Victory by the Fuck-ups of others

And the grand finale is...

Here!

Now, in case any of these pics failed to do it, here is a short tale of the Japanese fucking up after the battle of Tsushima.

>Victory over baka Russians
>Go to home port
>Admiral decides that the men should rest tonight and tomorrow we parade
>Alcohol prohibited
>Nobody is allowed to disembark
>Crew decides to party anyways
>Hold a secret sake party in the powder magazine of the flagship Mikasa
>Only gods know what a glorious party was had and those who live theorize that somebody accidentally knocked over an oil lamp
>Entire powder magazine explodes waking up the rest of the ship, the fleet, the port town and several towns in 50 kilometer radius
>Flagship is sinking in the port with a large hole in it
>Ship gets moored permanently and is made into naval museum

I had a character in a superhero game whose whole thing was spraying people with glue. Kinda like Spiderman except with glue instead of webs. At one point I was fighting a villain who was pretty much evil Captain America. He didn't have any special powers, he was just crazy good at fighting and fighting-related skills. The thing was, we didn't know each other's power-set, so I thought he was just some mook and tried to take him one-on-one. Big mistake, this asshole dodged everything I threw at him and just wore me down with regular punches.

He beat me into a broken mess and then picked me up to deliver the finishing blow. Which was his big mistake, because grappling me meant he could no longer dodge my attacks, so he immediately got hotglue'd right in the face.

I'm 99% sure it was just the GM taking pity on me, but it was still pretty funny.

Theoretically, it's possible to lose a game of chess in just two moves. Look up "Fool's Mate."

>the battleship Oryol sinks in the harbor before they even leave
>The Oryol fired 500 shells and hit nothing
...how?

Black can deliver mate on their second move (so four moves between both players). It's called Fool's Mate and it's the shortest possible complete game of chess.

I'll never understand how you can be careless in a room literally filled with explosives.

Alcohol mate.

Right but if the party was in the magazine that implies they drank after they already got there?

I guess pre drinking isn't a new concept

They raised the Oryol after it sunk. The harbor wasn't especially deep.

The Oryol firing 500 shells and hitting nothing isn't actually that unusual. Remember that this is before the invention of radar. Most ships only hit 2-3% of the time.

Either that or they thought that the heavy armoring of the citadel surrounding the powder magazine would dull the sounds of the party and so they chose it so they wouldn't be discovered.

This.
Also we must remember that Oryol was a pre-dreadnaught era battleship, built with a different battleship doctrine than for example Mikasa or most other battleships of the later times and even modern ones of the era.
This sort of design i callas "tons of armor all over the place and lots of small short range guns to pew pew the shit out of anything that comes within ""melee"" range".
On the other hand Mikasa and more modern battleships were built with the doctrine of "Let's attach couple of turrets on the ship, mount fuck huge guns on it and armor super heavily all the places that can blow up or sink the ship in one shot".

I lost a game of 40k when in a 1000pts game I lost my 10 man terminator (about 500pts)squad to deep striking off the table on turn 2, I was then left with a scout squad, tactical squad and captain. I got stomped by the end of term 4.

>Neutral ports are closed to Russia
>French ports are closed to Russia
Why? The French were at the time setting up an encirclement of Germany, right? Wouldn't letting German ships into their African and Asian ports be a great way to win them over without actually doing anything?

*Russian ships
of course

Would you let a fleet of unruly folks who are by now notorious of shooting at any ship believing it is just another Japanese torpedo boat in disguise AND who have gotten themselves on the bad side of the "Empire upon which sun never sets" which also has the largest navy in the world?

meh, the japs lost two battleships to mines

Maybe I'm going full retard, but would the British really go to war over letting an ally's ship into your ports when the Brits aren't even formally involved in the war?

I do get that the Russian fleet going full retard on numerous instances doesn't exactly sweeten the pot though.

This...this is amazing. I've never heard the full story before.

My sides have left me and all that's left are questions.

How do you almost torpedo yourself?

How big was this fucking snake?

How do you hit the boat towing the target unless you actively aim at the boat?

And then to top it all off, the Japanese party so hard they blow up their flagship.

What is it about early to mid twentieth century warfare that just allows for hilariously terrible shit to happen.

Like that guy who won a VC by fending off an entire Chinese human wave attack in the Korean War by throwing grenades at them until he ran out.

Then he proceeded to throw beer bottles and other shit at them until they retreated from this screaming, psychotic Englishman.

Source: warhistoryonline.com/featured/grenades-throwing-bottles.html

This...this is amazing. I've never heard the full story before.

My sides have left me and all that's left are questions.

How do you almost torpedo yourself?

How big was this fucking snake?

How do you hit the boat towing the target unless you actively aim at the boat?

And then to top it all off, the Japanese party so hard they blow up their flagship.

What is it about early to mid twentieth century warfare that just allows for hilariously terrible shit to happen.

Like that guy who won a VC by fending off an entire Chinese human wave attack in the Korean War by throwing grenades at them until he ran out.

Then he proceeded to throw beer bottles and other shit at them until they retreated from this screaming, psychotic Englishman.

Source: warhistoryonline.com/featured/grenades-throwing-bottles.html

...

I gotta admit that i dont really know what was going on with the reasoning the French had, but the Dogger bank incident did become such a colossal shitstorm it was on the news at the time across the world with a trial being held in France where surviving fishermen were being heard and where Russian navy officials had to try and explain how their end fucked up.

There's also this one Canadian, Léo Major, who liberated an entire Dutch city singlehandedly with a machinegune and grenades, and somehow convinced the Nazis that at the very least an entire corps was attacking them.

In honor of my two trips and those 3 trips of yours i shall now listen to the Martian battle cant for the rest of the night.

youtube.com/watch?v=wy-sVTaZRPk

Go to war? No, probably not, but there's plenty of other things they could have done to show thier displeasure; less favourable trade agreements, helping France's enemies (or, at least, not *not* helping France's enemies) in revenge, general lack of willingness to do France any favours in the immediate future, and so-so.

Remember; international politics then as always worked on the basis of 'you stab my back & I'll stab yours'.

Weak.

I was expecting this one: youtube.com/watch?v=2eCAphdQPck

> tfw I fools mate a class mate who loved chess
I barely played. I was smug as shit, and immediately retired.

Oops, sorry guys.

Captcha glitched so I accidently double-posted.

As an apology, I present to you the Battle of Kiska.

The operation to take the island was called Operation Cottage and it only goes down hill from here.

>PCs serving as drafted footsloggers forced to pay off a debt to a baron through service
>at war with the elves, the commander is a literal death knight, takes army for a daring raid, captures and razes an important elven stronghold
>elven army arrives, outnumbered them 3v1 when usual human war books call for a usual ratio of 2 to in their favor for parity
>it is the elite core of the elven kingdom, the king himself wants to make a show of avenging the fortress, the entire royal court, nobles, retainers, knights, everyone who country in high society is here
>they even wait a day instead of just running down the humans so their baggage train arrives fully
>humans realize there is nowhere to run and offer unconditional surrender(their commander fully knowing it will be rejected)
>nowhere to run and forced to fight to death they dig in, they had the time to dig trenches and cannon emplacements
>elven king decides to showboat and lead the charge carrying their ancient war banner, the relic that seals the pact between nature and the realm enabling the elves to freely access the ley lines and use magic
>he is cocksure because personal soothsayer promised no cannonbal aimed at him can ever hit and his mithril fullplate is impenetrable
>humans fire off first volleys bouncing it off the ground, to increase range and strike through ranks a common tactic at the time
>one of them hits the king dead center and turns him into chunky elf salsa

>entire army just stares in disbelief
>human commander immediatly sees history is in the making and orders a countercharge
>he actually manages to capture the elven flag and drives his unholy blade through it
>bam, no more magic for the elves. at all
>a quarter of the elves try pressing the charge, a quarter off them breaks off to defend the nobles, a quarter off them stands frozen in disbelief and a quarter of them just routs
>absolute total chaos, nobles turn on eachother to settle vendettas and ordering their retinues to cut them a way through the elves to escape
>but its for nothing, the humans press the advantage and encirles the elven army
>despite the many offerings from elven nobles and concubines they slaughter the entire army and the camp follwers too, only about a dozen elves manage to escape
>the entire elven realm is gutted, lost their king, their source of magic, their ruling caste,their best and brightest civil servants and their familes and so much treasure the human army needed to disband all of its cavalry and leave its cannons behind to carry it away
>entire kingdom collapses into a fragmented civil war days later

>actually, the human king just wanted to drag out the war for a decade, drum up nationalistic support from all the fiefdoms and declare himself emperor and this victory is a huge setback for him

Inspired by actual historic fuckups. It was pretty fun for the PCs to go through such a historic event from the POV of a random soldier, especiall how often it was referenced later in the campaign.

Explain user.
Explain.

>How do you hit the boat towing the target unless you actively aim at the boat?

Thats easy, leading the target too much.

>How do you almost torpedo yourself?

Early torpedos were notoriously glitchy and prone to randomly fuck away in all directions, turn around or start circling. Even the acoustic and magnetic homing torpedos os WW2 werent any better, many german and american subs sanks from their own torpedoes turning around to hit them.

hey at lease its not as bad as the Australians vs the emu's.

Now as I'm sure as you all know, the pacific campaign was the most jolliest theatre in the entirety of WW2 and a good time was had by all.

The date was the 15th August 1943 and by now the Allies had learned just how good the Japanese were at playing hide and seek.

Knowing this, the Allies decided that they were going to start seeking after only counting for five seconds.

Unfortunately, the Japanese's mum called and they had to go home for lunch. They were in such a rush to fill their grumbly bellies that they forgot to tell the Allies that they went home.

Now being the clever clogs that they were the Americans and Canadians decided to start searching from opposite sides of the island, so they could find the Japanese twice as fast.

Unfortunately it was very foggy when they were playing, so when they found each other they thought they were Japanese.

This startled the Americans so much that they fired at the Canadians who, because it would be rude not too, fired back.

After much merriment and some boo-boos were had, the Allies realised they had been very silly and many an embarrassed apology was given.

Meanwhile an American ship accidently drove into a mine that fell out of the Japanese's toy box as they were running away. This caused an itty-bitty amount of severe structural damage and many scraped knees among the sailors.

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cottage

Only the Japanese started WWII with working torpedoes. Scared the unholy fuck of the Navy for a while.

I realize this is probably too much to ask, but I want you to narrate several other highlights of WW2.

>The Holocaust, Two Nukes Weren't Enough and other Jolly Tales by Uncle Adolf

I have no idea how I forgot this little nugget of military history.

It's bad enough losing a war to an unprepared, unarmed opposition in your own land, but when the enemy is a bird with a brain smaller than the palm of your hand, that's something special.

Also, i remember some highlights from the battle of Tsushima itself.
Prepare for posts!
>Night before the battle is misty
>Japanese vessel Shinano Maru notices three lights on the horizon
>Moves closer to investigate
>Notices a silhouette of a Russian ship
>The Russian ship mistakes Shinano maru for one of their own and via light signals tells the ship the exact location of the fleet so it could return into formation
>Shinano Maru telegraphs enemy fleets position back to their own fleet and they leave
>Come morning the Japanese navy is around and ready to bombard the Russians
>Russian battleship Borodino becomes the first armored battleship in human history to be sunk by shells from another armored battleship
>It's powder magazine goes up and resulting smoke and fire trap the crew, causing all hands to be lost
>Russians lose few more battleships during the day
>By the end of the day, one of the admirals in Russian fleet by the name of Oskar Wilhelm Enkvist, decides to flee the battle
>His officers are near to mutiny after hearing his orders
>His flagship Oleg and cruisers Aurora and Zhemchug manage to flee the battle and seek sanctuary in the neutral port of Manila, which is under US control
>Enkvist and his men get detained and are sitting on an internment camp for the rest of the war
>During the night after the first battle Japanese engage in their most famous attack against the Russians, the one with tons of torpedo boats and destroyers running to close range of the Russian ships and firing torpedoes and shells at them
>Japanese losses nil, Russian losses loads
>Later that night Japanese lose contact with the Russians
>While searching for them they encounter strange lights at the sea
>They are Russian searchlights, the poor buggers put them on in order to see the Japs and shoot at them bot got shot at instead

To be continued...

During the Battle of France, the French Army was in a terrible state. Their baguettes had gone stale, the frog legs were running low and there wasn't a whiff of garlic to be seen.

Truly it was dark times.

Seeing the pitiful state of French morale, the brave souls of the Italian Cosseria dance troupe decided to do 5000 man tango through Pont-Saint Louis to brighten their spirits.

For 10 whole days, they danced for the entitlement of 9 disheartened French soldiers. Although they suffered 800 casualties in this once in a lifetime performance, they achieved their goal.

The 9 French soldiers gave a rounding applause, before leaving to join their comrades in the happy, fun time camps for the rest of the Italian concert tour of Europe.

All in all, this wholesome fun saw 6'000 gallant performers suffer boo-boos, whilst 250 audience members fainted from the excitement.

Sauce: lesaviezvous.net/history/in-1940-9-french-soldiers-fought-5000-italian-soldiers-for-a-week.html

>after all that paranoia in the english channel and the entire voyage they blindly trust an unindentified ship near japan

fucking hell

>Come next morning, admiral Nebogatov is just about ready to quit, he orders his ships to stop their engines and telegraph a declaration of surrender to the Japanese
>The Japanese code books lack the explanation for the international signal of "We surrender" and so they ignore coming messages and keep on firing at the Russians
>Nebogatov gets an idea and orders his troops to go to the officers mess and bring a white tablecloth with them
>Tablecloth is hoisted and Nebogatov thinks the Japs will quit
>As the Japanese admiral Togo notices this he remembers an incident that occured in the war with China in 1894
>There he let an enemy ship sail away under the white flag, thinking it had wanted to surrender
>So, he wouldn't make the same mistake twice and odered his ships to keep on firing
>At this point Nebogatov is scraping bottom of the barrel for ideas and manages to scrounge up somewhere an Japanese flag
>Flag is hoisted and the Japanese cease firing, Nebogatov and his surviving ships are captured
>Admiral Rozhestvensky is caught later that day, which marks the official end of the battle
>By now, only Russian ships that have managed to flee were the ones that went to Manila as well as 4 other ships which were headed towards Vladivostok
>One of the ships, Izumrud, runs aground near Siberia and the crew disembark the ship and scuttle it, continuing on foot towards their destination
>Three ships manage to make it to Vladivostok, they are Armored yacht/cruiser Almaz and destroyers Grozny and Bravy

Hm.

First dark heresy adventure and we find the cult leaders inner sanctum complete with slave girls chained to the walls.

We walk in and start looting of course.

Cue his entrance and it's this carapace armoires fuck with a runed up greatsword and a snaketongue.

>slaaneshi senses are going off

He proceeds to... do some early stuff and fucks it up so hard the DM had to collect himself for about 20 seconds.

He rolled terribly, manifested some phenomena, then perils, and ended up summon a straight up god damn demon in front of our rank one faces. It proceeded to start chewing on him and vomiting fire over his face.

We book it. Their is a administration shock squad we pass by and we tell them to RUUUUUN. They turn to look at us run past, and then they hear the screams of the demon pursuing us, and it starts tearing them a new asshole.

We got out, got the cult leaders journal, and ended up preventing a full blown incursion into the spire but mostly it was his own incompetence that did it.

>Early torpedos were notoriously glitchy and prone to randomly fuck away in all directions

Reminds me of this bit from Yes Primeminster (1:50 for relevant part): - youtu.be/IKQlQlQ6_pk

The best thing on Veeky Forums right now confirmed

Now as I'm sure you well know, the Germans in WW2 were known for two main things. Vegetarianism and love of exercise.

In fact they loved it so much, that they all went on a massive year long goose-stepping marathon around Europe. Unfortunately the French mistook their caravans for tanks and wouldn't allow them to use any of their campsites.

This made the Germans very upset, but then their holiday planner, Adolf Hitler, found a new place full of untamed wilderness where they could camp in peace, Russia.

The Germans were so excited, that they all rushed there in their millions into the hospitable, sunny wilderness of Russia.

Unfortunately the Germans soon found out that there was only a few places to buy their groceries from. One of these was Stalingrad.

Now Stalingrad was only a small resort town, so the Russians had to ship in millions of interns in order to fill all of the orders of Sausage and Sour kraut.

Whilst this was going on, the Germans set up a super cool club house where they could launch midnight snack raids on the Russian shops.

The Russians were very annoyed at this most rude behaviour, so they sent in a team of interns and an assistant manager to deal with these unruly tourists.

After chasing off these most rude ruffians, the assistant manager discovered that this was a most groovy club house. So groovy in fact, that he decided to make it his clubhouse and invited all his friends.

The Germans were very upset about losing their club house, mainly because Gunther and Dietrich left their beer-brewing kit in the basement.

Although they used all the mean tricks at their disposable, even trying to knock over the house with their campervans, they couldn't get their homebrew kit back.

Eventually, the Russians ran out of sausage and sour kraut so the Germans decided to go back home.

And thus ends the greatest camping holiday in German history.

badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?id=506519628414

>I'm going to Hell for this user, I hope your happy.

Japan in 1945 was a very chilly place. In fact it was so chilly that not even fluffy, little mittens couldn't keep their poor little hands warm.

The Americans were feeling really bad about breaking most of Japan's toys during the last year and especially bad for breaking the big, big aircraft carrier that Japan spent many months lovingly making in arts and crafts.

Now seeing all these poor people shivering from the cold, America decided to air drop thousands of campsites onto Japan to help warm them their little footsies.

Although thousands of Japanese managed to warm themselves around these campfires, but millions more couldn't get to the campfires in time before they died out.

Knowing that they could do better, America built one huge instant heater that could make an entire city all toasty and snug in an instant.

When the Americans turned on the first heater in Hiroshima, the citizens were so impressed that they were unable to put into words how good a job the Americans did.

Unsure of whether it worked or not, the Americans set up another heater in Nagasaki where it made many more Japanese people very happy, as they no longer needed their teensy, little mittens to stay warm.

The Japanese were so impressed at these gestures of friendship, that they immediately stopped bullying America and they have been best buddies ever since.

Feels: cracked.com/personal-experiences-1468-7-things-you-learn-surviving-atomic-blast.html

>"Two nukes weren't enough"
>It tells the story of how two nukes were exactly enough
poor form senpai

I know this is probably a bit selfish of me, but could someone more technically savvy screencap my "WW2 explained by 5-year olds" posts.

Unfortunately I am but a humble new-fag who does not know how to archive a thread on sup/tg/ or make a screen cap using paint.

I must venture forth now into the land of nod, but if this thread survives until tomorrow, I am more than happy to take requests on what moment of WW2 you want me to tackle next.

I'm also fairly knowledgeable in WW1 if you want me to start branching out.

>I'm also fairly knowledgeable in WW1 if you want me to start branching out.
ALPINE FRONT
ALPINE FRONT MOTHERFUCKER

You joke about this fleet but moving a fleet of coal powered battleships 18000 miles with no possibility of resupply along the way requiring half a million tonnes of coal was up until then one of the greatest logistical feats ever accomplished, for all the good it did.

Tsushima makes Jutland look like a competent affair.

Can you tell us the tail of Jutland, user?

During the first great German camping trip to France, the Italians and the Austro-Hungarians made a terrible discovery.

They found out that the Alps were made of chalk and in danger of collapse. If this were to happen, then no one would ever have a reason to visit them anymore.

Faced with losing all of their friends and pocket money, they decided to join forces to save the Alps.

Now because the Alps are a big big place, they needed to use very big big nails to hold it all together.

To help them make sure the nails fitted properly, each builder was given a "Fucile" or a "Gewehr"; which in English means "Screwdriver".

Unfortunately because chalk is very crumbly, there were many times where bits of the mountains would fall off and land on the toes of the poor builders who were trying keep them together.

Over the next couple of years, the builders stitched all the mountains together, so that they wouldn't be so crumbly. These stitches are called "trenches".

Now as you know, the Italians and the Austro-Hungarians are very playful people; so when it started to snow, they began to build the best snow forts they could.

Since each of them thought the other had the best snow fort, the builders had many snowball fights trying make the other ones run back home for hot chocolate and fuzzy slippers so they could have the forts all to themselves.

Unfortunately during some of these snowball fights, some builders got very chilly and had to go home because they caught the sniffles.

The best builders at snowballing were known as "Arditi" or "Sturmtruppen" which means "Really cool dudes" in English.

The motto of the Arditi was "O la vittoria, o tutti accoppati" which means "It doesn't matter if we win, as long as we have fun".

Just as the Germans were packing up their things for the long drive home, the Italians and Austro-Hungarians finally made enough trenches that the Alps were no longer in danger of collapsing and saved the day.

I'm afraid my knowledge of naval warfare is largely focused on the pacific in WWII, alas I have neglected most other fields of that study.
The rundown is despite Britain and Germany engaging in open combat on the sea nothing was accomplished except the British admiralty losing faith in the concept of the battle cruiser because they thought "Well it's got a battleships guns, let's have it fight like a battle ship" And losing almost twice as much tonnage as the Germans because of unsafe practices they continued to use because of "tradition".

Source, because it was either a foreign language joke or this in two parts.

Guess what I chose?

smithsonianmag.com/history/most-treacherous-battle-world-war-i-italian-mountains-180959076/

...

...

...

...

Thank you noble user for taking the time to turn my creations into easily saveable chunks.

I hope good fortune graces you in the days ahead.

not D&D but WHFB when i used to work at GW

>Vampire counts neckbeard wants to do a 2500 (fuckhuge) point game to test his lord character
>Vampire lord on zombie dragon, max allowed items, its like 750-800 points in one model
>only other WHFB player in the store at the time was a quiet 16 year old kid who painted more than played, and played emipre
>they spend over 30 minutes setting up for the game/deploying, empire goes first
>moves like 1 unit, goes to shooting phase
>fires a cannon at vamp lord
>cannons wound on a 2+, but an unsaved wound multiplies into D6 wounds
>vamp failes his ward save (no armor because cannon)
>multiplies to 6 wounds (To both rider and mount)
>800 points gone in 5 minutes of play

He packed up and left after that, saying "thats why i hate this game" and "empire cannons are so cheap" we fucking told him dont sink all your eggs in one basket

this was about 5 years ago and when i see my old manager at his new store we laff

In fairness it's better than Wikinger

2 german destroyers sank for no gain.

Surprised nobody posted about the Maine Potato Episode
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_O'Bannon_(DD-450)

Yeah, every military since has its Rozhestvensky fans. Kind of a hipster thing, but getting the (Russian!) Baltic fleet to Korea was mind-boggling.

Good guys in a castle being approached by an enemy army. The defenders are outnumbered like 10 to 1.

Before the enemy can arrive, the defenders launch an all-out attack in the middle of the night, spearheaded by a small, elite force to strike deep into the enemy army and attack the enemy command tent, which is on a hill. The enemy commander gets away safely, but the command tent is burnt down and his standard is stolen. At that moment, the camp is attacked from both left and right by a shallow encirclement. The enemy soldiers awake in confusion from their sleep, look to the commander's hill and see it captured, see attacks coming from left and right, think they've been outnumbered, and break and run.

The enemy commander rallies his forces from the rout and lays siege to the castle, though there were many deserters and supply stores burnt down by the enemy. After several months of siege, the defenders are eating leather and running out of arrows.

In the middle of the night, they make dummies out of hay and lower them on ropes. They start sounding the trumpets and lighting the torches, and make it seem like they are launching a sortie. The enemy commander orders several vollies of arrow fire before he realizes it is a ruse and halts it. The defenders retrieve the dummies and the arrows stuck in them. They do this a few times before the enemy starts ignoring it, then launch a real raid and burn down their stockpiles.

The enemy commander, now running low on supplies himself, orders an assault on the castle to bring a quick end to the siege. The good guys are still badly outnumbered and low on supplies, so they order the archers to stop using their bows and instead to start throwing stones at the attackers. The enemy general thinks that the defenders have run out of arrows and gets closer to command the assault in person. Then the defending commander orders all the archers to unleash a volley on the enemy commander, which kills him, and routes the enemy.

Another battle:

The heroes from the earlier battle are defending the border, when a corrupt minister, jealous of their rising rank, betrays them and marches off with the entire army, leaving them to defend a small walled town with just a militia force of a few hundred and orders not to retreat under any circumstances. The enemy king, having heard of these heroes, is eager to capture them, and marches an army hundreds of thousands of men in size towards them. The defenders send a message for help, no reply.

The militia captain suggests to the commander to close the gates to keep out spies, fortify the walls, set up trenches and barricades inside th town at choke-points, burn down the outlying woods and farms, set up ambushes on the enemy supply lines, and arm every man woman and child who can hold a spear.

The defending commander tells the militia not to do any of these things. In fact, they should hide their military equipment, and dress as farmhands, and go help the nearby farms. Then he takes a young boy, sits atop the town's walls, and teaches him to play a harp. He does this every day as the enemy approaches.

The enemy king hears scout reports that the village is completely undefended, unfortified, and the gates are open to all passerby. There is no military in sight, not even the militia. The king goes on a hill and sees the enemy commander sitting on the walls goofing off and "realizes" it's a trap and a large army must be hidden nearby with the town as bait. He marches away, and attacks a different town, capturing and beheading the crooked minister who betrayed the good guys.

>hundreds of thousands of men
what period-equivalent is this setting?

Roughly ~200 AD China if I recall correctly

I'm a bit impressed with what he managed to accomplish (in some given value of accomplish) with the utter lack of prrparedness of his fleet, training, and good ammo.

Granted, he still failed like hell, but he knew he was damn near bound to and still tried to win. End of the day, it was still a tired old fleet against a fresh modern fleet.

>How do you almost torpedo yourself?

Recruit these guys, bring the president along: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_WilliamD._Porter_(DD-579)

>How big was this fucking snake?

Rule of thumb for snakes, for every meter reported, expect a foot.

>How do you hit the boat towing the target unless you actively aim at the boat?

You'd think the rest of the story would have clued you in to Russian gunnery. If it's within a radian of the right direction...

Let me tell you the tale of the last trip Finnish coastal defence ship Ilmarinen made.
>13 of September 1941
>Germany is planning on taking Estonian islands of Saaremaa and Hiilumaa
>Ask the Finns for help
>Finns send one of their two largest battleships, the Ilmarinen to aid the Germans in a distraction maneuver to draw away soviet attention from the main landing forces
>During the operation Ilmarinen runs into a mine field and begins to sink
>271 crewmen drown and 57 manage to swim away from the sinking hulk and get rescued
>Survivors get a nickname in Finland as "Ilmarisen uimaseura" (Ilmarinen's swimming team)
>Germans take over the Islands as planned without any soviet attempts to stop them but the soviets also never engaged the distraction force
>To this day it is uncertain whether the soviets noticed either the distraction or the invasion to begin with

Pictured here is Ilmarinen's sister ship Väinämöinen.

Glueman is that you?

Just like this is a warhammer battle.

Playing 2500 points of Warhammer, O&G on both sides. Pitched battle. Turn 1 and 2 he moves up his entire army, of note on turn 2 is that he moves Grimgor and his Immortalz up the board, just out of what he thinks is the charge range. My turn I declare a charge with Boar Boy Big 'uns into Grimgor's unit. The move was more just to slow him down for a turn, but with the +1 attack banner to make it hurt a little more. It comes to the combat phase and Grimgor attacks. He wiffs his 5 attacks, getting 2 hits and rolling double 1 to wound. I attack back, and deal 9 wounds on his unit. The Immortalz fair a little better and deal 3 wounds. People from other tables have started to look on as the guy rages over the fact that Grimgor fucked up, and I'm sitting on more combat res than I deserve. We tally up, and I'm winning by 1. He breaks, and I run down his deathstar.

Now that guy has given Grimgor the surname of 'Softarse'.

So apparently just leaving yourself completely undefended was an effective strategy in ancient China, because every general overthought problems like PCs seeing the word "Trap" written on the wall.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empty_Fort_Strategy

Hi guys, I'm back.

Is there any other piece of Military History that you want me to recite in the most ridiculously whimsical way possible?

The Battle of the Somme?

Euh, what about Siege and Counter-Siege of Alesia? Curious how you can spin this woeful tale into whimsy.

>captcha sez: little asterix
It knows.

>Germany blows up a British ship with a magazine detonation
>the magazine detonation kills a British admiral
>Britain names a different ship after that Admiral
>25 years later it gets blown up by a magazine detonation

These are literally just Chinese tactics. Poor form, my man.

The Battle of Isonzo. All 12 of them.

That marshal, man, talk about job security - it's like something out of blackadder, you'd think after like 5 they'd give someone else a go.

Now as you all well know, back in the fast distant past there lived a race of great bakers known as the Romans.

They were so passionate about baking and making sure everyone ate great food, that they were the first people to set up mobile bakeries.

Using these mobile bakeries, they were able to provide yummy pizza and other delicious treats to the whole of Europe; they even managed reach Africa and Asia in their quest to fill rumbly tummies.

One of their biggest customers where the people of Gaul, who loved the food that the Romans made so much that the Romans had to keep sending their greatest chef, Julius Caesar, to Gaul to keep supplying them with yummy food.

One day, a greedy Gaul by the name of Vercingetorix decided to capture a Roman bakery and learn the secrets of Roman cooking, so he and his friends could have all the yummy pizza they wanted.

In order to do this, Vercingetorix and 80'000 of his bestest friends broke into a bakery called "Alesia", but unfortunately they broke the burglar alarm which woke up the Romans.

Being so rudely awakened from a peaceful nights sleep, the Romans were really grumpy when they went to see who had broken into their bakery.

They called out to Vercingetorix and told him that if they didn't come out right now, they would tell his parents and they would be very disappointed in him.

Vercingetorix got scared, because his parents would surely spank him for causing such mischief, so he called the rest of his friends over to scare the Romans off.

Unfortunately Vercingetorix was a very loud talker, so the Romans knew they were coming. The clever Romans than dug a ditch and filled it with yucky water, knowing that the Gauls would not cross it in fear of ruining their fancy trainers.

With his friends unable to reach him and after eating all the pizza, Vercingetorix came out and was sent home to his parents where he got spanked for being such a naughty little boy.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Alesia

and this is why Little Caesar's is named that, right?

Hue
Well done!

Might take me a minute or two to write something, there's only half of WW1 to go through.

I can't wait to find out why they thought spending two and a half years bum-rushing the same position was a good idea.

Whatever it is, I'm sure it will be the perfect thing for Disneyfication.

Before I start, I just want to say that I can't believe the Italian plan was:

"It is quite simple colonel, we cross this heavily defended river and proceed to march through this narrow chokepoint high in the mountains. From there, we simply conquer Slovenia and besiege Vienna. I don't see how this can cause us much trouble."

Honestly, one of the key Italian objectives was to destroy the gun emplacements that were stopping them crossing the river; but to destroy the gun emplacements they had to cross the river.

When did the Italians become so bad at war?

They started out strong and then they slowly petered out into the pitiful examples we see today.

At least the French have the excuse of being unexpectedly attacked on a wide front by a professional and well-equipped enemy. They didn't even do that poorly at defending themselves in WW2 considering they were dealing with "Oh god, where did all these fucking Germans come from? Why don't their fucking tanks die? Where the fuck did the sun go and why is the sky blasting brown noise at me?"

The Italians just start fights and then get their arse savagely beaten. If I have time, I might do the Italians verses Ethiopa, because it just shows how far bad they are.

The WW2 invasion of France succeeded not because the germans had superior numbers or equipment(the french held the edge in both, actually) but because they had the best general staff in history giving them unparalleled flexibility in strategy and doctrine.

It truly is a shining example of incompetence and fuck-up-ery on both sides, being that it dragged on for so long.

>When did the Italians become so bad at war?
After the collapse of Rome, not even joking. Until Charles VIII invaded, Italy had no "real" wars as the Condotierri had a monopoly on warfare between its city states (let's pretend Naples isn't Italy, as the Italians themselves pretended for most of pre-modern history). Then Napoleon invades too and everything goes to shit. Then the Italians unify at the peak of nationalist fervor. So you now have a nation with a lot of patriotism, a promising industry and nothing to show for it. It's Germany but without the history of military tradition. They were newfags trying to play the game of veterans. Add to this military leaders who only got to their position through connections (again, Italy did not participate in foreign wars a lot so there was no real rising through the ranks for their officers) and marshalls like Cadorna resorting to Roman tactics (because muh glorious Roman ancestors) literally 2000 years after they became outdated and everything goes to shit.

Cadorna also greatly believed in the power of morale. Napoopan did say that morale is to equipment as 3 is to 1, but Cadorna took that even further: every time his soldiers failed, it was because they didn't want to succeed enough. I guess he expected them to willpower enemy artillery away.

>At least the French have the excuse of being unexpectedly attacked on a wide front
Kek, look at the reaction of the Italians after the fall of France. They didn't even manage to make their way into France and it was not impossible that the French would counter-invade had the Germans not taken Paris. The Italian army considered itself humiliated, a fact Italian trolls love to forget when whining about cheese eating surrender monkeys.

>Superior numbers
A quick wiki search proves you wrong
>or equipment
Only as far as tanks went. The other branch of blitzkrieg, airplanes, was clearly in favor of the Germans. Part of why the French lost was because the Germans consistently held air superiority throughout the entire conflict (though to be fair I think the French destroyed about 25% of the luftwaffe? I'm not entirely sure, I just know the number of luftwaffe casualties was pretty high).