Funny things in history thread

Funny things in history thread.

>Russo-Japanese War
>Pacific Fleet gets bottled up in Vladivostok, Russian land forces getting BTFO
>Admiralty decides to send the Baltic Fleet to the Pacific to save the day
>six battleships, most modern warships Russia has
>crews and ships completely unprepared for combat
>the battleship Oryol sinks in the harbor before they even leave
>finally make it out into the North Sea behind schedule in autumn 1904
>Britain is Japan's ally, not at war but suspected of aiding the Japanese somehow because you can't trust merchants
>midnight on the North Sea, Dogger Bank off the East Coast of England

>suddenly, the supply freighter Kamchatka signals that she is under attack by torpedo boats
>PANIC.jpg
>entire fleet comes about and steams straight into save their comrade, guns blazing
>the cruisers Aurora and Dmitri Donskoy are misidentified as Japanese and hit repeatedly by friendly fire, killing a sailor and a ship's chaplain
>numerous cruisers report being hit by torpedoes, begin emergency maneuvers
>the battleship Borodino reports being boarded by Japanese forces, crew attempt to abandon ship

>20 minutes of panicked firing later, someone signals to cease fire
>searchlights illuminate a tiny cluster of unarmed, severely distressed British fishing trawlers, one slowly sinking
>three Englishmen dead
>oops
>Russian fleet decides to just keep sailing and pretend nothing happened

>next morning, trawlers limp home, the Royal Navy absolutely flips their shit and raises steam on the entire Channel Fleet
>suddenly the Russians find their six-battleship fleet being pursued by TWENTY-EIGHT battleships
>surrounded and forced to park off Spain until St. Petersburg finally apologizes and gives Britain enough money not to sink their entire navy as revenge

If you're counting, you'll have noticed that the Russians only managed a 2:3 kill ratio against unarmed fishermen. The Oryol fired 500 shells and hit nothing.

Other urls found in this thread:

hullwebs.co.uk/content/l-20c/disaster/dogger-bank/voyage-of-dammed.htm
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

This is the fleet they expected to save Vladivostok from the Japanese.

>fleet preparing to set sail, when a mysterious submarine is found in a crate aboard an American clipper
>base goes on full alert because it must be an attempted Japanese sneak attack!!!
>turns out the Russian Admiralty bought a submarine but forgot to tell anyone in the fleet or the port authority

>Bongs finally let the fleet go after holding them hostage at Tangiers under the guns of half the RN
>Circumnavigating the Cape of Good Hope, support freighters and transports keep falling out due to mechanical failure

>Baltic Fleet finally reaches Madagascar, only to find a message ordering them to hold there indefinitely

>turns out the Admiralty decided to dispatch reinforcements (all old, broken-down ships which the fleet commander had explicitly refused) with orders to "Locate the Baltic Fleet, whose course and heading are unknown to us..."

>2 months sitting in port at Madagascar in summertime
>all crews are confined to ships the whole time
>malaria everywhere
>four different Torpedo Destroyers lost to mechanical failures just from sitting at anchor
>three separate mutinies by pissed off, diseased crewmen

>reinforcements still not there
>decide to hold gunnery practice
>every single battleship misses their targets on every salvo
>exactly one hit scored, on the tug towing the target ship
>gunnery practice is aborted early because it turns out the Admiralty didn't issue enough ammunition for the battleships, while Kamchatka suddenly starts signaling that she's sinking for no reason and one of the cruisers has to stop practice because of a "very large snake" wrapped around the breech of their fore battery

>dozens of crew dead of malaria, decide to hold funeral at sea
>Borodino accidentally uses live ammunition for the salute
>hits the Aurora, again

>reinforcements finally arrive
>ur fucked now, cyka nips
>Tsushima ensues

They also bought wild animals in the coast of Africa that killed crewmenbers

Why are Russians so incompetent?

Here is the full thing. Something that doesn't get posted on here enough. The abridged Veeky Forums screencap only has 50% of the pure, fucking chaos that actually happened. The journey was so fucking insane that it takes someone having to prove that it happened with their PhD thesis that it is even believable.

hullwebs.co.uk/content/l-20c/disaster/dogger-bank/voyage-of-dammed.htm

>When two fishermen delivering consular dispatches from the Tsar approached the fleet, the Russians opened fire. Ironically, the two men, who were thankfully unharmed due to the appalling standards of Russian gunnery, had a personal message for Rozhestvensky from Tsar Nicholas informing him that he had now been promoted to Vice-Admiral.

>Pope hires Michelangelo to paint Sistine Chapel
>He's a sculptor but fuck it he's the best artist in the world and can't turn down a job offer from the Pope
>Realizes later that his painting skills probably suck and everyone is going to laugh at what a shitty job he does
>Runs away
>Pope finds him and brings him back
>Michelangelo says that he ran away because Raphael was planning on killing him because he was jealous of his art skills
>Pope doesn't believe him and makes him paint anyway

Sounds like a f...

>To lift their spirits, the crews collected exotic pets on shore visits - including a crocodile and a poisonous snake that caused a panic on one battleship when it wrapped itself around the guns and then bit the commanding officer. The fleet turned into a floating zoo as a bizarre menagerie of birds and animals was left free to roam the decks.
>Events took a more severe downturn when the cooling plant on the "Esperance", the fleet's refrigerated supply ship, broke down. A lot of rotting meat had to be jettisoned which resulted in the fleet being followed by sharks.

How did these guys even become sailors

->

>Land on opposite sides of an empty island
>Proceed to shoot eachother