm going to pin the best comment to the top.
Don't forget I got some great news for you, babies.
Starting Monday, January 30th,
I'm beginning a new upload schedule of daily uploads,
from Monday to Friday at exactly three PM,
Eastern Standard Time.
Yes, that means that every weekday,
at exactly three PM Eastern Standard Time,
you can expect a new video from me.
I hope you guys are as excited as I am,
and I will see you in just a couple days
with the new schedule.
Bye!