From ancient times to the Bay of Pigs and the Falklands War, military history has been marked as much by misjudgements and incompetence as by gallantry and glory. Such blunders have sometimes ended in tragedy, sometimes in farce and sometimes they have ended in triumph, despite all the odds.
In this fascinating and entertaining collection, author Geoffrey Regan not only recounts some of the staggering stories, but also highlights the kinds of difficulties that can lead to disaster, on land, at sea and in the air. His anecdotes encompass every aspect of warfare from the insanity of commanders - one Prussian general believed he was pregnant with an elephant - to the provision of inadequate supplies - such as the occasion when a British force surrounded by fierce African tribesmen broke open the ammunition boxes, only to find that they contained biscuits.
Proving the old adage that 'worse things happen at sea', we also discover who was responsible for the design of the Admiral Popov, the circular Russian battleship that couldn’t steer straight and how the British cruiser HMS Trinidad managed to torpedo itself in the Arctic. From the early abortive attempts at manned flight in the Renaissance period through the first faltering attempts to harness balloons for military purposes in the 18th and 19th centuries, through two World Wars, the Falklands and beyond, the adoption of flying machines into the military armoury has provided yet more opportunities for mishap and disaster to the Forces.
'The Great Book of Military Blunders' offers a wealth of absorbing thought-provoking and entertaining anecdotes from the field of war.
