The army waits for the enemy forces to come over the hill. They’re ready
for anything...but are they ready for cats?
How did cats help defeat an army? Why did the British arm their navy with hammers to
take out U-Boats? These are some of the most insane military tactics that actually worked.
It was the battle of Arsuf in the Third Crusade, and the Christian forces of Richard the Lionheart
faced the Muslim army of Saladin - who outnumbered them three to one. King Richard knew he was facing
a losing battle - so he chose to wait. Forming a defensive perimeter by a river, he let Saladin’s
army shoot at them from afar until Saladin assumed the Crusaders weren’t moving. He ordered his men
to move to a better position - and as soon as they moved, Richard ordered his men into action,
taking the Muslim forces by surprise through the power of patience.
Sometimes, high-tech warfare requires a low-tech solution.
During World War II, the fields of Europe were littered with explosive mines.
One wrong step could kill a soldier and wound everyone around him.
But the soldiers found a unique way to survive - getting up-close and personal. Instead of walking,
they would crawl on the ground and use a tool to dig into the ground at a thirty-degree angle.
Because the land mines were triggered on the top, digging into them from the side would let them
be removed safely, and these “prodders” helped soldiers escape the war with life and limb intact.
And sometimes, nature lends a helping hand.
Rule number one of warfare - you never invade Russia in the winter! The Teutonic Knights,
a powerful German brigade representing the Catholic forces of the Crusades, were at war
with the Russian Orthodox forces on their home turf. The Crusaders brought modern armor and
battle horses - but that worked against them when they reached Lake Peipus. While the Russians could
easily retreat over the lake, it couldn’t hold the weight of the armored Crusaders. While stories of
the ice breaking under the Crusaders were a Soviet film embellishment, the unfriendly terrain gave
the Russians enough time to fend off the Crusaders with their archers and send them into retreat.
When you’re outgunned, you use everything you can.
It was 1914, and Germany had changed the face of warfare forever. Their Unterseeboots,
better known as the U-Boats, were turning the waters into a killing field.
These submerged boats were impossible to detect and a single U-Boat sunk over a
dozen British ships including massive cruisers. As the situation worsened,
the British scrambled to find a solution, but the German ships were hard to sink. The brass
noticed that they had one weakness - they needed their periscope to find a target before firing.
Take out the periscope, take out the U-Boat’s power.
While many crazy solutions were proposed, including training birds or sea lions to
attack the periscope or spraying it with paint, ultimately a low-tech solution was proposed.
Soldiers would be put on small patrol boats with one job - look out for
periscopes popping up to the surface, and guide the boat over to them. Then,
slip a bag on the periscope, and hit it with a hammer quickly! If done right,
the U-boat will be neutralized and the soldier can get away. No one knows how
many U-Boats the hammer corps managed to knock out before depth charges were invented.
It wasn’t the only time the low-tech option saved the day.
When you think of fearsome wartime vehicles, you probably don’t think of bicycles.
But in 1942, the British learned the hard way. The British colony of Singapore was one of the
most valuable ports in Asia, and now it had come under attack by the Japanese. The war in Europe
meant many troops had been sent home, and only a smaller group of Commonwealth
soldiers remained to fend off the invasion. But they were confident - they thought the
Japanese ground troops wouldn’t be able to handle Singapore’s rough terrain.
Not on foot, they wouldn’t - but they weren’t on foot.
The Japanese soldiers came across the territory on bicycles, which gave them a massive advantage.
Not only could they move much faster over tricky terrain, but they could strap their
provisions to the back of the bikes and not have to carry them in their gear.
While much of Singapore didn’t have roads for larger vehicles, the Japanese bicycle infantry
could make their way over ramshackle bridges with ease. The Japanese forces that invaded were far
larger than the British expected, and soon the Japanese and their bicycles had taken Singapore.
If you need an edge on your enemy, you can always distract them.
In the year 623, what would one day be China was divided between warring kingdoms.
The Tuyuhun Kingdom had invaded the territory of the Tang Dynasty,
and the Tuyuhan had come with a massive battalion of archers. When they got to the higher ground,
General Ch’ai Shao of the Tang almost found his army wiped out. They retreated,
but the General knew he needed to get his Cavalry into position to attack. He needed
a way to distract the Tuyuhan - and there was one thing needed in almost any military camp.
Time to send in the ladies.
A pair of women from Ch’ai Shao’s camp were sent to meet the Tuyuhan, along with a musician.
When they arrived, the women began dancing to the music, performing an appealing routine that led
the soldiers to immediately drop what they were doing and watch them. While the women danced,
the Tang General moved his men into position and launched an attack on the Tuyuhan camp,
wiping them out. This could have been avoided if the Tuyuhan asked where the
random dance troupe came from - but they probably weren’t thinking with their heads.
For one of the most unlikely military tactics, you have to go all the way back to Roman times.
It was the Gallic Wars, as Julius Caesar sought to consolidate his empire in what would one day
be France. A Gallic revolt in the town of Alesia in 52 BCE had led Rome to send 60,000 Legionnaires
to the battle - but they were outnumbered. The Gallic tribes were putting up a fight against the
mighty Roman army, and soon word reached Caesar that a much larger relief force was coming to
assist the Gauls. It seemed like he would have to retreat and take a shocking loss for the Empire.
But Caesar had other plans.
His army built two walls - one surrounding the Gauls in Alesia and keeping them from escaping,
and another one surrounding the Romans to keep the larger forces from making their way in.
This meant the Romans would fight a war on two fronts, trapping themselves between
two hostile armies - but the Roman army didn’t become this powerful by accident.
The dual siege went on for several weeks, with the Romans outnumbered, but the Roman
cavalry ultimately fended off both the enemy forces and put an end to the revolt in Gaul.
Of course, one of the best ways to neutralize an enemy army is...laziness?
Denis Sefton Delmer was an unlikely war hero. A Jewish journalist from Britain
but born in Berlin, he was interested in the threat of Nazism from the start.
He even became one of the few British journalists to interview Hitler. But when war broke out,
he took Britain’s side quickly and became one of their secret weapons. He helped Britain
create fake radio broadcasts filled with lies that would confuse German soldiers,
but one of his best ideas was a trick that could help to depopulate the German army.
And all it took was a trick that every schoolboy knows.
Delmer created pamphlets that contained detailed instructions on how to fake an illness.
Most countries had a draft during World War II, and there was no shortage of
young men who were desperate to avoid the battlefield. The books and pamphlets even
contained recipes that would make someone temporarily sick but leave no ill effects,
and were distributed around Germany much to the anger of the Nazis - who put Delmer on a hit list.
But he remained safe in Britain, and the German army had more no-shows at roll call by the day.
This next tactic combined unlikely weapons with unlikely warriors.
The Eastern Front in World War II was the most brutal of the entire war,
as the Russian army faced off against the invading Nazis. The Germans were bringing modern
bomber planes, and the Russians chose to oppose them with - bi-planes? Not only were they using
old-fashioned planes that only carried two bombs each, but they were piloted by the Night Witches,
a group of women who often only had four hours of training before they took to the skies.
The Germans no doubt thought it would be an easy fight.
It was - for the Night Witches.
The Russians knew what they were doing, and they took the superior German forces by surprise.
The biplanes had wooden frames, making it impossible for radar to detect them.
The German planes might have been much faster, but they weren’t built to decelerate,
and that meant that it was tricky for them to accurately hit the humble Russian biplanes.
While the Soviets took the heaviest casualties of any military during the war,
the Night Witches and their biplanes became some of the only Russian air forces to survive.
But the most unexpected tool to win wars is often animals.
Timur came from powerful stock - he was a descendant of Genghis Khan,
and he followed in his ancestor’s footsteps by weaving a trail of conquest across Asia. But his
biggest challenge would be the capture of Delhi, where he faced a powerful sultan with an army
including 120 war elephants. These powerful beasts could easily stomp an invading army,
and Timur only had an army with load-carrying camels. How could camels beat elephants?
But Timur remembered something about elephants - they scare easily.
As the war elephants approached, Timur ordered his men to dismount the camels and load them up
with as much hay as would fit. He then lit the hay on fire, and sent the terrified,
burning camels running towards the elephants! This startled the elephants, sending them running
backward and trampling their own army. He had sacrificed the camels, but the elephants were
unharmed - and quickly tamed by Timur and his men to lead them into the Sultan’s territory.
But the flaming camels weren’t the only animals afire to turn the tide of a battle.
King Harald III of Norway began his adulthood as a simple mercenary,
and that was where he earned the name Harald the Ruthless. While working for the Byzantine empire,
he was sent to aid in the prolonged siege of a Sicilian settlement.
They were surrounded by impenetrable walls, and while Harald had the superior army,
he couldn’t afford to wait them out. He needed a secret weapon - and one came from the sky.
And soon, so would fire.
Harald observed that birds frequently scavenged in the fields but made their nests in the city
and sent mercenaries to trap as many as they could, and then carefully tied wood chips to
their legs. Before releasing them, the wood chips were set on fire, and the birds were then sent
back to their nests - where they set hundreds of fires around the city, creating chaos and
allowing the Byzantine forces to sweep in and conquer it. And hey, grilled birds for dinner.
But one strange tactic involving animals left them unharmed.
It was the Battle of Pelusium in 525 BCE,
and Cambyses II of Persia was facing off against the superior Egyptian forces. And
he had a secret weapon - cats. The fuzzy felines were revered in Egyptian religion,
with Pharaohs often being buried with their most prized cats. That meant that the Egyptian
army would treat them with kid gloves - and that’s what Cambyses II was counting on when he invaded.
The Egyptian army was about to get cat overload.
The first step - paint cats on the shields of the invading soldiers. Even destroying an
image of a cat was considered taboo in Egyptian culture. But the invading army went further and
had a collection of hundreds of cats placed at the front line of the Persians. Miraculously,
it worked - despite how hard it is to get cats to do anything. The Egyptians refused to harm the
cats and retreated, and the Persians successfully massacred the army and captured the Pharaoh.
But one military tactic had the losers wondering if the enemy had conquered death.
Life in Viking times was harsh, and so it was no surprise when a Viking Chief named Hastein died in
his prime. His men took him to the city walls and asked for passage to give him a Christian burial
within the city - and the city proved they learned nothing from the story of the Trojan horse.
It was all a scam, and within the city walls Hastein rose from his coffin and led his men
in the pillaging of the city. There was just one problem - Hastein thought he was sacking Rome, but
his men had taken him to the city of Luna instead. A for military tactics, D- for cartography.
For more on military strategy, check out “What Is Guerilla Warfare?”, or watch this video instead.