Since the very beginning, wars have been predominantly fought by young men. And young
men aren’t exactly known for their decision-making skills. This was no different during the Second
World War, when a stupid decision might mean the difference between life and death.
In this video, we tell five stories of the dumbest mistakes made by the soldiers of World War II.
Fighter pilots have always had a reputation as show-offs,
and it was no different for the pilots of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Flying high above the
seas, engaged in aerial death dances, these flyboys were more than a little bit cocky.
During the Guadalcanal campaign, USMC pilot Lieutenant Jack
Conger flew his F4F Wildcat in defence of Henderson Airfield. His job was to attack
Japanese bombers and provide air cover for the beleaguered marines on the ground.
On one occasion, while flying high above the ocean, Conger had a brush with death.
He had become separated from his group and was in a desperate dogfight against a Japanese Zero. The
planes dodged and scissored, but it soon became clear the Japanese pilot had the upper hand.
Each sharp, defensive turn lost Conger more altitude, and that could spell his death
in a fight like this. One bad manoeuvre later and the Zero was right behind him,
ready to make the kill. Conger vividly recalled what happened next:
“He did the damnedest thing you ever saw. He came down from above and behind, and instead of riding
it out on my tail and filling me full of bullets, he let himself go too fast so that he went by me.
He should’ve dodged off to one side and got out of there, but instead of that the fool rose right up
under my nose and did a roll. What was he trying to do? Impress me with his gymnastics?
Apparently those fellows have been told that they were the best flyers in the world,
they had to show their tricks when they had an audience. Or maybe he thought I couldn’t hit
him if he kept his plane tumbling like that. As a matter of fact, he was just making himself a
bigger target. I used a three second burst, and he was dead before I stopped firing.”
Conger survived the dogfight and scored nine more aerial victories in the Pacific. He was
a humble man, never forgetting the time that Japanese pilot was brought down by hubris alone.
Explosives are at the very top of the list of things you shouldn’t play with,
but sometimes common sense isn’t all that common.
A few US soldiers fighting in the Pacific made this painful discovery in 1943.
One of the weapons the Japanese Army brought to bear against the Allies was the Type-89
grenade discharger. This device comprised a small tube with a spring-loaded mechanism and was fixed
to a curved baseplate. It was designed to be propped up on the ground or a log at a fixed
angle of 45-degrees, from where a three-man team could fire 25 grenades per minute. It
proved to be a very effective method of supplying small units with an indirect fire capability.
It wasn’t long before the advancing Americans found a few Type-89s lying
around captured enemy positions. The first thing they noticed was its curved baseplate,
which just so happened to fit quite snuggly on a soldier’s knee. Since they hadn’t seen it used
before, the soldiers assumed the operator braced the device on their knee from a kneeling position.
It was comfortable and it sort of looked right, so why not?
The first American soldier to try this discovered why not. The Type-89 had quite a kick, and when
it fired, it immediately broke the man’s femur. You’d think they would only make a mistake like
this once, but other curious soldiers tried out these so-called “Knee Mortars” several more times,
breaking several more legs, before a training manual officially banned the practice.
It seems that mortars brought soldiers no end of trouble during the war. Far from the Pacific
theatre, on the battlefields of central Europe, partisan command was discovering this first hand.
Before firing, a British mortar shell was primed so that when it was knocked sharply—like when it
hit the ground—it would detonate. Standard stuff, but this became a problem when Special Operations
Executive decided to send some to Yugoslavia to help the Slovene partisans in their war effort.
Lieutenant General Franc Rozman, known by his partisan name “Stane,” was the
top Slovene partisan commander. He was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War and had
been a thorn in the side of the Germans occupying Yugoslavia since 1941. In September 1944, he was
awarded the prestigious Order of Suvorov for his leadership. Less than a month later, he was dead.
On November 7th 1944, a team of partisans set up a brand-new 2-inch mortar they had received in
a British airdrop. All was going well, until they loaded the first shell. It slid down the tube and
exploded the moment it hit the firing pin, fatally wounding Stane and several others.
As it turns out, airdropping munitions designed to explode when they receive a sharp knock
is a really terrible idea. One week after the incident, SOE reported,
“A recent series of 2 inch mortar premature [detonations] has been traced to ammo use in
airborne exercists in which a proportion of the fuses became armed when dropped.
Units will destroy forthwith any fuses [from] 2 or 4-inch [shells] which have been dropped
by parachute and have been observed to make abnormally heavy landing[s].”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the Allies’ greatest military failures was also the
scene of several smaller incidents, such as what happened to poor Private Cassidy.
Cassidy was a Paratrooper of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers,
a unit incorporated into the British 1st Airborne Division.
He jumped into Arnhem on September 17th 1944 as part of Operation Market Garden.
Market Garden has been made infamous by modern historians as a decisive Allied defeat,
and it was. Troops were deployed in three separate lifts instead of in one big group,
scattering units over a broad area. Many radio operators were also given the wrong equipment,
which severely hampered communications. The result was isolated groups of paratroopers
stuck on their own in occupied Holland, holding out with rifles against German tanks.
Private Cassidy was a light machine gunner armed with a Bren.
He fought alongside other members of 15 Platoon at the White House, otherwise known as Dreyeroord.
They were holding out, but their situation was becoming increasingly desperate. At 0530 on
September 19th, the Germans attacked in force. Mortars rained down, and the paras opened fire.
In the heat of the moment, Cassidy’s Bren jammed. He needed to get it working again, so the young
soldier stood up amid the battle, looked down the barrel, and smashed the weapon’s butt into
the ground. The jam cleared, the bolt cycled, and poor Cassidy shot himself through the head.
Few are keen to admit it, but often dumb luck plays the greatest role in life
or death situations. That was certainly true for Polish pilot Czestaw Tarkowski,
who was saved from death by an offhand comment.
There weren’t just British pilots fighting in the Battle of Britain.
Men from all over the British Commonwealth, as well as Poland and Czechoslovakia,
willingly joined the fight against the Luftwaffe in the skies of Britain. Their contributions are
often overlooked, but bullet-for-bullet, Polish pilots were the best the Royal Air Force had.
Czesław Tarkowski was one of these men. He flew a Hawker Hurricane in No. 303 Squadron,
the deadliest Royal Air Force squadron in the Royal Air Force.
By the end of the war, Tarkowski was a fighter ace and his fellows had shot down 126 German planes.
During one particularly brutal dogfight, Tarkowski was hit and forced to bail out of
his smoking Hurricane a few thousand feet above the British countryside.
Once his parachute deployed, he watched his stricken plane trail away into the distance,
its engine still running. Tarkowski landed in a tree near a village and called out to the locals
who had watched him fall. But his accent was thick, and his English virtually non-existent.
The villagers didn’t know an air battle was raging just out of sight. All they saw was a
lone parachutist in RAF uniform stuck in a tree, shouting in a language that sounded a bit like
German. They jumped to the conclusion that he was an enemy infiltrator and, after forming a mob,
advanced on Tarkowski with pitchforks and clubs. The pilot tried to convince them he was friendly,
but the villagers wouldn’t have it. Until, in frustration, he shouted “F*** OFF!”
When they heard that, the villagers stopped and cried, "He’s one of ours!”
A lucky escape. But what do YOU think? Which of these mistakes do YOU think was the worst?
Do YOU think the Japanese pilot was just trying to show off his skills? Why do YOU think SOE
thought dropping mortar shells from a plane was a good idea? Let us know in the comments!