Which is worse for a Navy to have in posistions like the First Lord of the Admiralty, an inexperienced civilian politician or someone who has military experience but its in a completely diffirent branch like the army?
I had to look up Plumridge after hearing about that. I highly doubted he would have been executed for treason ( and outright incompetence ) but I did think he would have been dismissed from the service in disgrace. Instead, they made the imbecile a "Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath" which from what little I know, is no small potatoes. That, and they promoted him to Vice Admiral. My question is; why was there no disciplinary action taken against him?? I reckon the nobility of the time could get out of a LOT of problems they started, but that was a disgrace to the whole Kingdom. At the very least, they should have demoted him to Captain, and put him permanently in charge of a Lighthouse... preferably that one in the south that kept getting battered by storms ( sorry for forgetting it's name ). Kind regards from Michigan.
Q&A, In the historical strategy-computer game Shogun 2 Total War, set in the 16th century Japan, so early age of sail, the player can buy European Ships (Presumably Portuguese carracks), Is that realistic for the time period ? Did European powers during the age of sail sell warships to non European powers. (Edit, corrected poor grammar)
Tried googling it, but only got references ro the peninsula and islands. Got a better search reference I can look up? Is this the Russian fleet admiral in the Russo Japan was?
@@johnthomas2485 yes. The Kamchatka was legendary and notorious for firing on anything that wasn’t a Japanese torpedo boat 😂 it’s quite the wild story and kinda makes it clearer how the Japanese were able to defeat the Russian fleet so easily
Interestingly the bombarment of the Aland islands by Plumridge led to the first ever Victoria Cross being awarded to Charles Davis Lucas who picked up a shell that had landed on his ship and hurled it overboard before it exploded. He got made a lieutenant on the spot.
That took balls bigger than the unexploded shell. I wonder how he managed to walk? But yes, Plumridge was a complete ass and likely was the official mascot of the Upper Middle Class Twit of the Year Award on Monty Python.
@@mpetersen6 Just Upper Class. Upper middle is a completely different animal - more local golf club, gammon/Karen and 'how far to the highly rated state school' than receding chin.
So that admiral throwing the chickens overboard actually has a funny component you didn't mention. It was a Roman sacred ritual to feed the Sacred chickens before a battle, analyse the behaviour and thus give the omens(would the gods favour them) for the coming fight. So when the chickens refused to eat anything (possibly due to seasickness), the priest declared the omens bad. Claudius, wanting a big win to boost his career, is said to have declared: "if they won't eat, then let them drink" and promptly threw the chickens in the seawater. Needless to say, yeah he lost.
Its interesting how such things tend to be a self fulfilling prophecy. The kind of person who would do something like that is a guy whos probably gonna make a mess of the battle, even if the chickens can't actually tell the future.
When I mentioned to a Korean student that I had an interest in naval history, he gleefully told me of the exploits of Admiral Ye. Deserves its own episode.
Admiral is a living deus ex machina, a single person manage to turn the tides of war in such overwhelming fashion that's it's unbelievable, like how do you response in losing an entire fleet to 13 ships??? Admiral Yi rolled a Nat 20 throughout the whole war.
cue Benny Hill music for that entire incident. While the Kriegsmarine crews obviously shouldn't have panicked, I lay the blame with the Luftwaffe not telling them what was going on.
I'm with you there, it would be hilarious if it wasn't for the fact that real men suffered and drowned. Hell, a lot of that happened, anybody tell you that war is glorious? Shite. Possibly the only thing thing worse is blind stupidity; combine the two and you might make it to Suvla Bay? Pax
Another hilarious naval loss was the U-boat commander who didn't bother to be briefed on the correct operation of the toilet flushing valves operation and managed to open the valves to the sea, which very quickly returned his deposit and hundreds of tons of seawater into the U-boat. The water entered under pressure and flooded the toilet compartment before going on to cause the boat to be abandoned as it was sinking rapidly! The commander arrogantly told the seaman that tried to explain the valves sequence that he, the commander, didn't need to be told how to flush a toilet! He wasn't interested that this was a new system of valves that operated very differently from the earlier types. Can you imagine losing the vessel because you wouldn't be told how to flush the toilet without sinking the boat. That's one hell of a thing to be known for.
I'm a retired Navy Chief Submariner who served from 1978 to 2000. We had a monthly message that was sent to all submarines about safety issues and training, and included in it was a DARWIN AWARD that told a true story of some Sailor got caught (or injured) doing some stupid thing (no names were used to protect their identities). I don't know if they still send them, but in my day, Darwin Awards did exist.
I used to work at a lot of sand and gravel outlets (fixing scales). The lunch rooms had Osha fatalgrams posted. I knew being a farmer was dangerous, but never realized the end could be so gruesome. I went to a Christian Elementary school and the principle and one of the teachers had lost an arm, both farmers! I guess they were the lucky ones.
@@haldorasgirson9463 not a week goes by without a news report of a farmer (or even worse - his child) being crushed by his tractor, shredded by a chipper or what have you
To be fair to the 2nd Pacific Squadron, a significant contributor to their problems was that their ships were never intended to make that voyage in the first place, but the Imperial Russian Navy was woefully inadequate as a whole. Darwin Awards are more along the lines of "you had all the tools necessary to crush the enemy and yet you still got your ass handed to you because of decisions you made that even a landlubber would see as foolish".
One fun fact about Plumridge is that when he tried raiding Kokkola he was defeated by the towns people. The British lost 3 officers and 15 sailors killed and 3 officers and 31 sailors captured + one barkas captured (which can still be found in Kokkola in English park) while the towns defenders suffered only few men wounded.
Another fun fact was that the prisoners of war from that battle were invited to the victory ball and had fun time dancing and drinking with the Russian soldiers and the locals. Different times...
@VompoVompatti Brits learned eventually that Finnish coast is not russia, and Finns are not russians. The common history and experiences prepared both sides for coming war against russia.
Just wrote a long text about it here, i grew up in that same neighborhood, the battle took place on the beach we frequented as kids. Finnish casualties was not few wounded, the brit could not hit anything from boats. Finnish actual casualties: one horse, shot by an errant bullet. That part of the story is the perfect end.. The thing is called The Skirmish of Halkokari.
@@mohdafnanazmi1674 actually yes, as long as he had even a single weapon larger than a basic arquebus (and he obviously had likely hundreds of large naval cannon in his fleet), he would already practically outgun the entire fleet of transports.
Indeed. Japan didn't really have proper naval combat ships. And this is part of why Admiral Yi's legend is as wonderous as it is. He saw this fact and basically invented modern naval tactics on the spot where he used his superior and longer ranged weapons to destroy the enemy fleet while trying to stay out of their effective/accurate range. This is why Yi was able to achieve such legendary status as defeating enemies with 10 times his own forces (more if you include logistical and supply vessels also at the battle). Yi also was the one who produced every turtle ship ever made, and did so to use them as a heavily armored, UNBOARDABLE pinning ship with cannons facing every direction to KEEP the Japanese ships stuck at range where the rest of his fleet could rain fire upon them (and to also just unleash very heavy for the time, but short range cannon fire into every Japanese vessel in the immediate vicinity). Won Gyun, when given the very fleet Yi had built up, lost almost all of it, including every turtle ship ever made. Despite him fighting enemies whose naval doctrine was "shoot them with tanegashima (impressive firearms for the time but still handheld infantry weapons) from the defensive works on their decks and then board them." It was like losing a fleet of dreadnoughts to a bunch of mid 1800s ironclad battleships, if not outright a bunch of old first rate ships of the line.
In fairness, while the Korean fleet *was* using cannon, the Japanese were still largely focused on boarding actions as a means of naval combat, so military transports, by virtue of carrying lots of people with weapons, were capable of fulfilling the Japanese fleet doctrine of the time. But still, yeah, if he'd been remotely competent he'd have done a ton of damage. Just look at the Battle of Myeongnyang that came after it, 13 ships taking on upward of 130 and winning without losing a single ship...even with Yi's ship being the ONLY ship fighting at the start of the battle, given the other captains were making reasonable assumptions about what the result of that kind of numerical advantage would be and planning to survive to fight another day.
Basically what had happened there is that Won Gyun saw that the Japanese were invading and freaked out at the number of enemy vessels, ignoring that the fleet he was looking at was made entirely out of transports (the actual Japanese warships wouldn’t arrive until hours later). He panicked, scuttled most of his fleet, and sailed away with the rest while writing to Admiral Yi to request his help (which was probably the smartest military decision he ever made).
The sinking of the White Ship comes to mind for a good Darwin Award Yes Captain Fitzstephen, head onto that ship packed with drunk lords including King Henry's only son and (allegedly) shove away a group of priests that had come to bless the voyage because you wanted to beat the King's ship that had left for England a few hours before, that surely wont result in you striking a rock on the way out of harbour and sinking with only a butcher surviving thus leading to a secession crisis and nearly 20 years of civil war
@@combativeThinker Yep. Caused a violent fifteen year-long civil war called The Anarchy between Henry's daughter Matilda and his nephew Stephen of Bois. End result was Stephen got the crown, but had to make Matilda's son his heir.
Honorable mention to the commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Sending the flagship of his force, a vessel with a maintenance schedule so far behind that it had last been signed off by Archimedes and that was barely capable of moving under its own power, into an active warzone against an enemy with a lot of shore-based missile systems.
@@termitreter6545 looks like someone hasn't read the maintenance documents "leaked" a month after the sinking. Even several of its air defense systems weren't operational!
while the document should still be given some healthy skepticism... the fact that the Russian Federation first claimed that a storm in very much clear skies and later an internal fire was the cause of the sinking does not exactly bode well for the Moskva.
According to Phil Barker in a Wargames Research Group publication from many years ago, ramming with the intention of holing an enemy vessel below the waterline was rare because this might result in *your* ship being inextricably attached to a sinking one ! Instead, the idea was to run down to side of the ship, shearing off the oars, leaving it immobile and helpless. As almost all ancient sea battles took place close to shore this could mean that disabled ships would either be driven aground by the wind and wrecked (with the inevitable casualties) or driven out into the open sea - not where you want to be with no means of propulsion. Some did have a simple square rigged sail, of course, but that wasn't really suitable as it left you at the mercy of the wind and tides.
@@basilpunton5702 Indeed, and even if they managed to do it they were still sitting ducks due to being much slower and less manoeuvrable. I'm also pretty sure that a ship hitting the oars would cause casualties among the oarsmen, who were fairly tightly packed together.
I did a uni paper paper on this. There is some debate about how the ram was used. There is a third option (which i think unlikely), that a ram could be aimed at the steering oar to facilitate capture. What we do know is that Hellenic warships were fast. We have a number of records of ships or fleets going from point A to B in X-many days. And they were moving faster than most ships in the Mediterranean until steamships. Part of this was a skilled and well paid crew. But design choices made to enable that speed also meant that they were somewhat fragile. So a lot of historians think that ramming an enemy risked breaking your own ship too. As i understand happened in the 19thC when various navies tried putting rams on their steamships. I'd be interested to hear what any naval engineers think.
I think Won Gyun waiting for the Japanese to kill him was actually the smartest choice he had left. I think he recognized even with his pedigree and connections that he was likely to suffer a horrific fate at the Chosin court if he went back to report his once again monumental failure.
Speaking of which, the Korean court demoting, arresting, imprisoning and almost executing Admiral Yi deserves a place on this list. One of the dumbest moments ever in our history. And the whole reason for it? After Admiral Yi had, I dunno, destroyed multiple Japanese naval forces, caused around 9,000 Japanese casualties in manpower (plus well over two hundred vessels) and neutralized the entire Japanese navy in the first months of the war, he mostly participated in smaller-scale actions and kept up the naval blockade BECAUSE HE’D ALREADY WON AND ONLY NEEDED TO KEEP APPLYING PRESSURE ON SEA ROUTES TO PREVENT RESUPPPLY AND REINFORCEMENTS. The Korean government, for some reason, thought this was a sign of cowardice. So when a Japanese spy sent in a false report to try and bait him into a trap and he refused, they took the opportunity to get rid of him.
@@bkjeong4302 You can't be serious. The Japanese had more respect for him than that. A Japanese admiral in this past century refused the title of "God of the sea" because, in his words, that title belonged to Admiral Yi.
@@CiaranMaxwell Oh, and it gets even worse. Do you know who wrote the official report falsely accusing Yi of treason and cowardice even though he knew Yi was right to not take the bait, and gave the perfect excuse for the king to try and have Yi executed? Won Gyun. Yep, the guy was not only incompetent, he had the bright idea of getting rid of the one guy who could actually run the Korean navy properly so HE could be the Supreme Admiral of the Three Provinces (a position pretty much equal to SecNav in terms of how high up it was in the navy and how important it was). A position that absolutely nobody but Yi was qualified to hold at that point (though Yi himself wrote even he wasn’t qualified enough for the job, but Yi was critical of everyone including himself so that’s not necessarily indicative of his actual competency). That said, it should be noted that most contemporary Korean military officials and even some in court pretty much knew who was the actually competent (or rather, hypercompetent) admiral and who was the idiot; they just couldn’t (or wouldn’t) do much about it because the fucking head of state personally preferred Won Gyun and speaking in defence of Yi ran the risk of getting wrongfully executed alongside him (a few of them did accomplish enough to save his skin, which was a VERY GOOD THING for Korea as it turned out). Edit: here is an incomplete list of everything wrong with Won Gyun and why he has to be considered one of the low points of both Korean history and naval history in general: - getting a relatively prestigious military career largely on family connections, instead of passing the military service exam as most officers (Yi included) did. (That said it is worth noting that the military was considered a lowly posting in Joseon Dynasty Korea because neo-Confuscianism) - being morbidly obese to the point he couldn’t ride a horse (some in the Korean navy joked that this was why he was assigned to the navy and not the army) - Scuttling his forces at the sight of Japanese transports invading Korean soil (not the actual Japanese navy, the transports). Granted there is some leeway for his actions here because Korean doctrine separated each provincial fleet into several squadrons at multiple bases, and so he might not have had the time to consolidate anyways before the actual Japanese war fleet showed up. - focusing more on beheading Japanese corpses and POWs than actually dealing with living Japanese hostiles during battles, so he could say the ships and sailors under his jurisdiction “killed more of the enemy” (Yi instead favoured subordinates who made meaningful contributions to a battle and would recommend them for promotions). - trying to execute fellow Koreans and disguise them as Japanese sailor losses to pad up the Korean killcount - botching the cleanup job after Yi’s victory at Hansando (Hansan Island); for context, after the main Japanese fleet was destroyed off Hansando, a few hundred survivors ended up on nearby uninhabited islets with no freshwater source, and Yi ordered Won to have his forces either kill them off or make sure they were stuck on those islets while Yi himself went off to deal with the remainder of the Japanese fleet (which he did, at Angolpo). As it turned out Won did neither of these things and allowed most of the marooned Japanese to escape. - trying to sabotage Yi’s career and the Korean naval war effort in general for the sake of career advancement on more than one occasion - actually sabotaging Yi’s career and almost causing his execution for the sake of being put in charge of the entire Korean navy - doing absolutely nothing to run the Korean navy after he got the job - knowingly sailing his fleet into a Japanese trap at Chilcheonryang near a Japanese-occupied Busan, THE EXACT TRAP YI REFUSED TO GET HIMSELF INTO (and the one that Won had just used as an excuse to get rid of Yi), just so he would look better to the government - not bothering to scout or gather intelligence before the operation - getting a panoeksun (the capital ships of the Korean fleet at the time, with modified versions including Yi’s flagship and the turtle ships with their dragon head and anti-boarding deck) captured by the Japanese during a minor skirmish (which the Koreans won, but entirely because Yi’s influence and naval reforms hadn’t entirely disappeared after his arrest). Keep in mind that Yi didn’t lose a single ship in his entire naval career. - forcing his fleet to sail through a storm on the way to Chilcheonryang - all the things he did wrong at Chilcheonryang, most of which are mentioned in this video, but one that wasn’t mentioned was the fact he never bothered to resupply his fleet before setting sail; by the time he realized he was out of water, the only place close enough for his fleet to restock on drinking water was a Japanese-occupied island (which Won had no idea was Japanese-occupied due to aforementioned lack of scouting). - trying to flee the battle - leaving his younger sibling (who, while no Yi, was actually a decent officer) to die while fleeing - failing to even save his own skin and getting cut down after making it ashore - getting almost the entire Korean navy destroyed
in his defense, communication wasnt very strong from his sources, and radar was still in its infancy at the time. iirc the first was known about but communication broke down, second was a suprise. i could be wrong and am open to correction though. :)
I believe a video for that is likely coming out soon because drach did say I won't put things in this list that are already covered extensively on the channel (I know that's not how he worded it but I'm lazy) so I hope a video is coming out on Halsey's incompetence, maybe the next biography video will be Halsey who knows
The other thing complicating naval Darwin Awards is that those high enough up the food chain to make the really catastrophic decisions are usually also old enough to have had children already (though in particular cases they may not themselves have actually done so).
Another great example of naval Darwin awards is the Athenian admirals st the battle of Egos Rivers. Those guys basically lost the battle that doomed Athens and led to losing it's navy and the Peloponnesian war. What basically happened is that the two fleets had a standoff against each other day after day without anyone attacking, withdrawing to their anchorages every night, at opposite ends of the Dardanelles. But the Spartans operated out of a city, while the Athenians had set up camp in the Egos Rivers delta. What that meant was that the Athenians had basically no way of feeding their men other than sending the crews to forage in the nearby area. After some days of not doing anything, the Spartans withdrawed for the night, waited for the Athenian crews to go foraging and then attacked, catching the disorganized Athenians by surprise and destroying almost all of the Athenian fleet.
But that’s a pretty common tactic in the ancient era? Roman marines had to dismount and forage all the time I don’t think following common procedures i a Darwin Award
@@balmorrablue3130 The Darwin award is that the Athenians could have based themselves in a city like the Spartans. There was one city to the south of were the Athenians had camped. But they chose to base themselves directly opposite to the Spartan occupied city, in no man's land. And thus the Athenian navy, the most capable navy of its time, was destroyed in one fell swoop by the Spartan navy. That was in all intents and purposes, embarrassing. The Peloponnesian war that had lasted on and off for around 30 years ended after this win because Athens had lost its navy and most of its capable fighting men were either dead, stranded in the Dardanelles or captured by the Spartans. Foraging was a common tactic yes, but when you loose your whole navy and a 30 year long war because of bad positioning, that's Darwin award worthy in my book.
@@nickklavdianos5136 without knowing any more about the context of the battle I can only maintain my stance that following standard procedures of the time is not a Darwin Award Basing themselves in a different town further from the Spartans may have been a bad strategic decision perhaps the waters were shallow of the city was lacking food or it was too far to sally out and engage the Spartans Without knowing more I can’t criticize them
@@nickklavdianos5136 still the spartans had to know the exact time the foragers were out and the ships on the land. there is a theory that the general not executed (the spartans didnt execute 1 of he generals ) was from the oligarchic party and messaged the spartans when to attack
Surprised to see one of my (not)proud countrymen in there. But as a Korean, I can say that Won Gyun definitely does deserve a place on that list. Such a stark opposite of his contemporary Yi Sun-Shin. Would love an episode on the naval battles of the Imjin War someday P.S. And your pronunciation of Won Gyun is pretty much spot on 👍
Admiral Yi is such a fascinating guy even if half of what he did was made up he's still an incredibly adept commander and I hate saying stuff like this but certainly one of the greatest of all time.
Yes, definitely an Imjin War/Yi Soon-Shin video is needed. However something tells me that this name drop of Won-Gyun indicates that Drac may already be in the process of this...
I absolutely want to do a video on Admiral Yi, but I also want to do it right, which means finding a historian who specialises in that conflict. That's proving harder to find that I would have though, at least in the English speaking world.
I know almost nothing of Korean naval history other than having seen "The Admiral: Roaring Currents" Do you have any tips for reading up on other battles? Massive respect from England, that film was amazing BTW and we Brits know a thing or two about ship to ship combat.
Won Gyun lost a splendid fleet. One of my biggest, 'Naval What Ifs,' is what if Admiral Yi had not had the fleet that he built up taken from him and given to an incompetent?
I nominate Sir Cloudesley Shovell, not just for his silly name, but he caused the Scilly Naval Disaster, in which he sailed his ships into rocks of the coast of scilly and Four large ships, HMS Association, the third-rate HMS Eagle, the fourth-rate HMS Romney and the fire ship HMS Firebrand all sank, he himself d ied and so did 2,000 others. There is also a story that alleges that a common sailor on the flagship tried to warn Shovell that the fleet was off course but Shovell had him hanged at the yardarm for inciting mutiny. Even if not true the fact that people find him that incompetent, that they'd believe something like that, is a testament to his nomination for the Darwin Award.
A running theme in these sorry incidents is that is the crews that pay the price. The boneheaded idiot is merely getting his just reward. The only good thing about the Scilly* disaster is it ultimately gave us chronometers. And as for ridiculous names there are a series of books recounting the fiction adventures of Amelia Pezbody Emerson and her husband Egyptologist Radcliffe Emerson. There is one recurring character with a thoroughly ridiculous name connected to British intelligence. Author Elizibeth Peter's (Barbara Mertz) *given the pronunciation I've usually heard the whole was not silly at all.
I don't think Shovel was too much to blame individually - from accounts I've read of the disaster, as the fleet approached the Channel and unsure of their position, he held a meeting of senior officers from several of his ships to get their opinions, and the consensus was that they were off Ushant when in fact they were a long way north-west of there.
The tale on the Scillies is that Shovell was still alive when he washed up on to a beach where someone stove his skull in with a rock and stole his jewellery before burying the evidence.
If D'estre was a fool to disregard his navigators at Curacao was Shovell at fault for doing the opposite? As for the hanged sailor it was specifically forbidden in regulations for the crew to make their own navigation calculations, and as usual the punishment was death.
Kind of surprised U-1206 didn't make the list. The loss of a U-boat from a failure to properly operate the toilet sounds like a Darwin award if I ever heard one.
A special, continual, and perpetual mention of Admiral "There's something wrong with our bloody ships today" Beatty: for gross miscommunication and the dogged insistence that battlecruisers were indistinguishable from battleships. As an aside, his efforts did lead to an interesting investigation of first world war naval explosives during the early 21st century, courtesy of one certain 'Drachinifel'.
@@Bob.W. Hey, it's not Lt. Stanley's fault that the Admiralty took the most culturally significant signal in Royal Navy history _out of the signals manual._
While the Battle of Jutland ended the way it did. I would nominate Admiral Beatty. The unsafe practices of munitions handling he allowed on his ships. The poor structure of his sailing group to the other squadrons under his command. Bad signaling to other ships to the point squadron commanders decided to handle the problem themselves. And finally, his blatant refusal to respond to his superior officer when Jellicoe was asking for the data required to deploy the Grand Fleet effectively against the High Seas Fleet. Britain may have won in the end. But this level of clear incompetence shouldn't be ignored. Just my opinion.
Not taking advantage of his battle cruisers superior range didn't help either. Or the fact that most captains were more concerned with the appearance of their ships rather than their efficiency.
Not forgetting Beatty attempted to try and alter the record of the battle to put himself in a better light. The failure of British fuses did not help or their lack of training in fighting night actions.
@@stephenbarker5162 the failure of shell fuses would be more failure of the ordinance and admiralty boards then Beatty himself. Jellicoe had actually put forth a memo saying the shells had problems and nothing up the chain was done about it until he was First Sea Lord himself and could force them to fix the problems.
The Kriegsmarine-Luftwaffe-relationship will never be not funny 😅 Also, strange how Fritz Berger messed this up so badly, due to his performance at Narvik I always thought he was a very able commander.
@@mpetersen6 Damn straight. This was not incompetence as they did not know what they were doing; they KNEW there were SERIOUS problems with the MK 14 and conspired to cover it up and destroy anyone that tried to fix the problems. They should have been tried for treason and hung. I wish someone would make a real good movie about this obscenity. The Rhode Island Congressman that also worked to prevent anyone inspecting the Factory for its clear failures as well. There were a lot of people who looked the other way also.
Was the big failure in BuOrd. I read somewhere that it was really the admiral who made the decisions and then was able to suppress the negative reports. If so just shoot one person.
This may not be a popular nominee, but based on what I understood of Drach's expIanation about the sinking of HMS Victoria, I would nominate Sir George Tryon. His intention to let British naval officers take more initiative instead of blindly following orders may have been good. But giving an order that would result in disaster if blindly followed to the subordinates that are currently too hierarchical-minded does not seem like a wise way to conduct retraining.
I was going to mention this. Tryon gets the full Darwin Award for getting himself killed, although admittedly it appears he may have chosen to go down with the ship. From everything I've read the disaster was almost entirely Tryon's fault. He was warned during planning that the columns would be too close together. When Markham hesitated in making the turn, Tryon signalled "What are you waiting for?", a public rebuke. And as the ships bore down on each other, the captain of Victoria asked three times for permission to go astern before Tryon consented. Admittedly the captain could have given the order straight away but the lack of response could be construed as denial. Tryon even ordered the boats coming to rescue the crew to turn back, believing the ship would not sink. Luckily they ignored that order. So although clearly it would have been better if Tryon's officers had stood up to him more, that doesn't change the fact that he was in charge and made a colossal and unnecessary blunder.
@@davidmoore1253 Some of that could be explained if he wanted his subordinates to think for themselves. It's what I think Drach believes, based on a Drydock answer. The problem is that it is an extremely risky sink-or-swim training method. (Literally, for that first part.) Turning the boats away, and apparently not realizing many of the bulkhead doors were open, which increased the risk of sinking in case of damage, that is just sloppy though.
I remember suggesting a Darwin Awards episode when Drach did his Best Engineered ships episode; happy to see others also asked for it and we got an episode!
I guess we all have our own favourites, as well as the Kamchatka, but I would nominate Admiral Persano at the Battle of Lissa when he was not only roundly defeated by an inferior force but actually returned home and claimed he had won a great victory. Of course the truth came out, and perhaps as a sign his flagship sank at its moorings. Or of course there is Admiral Sir George Tryon and the disaster of the Victoria and the Camperdown.
I was sure that Tryon was going to be an example. Losing a powerful battleship in peacetime to an elementary math error is, as far as I'm aware, unique.
@@matthewcraver9917 And of course it could have been far worse. Some believe that if what he had been trying to do was carried out then each pair of battleships in the two columns would have collided!
Just because of how monumentally stupid it is, there are some who say Tryon gave the order explicitly so it wouldn't be followed (because that would be stupid). He tried to promote commanders thinking for themselves and wanted to give them some "practice" in disregarding orders, starting with an intentionally impossible one. Unfortunately for him, the Vice Admiral aboard Camperdown wasn't even ready to do that.
@@captainloggy140 That is another theory, though of course it is just as speculative as the one I mentioned. But if that is what Tryon was attempting to do it shows he did not really know Admiral Markham and how he would react. If a commander wants to give orders in that way he needs to know his subordinates and how they are likely to react, and not just to hope they will somehow read his thoughts. When Admiral Parker sent the famous signal to Nelson at Copenhagen, he confided to his flag captain that he did not expect Nelson to take any notice of the signal. As we know, he turned out to be right. Sadly for everyone involved Tryon was not.
Fun fact: through his maternal niece he is actually a distant relative of none other than David Cameron. So causing massive financial, political and reputation loss to Britain can be considered a proud family tradition.
Jean II d'Estrées was nephew of Gabrielle d'Estrées (mistress of King Henri IV, who got his childless marriage annulled for her (and to legitimise their three children), but she died suddenly before the marriage (eclampsia with a stillborn son); poison was suspected. Henri wore black in mourning (something no King of France had done before) and gave her a Queen's funeral). In 1663 Jean's 90-year old father was created first Duc d'Estrées; the dukedom went down the line of his older brother. D'Estrées is simply a family name and derives from _strata_ (a northern French word for the Roman roads in the area). There are a number of villages in northern France which include '-d'Estrée' in their name (equivalent to '-on-Street' etc in England).
By the First Punic War the Republic effectively is only starting to have their own fleet and probably majority of those minor commanders in the engagements won still are Socii Navales from the Greek cities of the Graecia Magna. As those cities were required to supply ships and crews instead of land troops. That proportion is gradually smaller and smaller towards the end of the war as Romans get naval experience, but that's still some people who have an idea what they are doing at sea. That battle, however, is fought by an equivalent of a Consular army (actually, it is a Consular army except put on ships). It had to be led by a Roman Consul and what idea a land commander might have about fighting this?
There is a fairly good reason as to why the romans decided that assigning a consul without any fleet experience as the commander of a fleet was the best option: - There were no romans that had fleet experience -
I was expecting Halsey to be on the list, was disappointed that he wasn't. I imagine if Taffy-3 hadn't pulled off the upset of the century he probably would have been. Saved him from looking like the complete horse's ass he was.
To be fair to Halsey during Samar, he would have been right to go after the Japanese carriers had they their full complement of aircraft. I dont think Halsey quite realized how desperate Japan was to throw their surface ships at the problem, and when he was told of what actually was happening, he didnt mess around and immediately ordered Admiral Lee to steam back.
During one battle Won Gyun also apparently suggested killing the civilians from HIS side and pretending they were the enemy dead to pad up the Korean kill count (even though the Koreans already had killed/captured enough Japanese sailors and destroyed enough ships for a definitive victory). Thankfully Yi was in charge during that particular battle.
As an Italian a honourable mention: the high ranks and chief of staff (SUPERMARINA) of the Royal Italian Navy (Regia Marina) during WWII (Capo Gaudo e Matapan) though it has been covered in another episode
Naaah... Its not the Italian Navy Fault that their political leadership forced them into a war they knew they were not in a situation to fight and Then the same political leadership forced them to perform offensive operations they perfectly knew were barely feasible and got defeated. They knew it from the beginning it was going to be ugly.
The Honda point disaster 1923 deserves a Darwin Award Foggy night Using dead reckoning for navigation when the ocean currents were abnormal do to the recent Japanese earthquake Running twenty knots into a channel you can’t see do to fog and partly do to being miles from where you thought you were at night Seven ships lost when sensible precautions could have prevented the loss
I live in Kotka, Finland. The site of the battle of Svensksund is right off the coast where I used to live, a lot of the old Russian fortifications on the island where the city center sits were blown up by the British during the Crimean War. According to legend the whole town (that mostly existed to serve the garrisons of the various forts around the island and the surrounding islands) was pretty much razed, and it was only thanks to an old widow named Maria Purpur that the old Orthodox Church that sits on a hill in the middle of the island at a place which is now a quite popular park was spared. All the fortifications have pretty much been razed, the old Fort Slava only has a fragment of it's original wall left, parts of which have been restored, but it's mostly a pile of rubble now. There are still to this day old powder magazines from that time, buildings made out of huge blocks of granite, some of them blown to bits, others partially restored. Much of the walls of Fort Catherine on the city island itself have likewise been restored, as well as much of Fort Elizabeth on Varissaari. A good chunk of my family comes from Finland Proper, mostly fishermen and farmers from the coast quite close to Åland, so it's possible that some of them may have lived through these events.
The loss of HMS Victoria and the behavior of Vacca, Albini and Persano at Lissa look to me two outstanding, very honorable examples of naval stupidity.
124k views in one day! Congratulations Drach, I'm not sure if this is usual for your channel, but I'm pleased to see such an academic channel have a video blow up like this!
@@sirjohnbarlow7261 Eh,he certainly caused lot of confusion among his fleet,but he still got strategic victory against German high seas fleet(yes,at high price in casualties and lost ships).
So far as can be determined, not only did Plumridge NOT have anyone with the fleet who could speak Finnish, no one of rank knew that the Finns were not simply Russians. Meanwhile, Finland was not at all part of Russia--it was a personal possession of the Czar, was not subject to the Russian bureaucracy, had its native social organization (not Russian aristocrats imposed on it), AND the Finns were exempt from the draft! Given that men in Russia mutilated themselves to avoid the draft, this was a big deal. Because of Plumridge's wanton destruction, the Finns *volunteered* to give up their exemption so that they could serve in the Russian military. So, yeah, it's even worse than the story Drach told.
It's got to be the Battle of Lissa again. Yes you've already done the battle, but it could do with a longer and more detailed account of it. Besides, we all love you Uncle Drach and want you to tell us another story.
I feel like if you decide to do another Darwin Awards episode, a good criteria might be that the officer responsible for the failure either died or was permanently stripped of command. That seems like it would fit with the self-sabotage nature of most Darwin Awards.
Not doomscrolled through all the comments to see if this has been mentioned, but a bit of and opsie in the segment on German WW2 torpedoes. To whit: 28:01 "Now another incident most have heard of is the sinking of the battleship Royal Oak in Scapa Flow..." - so far, so good, but: 29:21: Less than two weeks into the War, U-39 had managed to penetrate the destroyer screen around the aircraft carrier HMS Royal Oak..." - Ummm Methinks you mean HMS Ark Royal, old chap.
As soon I as herd Won Gyun was a contemporary of Admiral Yi, I knew who he was. That's one of my favorite naval conflicts of the period, so I may not have reconginzed the name imidatily, once I heard the context I knew who he was.
The "Great Blunders" series by Geoffrey Regan was one of my favorites when I was younger. I lost my copy of Naval Blunders ages ago so I don't remember it very well, but I still have Great Military Blunders still lying around somewhere.
@@questionmaker5666 Not quite a stalemate. Both ships were sunk. All of Sydney's crew died, whereas Kormorant crew mostly survived. Sydney, if properly handled should have demolished Kormorant with little damage. It was Sydney's lack of preparation that created the conditions for a defeat.
Showed a friend, who was new to boating here in the Pacific, how to leave port. He promptly put the boat on a shallow reef. Had to reverse drive it out of the danger zone because I knew where the razorsharp corall towers are. Otherwise we would have had to swim through tigershark alley... He now understands that red and green buoys are not a mere suggestions out here. My tunaboat got swamped on a shallow reef in Kahului harbor with 2 inches of depth under the prop. My mother was on a scuba boat. Engine failed and the boat got pushed on a reef. 10 mins of destruction later...all that was left was the engine block sitting on the reef. We all get into situations sometimes. It gets messy and costly if your ship mastering abilities dont match the Exxon Valdez or mastering a flotilla. How do you fix a leaking fishing boat? You add a third and fourth bilge pump.
I nominate for your Darwin awards whoever decided to keep the ammo flash hatches open on British battlecruisers; I almost hope they were aboard when the whole ship went up.
I'd like to nominate an incident -- not sure of the names of the people responsible but I'm sure they will yield to fairly easy research. The first class of monitors designed for WW I were tank tested. The Admiralty received a letter reporting that the design was faulty, and the ship wouldn't come anywhere near it design speed of 12 knots because the stern form was so poor that there would be separation, adding lots of resistance and interfering with the action of the rudder and propellers. The letter was signed by Robert Froude. When you get a letter from the son of the man for whom the Froude number was named, and he tells you your hull is no good, you need to go back to the drawing board and start over. However, the Admiralty responded that they were already cutting steel and the ships were needed for the war effort and the construction would go forward. The first ship went out on trials and indeed, it failed to make 12 knots, and worse, when it slowed below 5 knots to maneuver to its moorings it became uncontrollable and needed a tug to prevent it from hitting anything. The entire class of early monitors had to be escorted by a tug whenever they were underway. I learned about this from the book, "Big Gun Monitors," by Ian Buxton. I think a second edition has since come out but I'm recounting my (admittedly long ago memory) of what the earlier edition said. This might be a good candidate for another episode of the Naval Darwin Awards.
Another fun fact about the battle of Drepana is that Pulcher's sister, Claudia, became infamous when, stuck in a blocked street by poorer citizens, she wished out loud that her brother would lose another battle in order to thin the crowd.
I remember from the past a story about the French Admiral D'Estrées, he was fighting alongside the English against the Dutch fleet at the battle of Texel (Kijkduin). The story goes that he was instructed by the French king Louis the 14th, too try and keep the French fleet as intact as possible and he had to try and learn as much as possible about the way the English and Dutch were fighting there naval battles. The English and French lost the naval battle and lost around 2000men after which the English went off to sign the westminister peace declaration. However the french admiral had to offcourse explain to Louis the 14th that they lost the battle, but he added to say that he did learn a lot. :) Only I cannot find the exact source anymore which is a pity.
Not sure if you’ll see this, but apparently there is a study on how Admiral Yi Sun-sin was seen in Japanese records and literature after the Imjin War, written by a certain Kim Joon-Bae. Something to keep in mind if you ever plan to do an Admiral Yi video.
I'd love to see a video on the impacts on the war if german torpedo's had worked properly. I know alternate histories are a bit of a dark art but it seems like a pretty mininal change could have had a major impact on the war
As a WWII history buff, there are SO many of these cusp events that really impacted the outcome of the war. As a friend of mine said, "In an alternate universe, the (Germans) won the war handily- but in ours, fate conspired against them." However, a large number of these events resulted from highly questionable decisions made by Moustache Guy. "Let's delay the Prokhrovka offensive unitl the Russians can turn the entire region into the world's largest tank trap." I highly recommend Kenneth Macksey's "Invasion: The Alternate History of the German Invasion of England, July 1940." Macksey wrote it in the style of an actual history book, with period photos, tactical maps, etc. Brilliant work, and probably what happened in that alternate universe.
Can't believe this list did not include the disastrous voyage of the Imperial Russian Baltic Fleet. It has to be the biggest cluster fck in the history of clusters!!! The levels of incompetence and idiocy reached was truly awe inspiring!! How did you miss it?!?
My thoughts exactly. Thick fog, and ships with screaming crews running into each other for absolutely no reason. But you have to take into account that a german destroyer may have been a tad more manueverable than a K-class sub, so you have to admit there was a little more enthusiasm and initiative among german sailors that caused the mayhem of Operation Wikinger, as opposed to british sailors struggling to operate patently unusable vessels....
HMS Victoria. Histories biggest lawn dart. And Admiral Tyron is the poster child for the Naval Darwin Awards. At least he paid the price for his folly. No scratch that. His crew paid the price. He got his just rewards.
Unless one follows the line of thinking that Tryon gave a potentially catastrophic order in order to jolt the Royal Navy away from blind obedience to orders.
34:00: To explain the poor choice of leader, it helps to understand that Roman culture didn't make such a clear distinction between politics and war. Command is command, to them: Commanding a city, commanding an army, they are both positions of power. So someone who is skilled in one would be regarded as probably skilled in the other. Doesn't matter if you are organising an army on the battlefield or an army of workers to construct an aqueduct.
Regarding Torpedo issues, you've already well documented the MK14 and now the German torpedo problems. But what problems did the British experience with their torpedoes? I know that failures of the British torpedoes prevented the accidental sinking of HMS Sheffield when a flight of Swordfish mistook her for Bismarck, but other than that I haven't read or heard much on the British torpedoes.
its quite amazing how the Romans almost completely lost their entire fleet only to quickly rebuild it from almost scratch like 3 times in such a comparatively short time.
"Drapana" is the same as "Drapanum"; The important part is the base/root word. It's the same as how "go", "goes", and "going" are all variations of "to go" with the ending indicating tense. Latin does this with all words, not just verbs. Latin word endings also indicate a word's relationship to the rest of the sentence, not just tense as they do in English.
On the evening of September 8, 1923, seven destroyers, while traveling at 20 knots (37 km/h), ran aground at Honda Point (also known as Point Pedernales; the cliffs just off-shore called Devil's Jaw), a few miles from the northern side of the Santa Barbara Channel off Point Arguello on the Gaviota Coast in Santa
Thank you for timestamping this video! It's so long, and I have so much stuff to do, that I have no way on watching it whole anytime soon - but now I can watch some bite-sized pieces over the coming days!
As a side note to this marvelous list, you really should have the closed captions on. Admiral Doenitz is now Admiral Donuts. 🤪HMS Warspite is War Spike, and other delightful bits. This was fun and informative.
Pinned post for Q&A :)
EDIT: At 00:29:29 that's supposed to be 'Ark Royal' not 'Royal Oak'!
Which is worse for a Navy to have in posistions like the First Lord of the Admiralty, an inexperienced civilian politician or someone who has military experience but its in a completely diffirent branch like the army?
Hey Drach, wasn't it Napoleon who said "Never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake"?
When was the ottoman empire navy at it's strongest
I had to look up Plumridge after hearing about that. I highly doubted he would have been executed for treason ( and outright incompetence ) but I did think he would have been dismissed from the service in disgrace.
Instead, they made the imbecile a "Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath" which from what little I know, is no small potatoes. That, and they promoted him to Vice Admiral.
My question is; why was there no disciplinary action taken against him?? I reckon the nobility of the time could get out of a LOT of problems they started, but that was a disgrace to the whole Kingdom. At the very least, they should have demoted him to Captain, and put him permanently in charge of a Lighthouse... preferably that one in the south that kept getting battered by storms ( sorry for forgetting it's name ).
Kind regards from Michigan.
Q&A, In the historical strategy-computer game Shogun 2 Total War, set in the 16th century Japan, so early age of sail, the player can buy European Ships (Presumably Portuguese carracks), Is that realistic for the time period ? Did European powers during the age of sail sell warships to non European powers. (Edit, corrected poor grammar)
I vote that the nautical version of the Darwin awards be officially named the Kamchatka awards
The I See Torpedo Boats Award.
I second this
Tried googling it, but only got references ro the peninsula and islands. Got a better search reference I can look up? Is this the Russian fleet admiral in the Russo Japan was?
@@johnthomas2485 yes. The Kamchatka was legendary and notorious for firing on anything that wasn’t a Japanese torpedo boat 😂 it’s quite the wild story and kinda makes it clearer how the Japanese were able to defeat the Russian fleet so easily
@@johnthomas2485 oh, Kamchatka is a ship, I forget the admirals name but he was actually a decent sounding guy
"History is full of other examples of naval stupidity."
Meanwhile...
"Do you see torpedo boats?"
Japanese torpedo boats. Japanese torpedo boats everywhere.
Quick! Where are my binoculars?!?!
Are the torpedo boats in the room with us right now?
@@stevewhite3424 Thrown them all overboard while cursing the slovenly cow!
Now show me on the doll where the torpedo boats touched you
Interestingly the bombarment of the Aland islands by Plumridge led to the first ever Victoria Cross being awarded to Charles Davis Lucas who picked up a shell that had landed on his ship and hurled it overboard before it exploded. He got made a lieutenant on the spot.
A champion of Common Sense the world over.
That took balls bigger than the unexploded shell. I wonder how he managed to walk? But yes, Plumridge was a complete ass and likely was the official mascot of the Upper Middle Class Twit of the Year Award on Monty Python.
@@mpetersen6 Just Upper Class.
Upper middle is a completely different animal - more local golf club, gammon/Karen and 'how far to the highly rated state school' than receding chin.
@@mpetersen6 : I would imagine Mr. Lucas had learned how to take advantage of his own pendulous sway.
@@absalomdraconis Yep, when one has the mass of a pair of miniature black holes orbiting below, I guarantee you he steps firmly in sync!
So that admiral throwing the chickens overboard actually has a funny component you didn't mention. It was a Roman sacred ritual to feed the Sacred chickens before a battle, analyse the behaviour and thus give the omens(would the gods favour them) for the coming fight. So when the chickens refused to eat anything (possibly due to seasickness), the priest declared the omens bad. Claudius, wanting a big win to boost his career, is said to have declared: "if they won't eat, then let them drink" and promptly threw the chickens in the seawater.
Needless to say, yeah he lost.
Its interesting how such things tend to be a self fulfilling prophecy. The kind of person who would do something like that is a guy whos probably gonna make a mess of the battle, even if the chickens can't actually tell the future.
According to histories, when he returned to Rome, he was put on trial for sacrilege.
🤌[chef's kiss]
i heard about him from the oversimplified video about the first punic war.
SO MANY LOST FLEETS IN ONE WAR! SO MANY DEAD!
Always listen to your sacred chickens lol
Just popped in to say how jealous I remain of your epic channel intro sequence Drach
Both your styles are excellent.
Came to say I agree with this a year later - both creators fill their niches extremely well
When I mentioned to a Korean student that I had an interest in naval history, he gleefully told me of the exploits of Admiral Ye. Deserves its own episode.
Admiral Yi was a fucking legend.
Masterofroflness did an amazing meme video on the man
Admiral is a living deus ex machina, a single person manage to turn the tides of war in such overwhelming fashion that's it's unbelievable, like how do you response in losing an entire fleet to 13 ships??? Admiral Yi rolled a Nat 20 throughout the whole war.
The channel Extra Credits has a miniseries on Admiral Yi as part of their Extra History series
Yi is to Korea what Washington is to Americans
Honestly, the two German destroyers sunk by literally nothing but panic, while tragic, has got to be one of the funniest parts of naval history.
I wish that most of the crew or more preferably, all the crew survived so I could not feel bad laughing
cue Benny Hill music for that entire incident. While the Kriegsmarine crews obviously shouldn't have panicked, I lay the blame with the Luftwaffe not telling them what was going on.
I'm with you there, it would be hilarious if it wasn't for the fact that real men suffered and drowned. Hell, a lot of that happened, anybody tell you that war is glorious? Shite. Possibly the only thing thing worse is blind stupidity; combine the two and you might make it to Suvla Bay?
Pax
Another hilarious naval loss was the U-boat commander who didn't bother to be briefed on the correct operation of the toilet flushing valves operation and managed to open the valves to the sea, which very quickly returned his deposit and hundreds of tons of seawater into the U-boat.
The water entered under pressure and flooded the toilet compartment before going on to cause the boat to be abandoned as it was sinking rapidly!
The commander arrogantly told the seaman that tried to explain the valves sequence that he, the commander, didn't need to be told how to flush a toilet!
He wasn't interested that this was a new system of valves that operated very differently from the earlier types.
Can you imagine losing the vessel because you wouldn't be told how to flush the toilet without sinking the boat.
That's one hell of a thing to be known for.
@@felixcat9318 now that I can happily laugh at because I am 90% sure no one lost their life.
I'm a retired Navy Chief Submariner who served from 1978 to 2000. We had a monthly message that was sent to all submarines about safety issues and training, and included in it was a DARWIN AWARD that told a true story of some Sailor got caught (or injured) doing some stupid thing (no names were used to protect their identities). I don't know if they still send them, but in my day, Darwin Awards did exist.
Guidograms. Admiral Guido Granuzzlo (sp?)
I used to work at a lot of sand and gravel outlets (fixing scales). The lunch rooms had Osha fatalgrams posted. I knew being a farmer was dangerous, but never realized the end could be so gruesome. I went to a Christian Elementary school and the principle and one of the teachers had lost an arm, both farmers! I guess they were the lucky ones.
@@haldorasgirson9463 You're right there... my grandpa on my dad's side lost his hand to an accident with a wheat thrasher... ick!
@@haldorasgirson9463 not a week goes by without a news report of a farmer (or even worse - his child) being crushed by his tractor, shredded by a chipper or what have you
German destroyer at 16:35 : "I hear submarines!"
The Kamchatka: I kinda like this guy.
"Naval Darwin Awards"
*looks at list*
So I guess the 2nd Pacific Squadron are a league on their own huh
Kamchatka better be here too. She's the Dodo bird of the naval history world.
They should get the Darwins Award of the Darwins Awards.
The Kamchatka is the one handing out the awards, with the Moskva featured as a guest speaker.
@@TBone-bz9mp Moskva? How about Savo Island Naval battle, it tops the charts
To be fair to the 2nd Pacific Squadron, a significant contributor to their problems was that their ships were never intended to make that voyage in the first place, but the Imperial Russian Navy was woefully inadequate as a whole. Darwin Awards are more along the lines of "you had all the tools necessary to crush the enemy and yet you still got your ass handed to you because of decisions you made that even a landlubber would see as foolish".
One fun fact about Plumridge is that when he tried raiding Kokkola he was defeated by the towns people. The British lost 3 officers and 15 sailors killed and 3 officers and 31 sailors captured + one barkas captured (which can still be found in Kokkola in English park) while the towns defenders suffered only few men wounded.
brainless idiot his idiotcy beggers beyond belief
He would have fitted right in with the Zulu Dawn 'British to the Bone' mob
Another fun fact was that the prisoners of war from that battle were invited to the victory ball and had fun time dancing and drinking with the Russian soldiers and the locals. Different times...
@VompoVompatti Brits learned eventually that Finnish coast is not russia, and Finns are not russians.
The common history and experiences prepared both sides for coming war against russia.
Just wrote a long text about it here, i grew up in that same neighborhood, the battle took place on the beach we frequented as kids. Finnish casualties was not few wounded, the brit could not hit anything from boats. Finnish actual casualties: one horse, shot by an errant bullet. That part of the story is the perfect end..
The thing is called The Skirmish of Halkokari.
Won Gyun not only scuttled his fleet but he lost to millitary transports. If he had so much as tried to fight he would of done a lot of damage.
To the enemy right.......?(padme worry face)
@@mohdafnanazmi1674 actually yes, as long as he had even a single weapon larger than a basic arquebus (and he obviously had likely hundreds of large naval cannon in his fleet), he would already practically outgun the entire fleet of transports.
Indeed. Japan didn't really have proper naval combat ships. And this is part of why Admiral Yi's legend is as wonderous as it is. He saw this fact and basically invented modern naval tactics on the spot where he used his superior and longer ranged weapons to destroy the enemy fleet while trying to stay out of their effective/accurate range. This is why Yi was able to achieve such legendary status as defeating enemies with 10 times his own forces (more if you include logistical and supply vessels also at the battle). Yi also was the one who produced every turtle ship ever made, and did so to use them as a heavily armored, UNBOARDABLE pinning ship with cannons facing every direction to KEEP the Japanese ships stuck at range where the rest of his fleet could rain fire upon them (and to also just unleash very heavy for the time, but short range cannon fire into every Japanese vessel in the immediate vicinity).
Won Gyun, when given the very fleet Yi had built up, lost almost all of it, including every turtle ship ever made. Despite him fighting enemies whose naval doctrine was "shoot them with tanegashima (impressive firearms for the time but still handheld infantry weapons) from the defensive works on their decks and then board them."
It was like losing a fleet of dreadnoughts to a bunch of mid 1800s ironclad battleships, if not outright a bunch of old first rate ships of the line.
In fairness, while the Korean fleet *was* using cannon, the Japanese were still largely focused on boarding actions as a means of naval combat, so military transports, by virtue of carrying lots of people with weapons, were capable of fulfilling the Japanese fleet doctrine of the time. But still, yeah, if he'd been remotely competent he'd have done a ton of damage. Just look at the Battle of Myeongnyang that came after it, 13 ships taking on upward of 130 and winning without losing a single ship...even with Yi's ship being the ONLY ship fighting at the start of the battle, given the other captains were making reasonable assumptions about what the result of that kind of numerical advantage would be and planning to survive to fight another day.
Basically what had happened there is that Won Gyun saw that the Japanese were invading and freaked out at the number of enemy vessels, ignoring that the fleet he was looking at was made entirely out of transports (the actual Japanese warships wouldn’t arrive until hours later). He panicked, scuttled most of his fleet, and sailed away with the rest while writing to Admiral Yi to request his help (which was probably the smartest military decision he ever made).
The sinking of the White Ship comes to mind for a good Darwin Award
Yes Captain Fitzstephen, head onto that ship packed with drunk lords including King Henry's only son and (allegedly) shove away a group of priests that had come to bless the voyage because you wanted to beat the King's ship that had left for England a few hours before, that surely wont result in you striking a rock on the way out of harbour and sinking with only a butcher surviving thus leading to a secession crisis and nearly 20 years of civil war
Also guaranteed England and France (or the lands that would become England and France) would be enemies for the next few centuries.
Succession crisis.
Wow. Definitely one for the Darwin Awards!
Bloody hell…
@@combativeThinker Yep. Caused a violent fifteen year-long civil war called The Anarchy between Henry's daughter Matilda and his nephew Stephen of Bois. End result was Stephen got the crown, but had to make Matilda's son his heir.
Honorable mention to the commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Sending the flagship of his force, a vessel with a maintenance schedule so far behind that it had last been signed off by Archimedes and that was barely capable of moving under its own power, into an active warzone against an enemy with a lot of shore-based missile systems.
@@termitreter6545 looks like someone hasn't read the maintenance documents "leaked" a month after the sinking.
Even several of its air defense systems weren't operational!
@@MichaelStasivI love seeing an outstanding reply to a since deleted comment.
I know who won.
while the document should still be given some healthy skepticism... the fact that the Russian Federation first claimed that a storm in very much clear skies and later an internal fire was the cause of the sinking does not exactly bode well for the Moskva.
According to Phil Barker in a Wargames Research Group publication from many years ago, ramming with the intention of holing an enemy vessel below the waterline was rare because this might result in *your* ship being inextricably attached to a sinking one !
Instead, the idea was to run down to side of the ship, shearing off the oars, leaving it immobile and helpless. As almost all ancient sea battles took place close to shore this could mean that disabled ships would either be driven aground by the wind and wrecked (with the inevitable casualties) or driven out into the open sea - not where you want to be with no means of propulsion.
Some did have a simple square rigged sail, of course, but that wasn't really suitable as it left you at the mercy of the wind and tides.
Ships sailing into combat would inevitably leave behind their masts and sails at nearby beach as they would be wholly oar-powered during the fighting.
Also, as it turns out, wooden ships are pretty hard to sink! Since, well, wood floats.
Had to do both sides to achieve full immobility. One side basically meant that oars had to transferred across. Not easy during a battle.
@@basilpunton5702 Indeed, and even if they managed to do it they were still sitting ducks due to being much slower and less manoeuvrable.
I'm also pretty sure that a ship hitting the oars would cause casualties among the oarsmen, who were fairly tightly packed together.
I did a uni paper paper on this. There is some debate about how the ram was used. There is a third option (which i think unlikely), that a ram could be aimed at the steering oar to facilitate capture.
What we do know is that Hellenic warships were fast. We have a number of records of ships or fleets going from point A to B in X-many days. And they were moving faster than most ships in the Mediterranean until steamships. Part of this was a skilled and well paid crew. But design choices made to enable that speed also meant that they were somewhat fragile. So a lot of historians think that ramming an enemy risked breaking your own ship too. As i understand happened in the 19thC when various navies tried putting rams on their steamships.
I'd be interested to hear what any naval engineers think.
I think Won Gyun waiting for the Japanese to kill him was actually the smartest choice he had left. I think he recognized even with his pedigree and connections that he was likely to suffer a horrific fate at the Chosin court if he went back to report his once again monumental failure.
That or he forgot how to run away
Speaking of which, the Korean court demoting, arresting, imprisoning and almost executing Admiral Yi deserves a place on this list. One of the dumbest moments ever in our history.
And the whole reason for it? After Admiral Yi had, I dunno, destroyed multiple Japanese naval forces, caused around 9,000 Japanese casualties in manpower (plus well over two hundred vessels) and neutralized the entire Japanese navy in the first months of the war, he mostly participated in smaller-scale actions and kept up the naval blockade BECAUSE HE’D ALREADY WON AND ONLY NEEDED TO KEEP APPLYING PRESSURE ON SEA ROUTES TO PREVENT RESUPPPLY AND REINFORCEMENTS. The Korean government, for some reason, thought this was a sign of cowardice.
So when a Japanese spy sent in a false report to try and bait him into a trap and he refused, they took the opportunity to get rid of him.
@@bkjeong4302 You can't be serious. The Japanese had more respect for him than that. A Japanese admiral in this past century refused the title of "God of the sea" because, in his words, that title belonged to Admiral Yi.
@@CiaranMaxwell
Oh, and it gets even worse. Do you know who wrote the official report falsely accusing Yi of treason and cowardice even though he knew Yi was right to not take the bait, and gave the perfect excuse for the king to try and have Yi executed?
Won Gyun.
Yep, the guy was not only incompetent, he had the bright idea of getting rid of the one guy who could actually run the Korean navy properly so HE could be the Supreme Admiral of the Three Provinces (a position pretty much equal to SecNav in terms of how high up it was in the navy and how important it was). A position that absolutely nobody but Yi was qualified to hold at that point (though Yi himself wrote even he wasn’t qualified enough for the job, but Yi was critical of everyone including himself so that’s not necessarily indicative of his actual competency).
That said, it should be noted that most contemporary Korean military officials and even some in court pretty much knew who was the actually competent (or rather, hypercompetent) admiral and who was the idiot; they just couldn’t (or wouldn’t) do much about it because the fucking head of state personally preferred Won Gyun and speaking in defence of Yi ran the risk of getting wrongfully executed alongside him (a few of them did accomplish enough to save his skin, which was a VERY GOOD THING for Korea as it turned out).
Edit: here is an incomplete list of everything wrong with Won Gyun and why he has to be considered one of the low points of both Korean history and naval history in general:
- getting a relatively prestigious military career largely on family connections, instead of passing the military service exam as most officers (Yi included) did. (That said it is worth noting that the military was considered a lowly posting in Joseon Dynasty Korea because neo-Confuscianism)
- being morbidly obese to the point he couldn’t ride a horse (some in the Korean navy joked that this was why he was assigned to the navy and not the army)
- Scuttling his forces at the sight of Japanese transports invading Korean soil (not the actual Japanese navy, the transports). Granted there is some leeway for his actions here because Korean doctrine separated each provincial fleet into several squadrons at multiple bases, and so he might not have had the time to consolidate anyways before the actual Japanese war fleet showed up.
- focusing more on beheading Japanese corpses and POWs than actually dealing with living Japanese hostiles during battles, so he could say the ships and sailors under his jurisdiction “killed more of the enemy” (Yi instead favoured subordinates who made meaningful contributions to a battle and would recommend them for promotions).
- trying to execute fellow Koreans and disguise them as Japanese sailor losses to pad up the Korean killcount
- botching the cleanup job after Yi’s victory at Hansando (Hansan Island); for context, after the main Japanese fleet was destroyed off Hansando, a few hundred survivors ended up on nearby uninhabited islets with no freshwater source, and Yi ordered Won to have his forces either kill them off or make sure they were stuck on those islets while Yi himself went off to deal with the remainder of the Japanese fleet (which he did, at Angolpo). As it turned out Won did neither of these things and allowed most of the marooned Japanese to escape.
- trying to sabotage Yi’s career and the Korean naval war effort in general for the sake of career advancement on more than one occasion
- actually sabotaging Yi’s career and almost causing his execution for the sake of being put in charge of the entire Korean navy
- doing absolutely nothing to run the Korean navy after he got the job
- knowingly sailing his fleet into a Japanese trap at Chilcheonryang near a Japanese-occupied Busan, THE EXACT TRAP YI REFUSED TO GET HIMSELF INTO (and the one that Won had just used as an excuse to get rid of Yi), just so he would look better to the government
- not bothering to scout or gather intelligence before the operation
- getting a panoeksun (the capital ships of the Korean fleet at the time, with modified versions including Yi’s flagship and the turtle ships with their dragon head and anti-boarding deck) captured by the Japanese during a minor skirmish (which the Koreans won, but entirely because Yi’s influence and naval reforms hadn’t entirely disappeared after his arrest). Keep in mind that Yi didn’t lose a single ship in his entire naval career.
- forcing his fleet to sail through a storm on the way to Chilcheonryang
- all the things he did wrong at Chilcheonryang, most of which are mentioned in this video, but one that wasn’t mentioned was the fact he never bothered to resupply his fleet before setting sail; by the time he realized he was out of water, the only place close enough for his fleet to restock on drinking water was a Japanese-occupied island (which Won had no idea was Japanese-occupied due to aforementioned lack of scouting).
- trying to flee the battle
- leaving his younger sibling (who, while no Yi, was actually a decent officer) to die while fleeing
- failing to even save his own skin and getting cut down after making it ashore
- getting almost the entire Korean navy destroyed
@@bkjeong4302 My response to that is not safe for youtube comments. ._.
When your own admiral is a bigger hindrance to your war effort its deserving an award
"We have met the enemy, and he is us." -Pogo Possum
Halsey sailing his fleet through a typhoon, not once, but TWICE would qualify him for a Naval Darwin Award, methinks.
in his defense, communication wasnt very strong from his sources, and radar was still in its infancy at the time. iirc the first was known about but communication broke down, second was a suprise. i could be wrong and am open to correction though. :)
I believe a video for that is likely coming out soon because drach did say I won't put things in this list that are already covered extensively on the channel (I know that's not how he worded it but I'm lazy) so I hope a video is coming out on Halsey's incompetence, maybe the next biography video will be Halsey who knows
Speaking of which, "Where is, repeat, where is task force 34?..."
It's easy to judge Halsey posthumously on a few of the literally thousands of
decisions he made with limited information.
@@rle43
Not that stupid given that the American landings had been going on for days and the outcome was already assured by that point….
The other thing complicating naval Darwin Awards is that those high enough up the food chain to make the really catastrophic decisions are usually also old enough to have had children already (though in particular cases they may not themselves have actually done so).
Great point!!!🙏👍🤔⚓
If you screw up bad enough they tended to end your family line.
Another great example of naval Darwin awards is the Athenian admirals st the battle of Egos Rivers. Those guys basically lost the battle that doomed Athens and led to losing it's navy and the Peloponnesian war. What basically happened is that the two fleets had a standoff against each other day after day without anyone attacking, withdrawing to their anchorages every night, at opposite ends of the Dardanelles. But the Spartans operated out of a city, while the Athenians had set up camp in the Egos Rivers delta. What that meant was that the Athenians had basically no way of feeding their men other than sending the crews to forage in the nearby area. After some days of not doing anything, the Spartans withdrawed for the night, waited for the Athenian crews to go foraging and then attacked, catching the disorganized Athenians by surprise and destroying almost all of the Athenian fleet.
But that’s a pretty common tactic in the ancient era? Roman marines had to dismount and forage all the time I don’t think following common procedures i a Darwin Award
@@balmorrablue3130 The Darwin award is that the Athenians could have based themselves in a city like the Spartans. There was one city to the south of were the Athenians had camped. But they chose to base themselves directly opposite to the Spartan occupied city, in no man's land. And thus the Athenian navy, the most capable navy of its time, was destroyed in one fell swoop by the Spartan navy. That was in all intents and purposes, embarrassing. The Peloponnesian war that had lasted on and off for around 30 years ended after this win because Athens had lost its navy and most of its capable fighting men were either dead, stranded in the Dardanelles or captured by the Spartans. Foraging was a common tactic yes, but when you loose your whole navy and a 30 year long war because of bad positioning, that's Darwin award worthy in my book.
@@nickklavdianos5136 without knowing any more about the context of the battle I can only maintain my stance that following standard procedures of the time is not a Darwin Award
Basing themselves in a different town further from the Spartans may have been a bad strategic decision perhaps the waters were shallow of the city was lacking food or it was too far to sally out and engage the Spartans Without knowing more I can’t criticize them
@@nickklavdianos5136 still the spartans had to know the exact time the foragers were out and the ships on the land. there is a theory that the general not executed (the spartans didnt execute 1 of he generals ) was from the oligarchic party and messaged the spartans when to attack
Surprised to see one of my (not)proud countrymen in there. But as a Korean, I can say that Won Gyun definitely does deserve a place on that list. Such a stark opposite of his contemporary Yi Sun-Shin.
Would love an episode on the naval battles of the Imjin War someday
P.S. And your pronunciation of Won Gyun is pretty much spot on 👍
Admiral Yi is such a fascinating guy even if half of what he did was made up he's still an incredibly adept commander and I hate saying stuff like this but certainly one of the greatest of all time.
Yes, definitely an Imjin War/Yi Soon-Shin video is needed.
However something tells me that this name drop of Won-Gyun indicates that Drac may already be in the process of this...
I absolutely want to do a video on Admiral Yi, but I also want to do it right, which means finding a historian who specialises in that conflict. That's proving harder to find that I would have though, at least in the English speaking world.
I know almost nothing of Korean naval history other than having seen "The Admiral: Roaring Currents"
Do you have any tips for reading up on other battles?
Massive respect from England, that film was amazing BTW and we Brits know a thing or two about ship to ship combat.
Won Gyun lost a splendid fleet. One of my biggest, 'Naval What Ifs,' is what if Admiral Yi had not had the fleet that he built up taken from him and given to an incompetent?
I nominate Sir Cloudesley Shovell, not just for his silly name, but he caused the Scilly Naval Disaster, in which he sailed his ships into rocks of the coast of scilly and Four large ships, HMS Association, the third-rate HMS Eagle, the fourth-rate HMS Romney and the fire ship HMS Firebrand all sank, he himself d ied and so did 2,000 others. There is also a story that alleges that a common sailor on the flagship tried to warn Shovell that the fleet was off course but Shovell had him hanged at the yardarm for inciting mutiny. Even if not true the fact that people find him that incompetent, that they'd believe something like that, is a testament to his nomination for the Darwin Award.
A running theme in these sorry incidents is that is the crews that pay the price. The boneheaded idiot is merely getting his just reward. The only good thing about the Scilly* disaster is it ultimately gave us chronometers.
And as for ridiculous names there are a series of books recounting the fiction adventures of Amelia Pezbody Emerson and her husband Egyptologist Radcliffe Emerson. There is one recurring character with a thoroughly ridiculous name connected to British intelligence. Author Elizibeth Peter's (Barbara Mertz)
*given the pronunciation I've usually heard the whole was not silly at all.
I don't think Shovel was too much to blame individually - from accounts I've read of the disaster, as the fleet approached the Channel and unsure of their position, he held a meeting of senior officers from several of his ships to get their opinions, and the consensus was that they were off Ushant when in fact they were a long way north-west of there.
The tale on the Scillies is that Shovell was still alive when he washed up on to a beach where someone stove his skull in with a rock and stole his jewellery before burying the evidence.
If D'estre was a fool to disregard his navigators at Curacao was Shovell at fault for doing the opposite? As for the hanged sailor it was specifically forbidden in regulations for the crew to make their own navigation calculations, and as usual the punishment was death.
I was a little disappointed he wasn't on this list too!
Whether they’re eligible or not, the title sent my mind straight to *a certain russian auxiliary vessel*
💯
I haven't finished the video yet. You're telling me the Kamchatka *isn't* on the list? How?
@@Kgosha You have to have at least some IQ to meet the minimum requirement.
Part 2 will be just for the Kamchatka
There are torpedo boats in the comments so kamchatka scuttled herself out of the video after abandoning ship
Kind of surprised U-1206 didn't make the list.
The loss of a U-boat from a failure to properly operate the toilet sounds like a Darwin award if I ever heard one.
To make it all a bit worse, she sank a bit under a month before the end of the war in Europe.
A toilet that was so complicated they needed specially trained people to operate it. I dubbed them
Toilettentechniker! ( toilet technicians) 😂😂😂😂😂😂
A special, continual, and perpetual mention of Admiral "There's something wrong with our bloody ships today" Beatty: for gross miscommunication and the dogged insistence that battlecruisers were indistinguishable from battleships.
As an aside, his efforts did lead to an interesting investigation of first world war naval explosives during the early 21st century, courtesy of one certain 'Drachinifel'.
He has to share that with his flag officer, Stanley.
@@Bob.W. Hey, it's not Lt. Stanley's fault that the Admiralty took the most culturally significant signal in Royal Navy history _out of the signals manual._
Agreed.
While the Battle of Jutland ended the way it did. I would nominate Admiral Beatty. The unsafe practices of munitions handling he allowed on his ships. The poor structure of his sailing group to the other squadrons under his command. Bad signaling to other ships to the point squadron commanders decided to handle the problem themselves. And finally, his blatant refusal to respond to his superior officer when Jellicoe was asking for the data required to deploy the Grand Fleet effectively against the High Seas Fleet. Britain may have won in the end. But this level of clear incompetence shouldn't be ignored. Just my opinion.
Contentious! I would add more if I was better informed and had the time to do so. Alas I fail on both counts.
Pax
Baron you make a very convincing argument indeed!!!🙏👍🤔⚓
Not taking advantage of his battle cruisers superior range didn't help either. Or the fact that most captains were more concerned with the appearance of their ships rather than their efficiency.
Not forgetting Beatty attempted to try and alter the record of the battle to put himself in a better light. The failure of British fuses did not help or their lack of training in fighting night actions.
@@stephenbarker5162 the failure of shell fuses would be more failure of the ordinance and admiralty boards then Beatty himself. Jellicoe had actually put forth a memo saying the shells had problems and nothing up the chain was done about it until he was First Sea Lord himself and could force them to fix the problems.
13:04 to 19:04 Shades of the 2nd pacific squadron. I expect the ghost of Rozhestvensky handed a pair of binoculars to Von Tirpitz to vent his rage.
poor tippy
Ohhh, I've been looking forward to this one, 2019 vintage barrel-aged Drachinifel snark.
The Kriegsmarine-Luftwaffe-relationship will never be not funny 😅
Also, strange how Fritz Berger messed this up so badly, due to his performance at Narvik I always thought he was a very able commander.
That whole incident reads like a Monty Python sketch! 🤣
Not as funny as the feud between the IJA and IJN.
@@AWMJoeyjoejoe A naval equivalent of the Funniest Joke In The World?
@@aceade Luftwaffe/Kriegsmarine co-operation in WWII is a mostly a running joke, mostly down to Goring's utter incompetence in running the former.
@@aceade one ship received two lines of the joke and spent several weeks in dry dock.
A whole video about naval stupidity without mentioning 2nd pacific squadron at dogger bank is an achievement :)
Impressive or worrisome?
Much like a study of WWII bombing campaigns, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are in a class by themselves.
I thought the same. However...maybe the 2nd Pacific Squadron as whole is more a case of madness than stupidity ;-)
Too easy...
@@JonatasAdoM those are one in the same this time.
Regarding the lack of higher officer removal for the Mk14 Torpedo. If Admiral King had his way I think the entire BuOrd would've been shot.
Shooting was too good for them
@@mpetersen6 Damn straight. This was not incompetence as they did not know what they were doing; they KNEW there were SERIOUS problems with the MK 14 and conspired to cover it up and destroy anyone that tried to fix the problems. They should have been tried for treason and hung.
I wish someone would make a real good movie about this obscenity. The Rhode Island Congressman that also worked to prevent anyone inspecting the Factory for its clear failures as well. There were a lot of people who looked the other way also.
@@mpetersen6 what about being bludgeoned by their own torpedoes?
Was the big failure in BuOrd. I read somewhere that it was really the admiral who made the decisions and then was able to suppress the negative reports. If so just shoot one person.
@@mpetersen6 YEP they should have replaced the warheads and then shot out of a tube.
This may not be a popular nominee, but based on what I understood of Drach's expIanation about the sinking of HMS Victoria, I would nominate Sir George Tryon. His intention to let British naval officers take more initiative instead of blindly following orders may have been good. But giving an order that would result in disaster if blindly followed to the subordinates that are currently too hierarchical-minded does not seem like a wise way to conduct retraining.
It has a 95% success rate. Unfortunately, we had dunces for captains that day.
Thing is…
Who was more Darwin!?
Tyron for giving the order (of sorts) or Markham for obeying it?
I was going to mention this. Tryon gets the full Darwin Award for getting himself killed, although admittedly it appears he may have chosen to go down with the ship.
From everything I've read the disaster was almost entirely Tryon's fault. He was warned during planning that the columns would be too close together. When Markham hesitated in making the turn, Tryon signalled "What are you waiting for?", a public rebuke. And as the ships bore down on each other, the captain of Victoria asked three times for permission to go astern before Tryon consented. Admittedly the captain could have given the order straight away but the lack of response could be construed as denial. Tryon even ordered the boats coming to rescue the crew to turn back, believing the ship would not sink. Luckily they ignored that order. So although clearly it would have been better if Tryon's officers had stood up to him more, that doesn't change the fact that he was in charge and made a colossal and unnecessary blunder.
@@davidmoore1253 Some of that could be explained if he wanted his subordinates to think for themselves. It's what I think Drach believes, based on a Drydock answer. The problem is that it is an extremely risky sink-or-swim training method. (Literally, for that first part.)
Turning the boats away, and apparently not realizing many of the bulkhead doors were open, which increased the risk of sinking in case of damage, that is just sloppy though.
Tryon doesn't win an award because he was trying to break the habit of blind obedience to orders that had set in across much of the RN.
I remember suggesting a Darwin Awards episode when Drach did his Best Engineered ships episode; happy to see others also asked for it and we got an episode!
I guess we all have our own favourites, as well as the Kamchatka, but I would nominate Admiral Persano at the Battle of Lissa when he was not only roundly defeated by an inferior force but actually returned home and claimed he had won a great victory. Of course the truth came out, and perhaps as a sign his flagship sank at its moorings. Or of course there is Admiral Sir George Tryon and the disaster of the Victoria and the Camperdown.
I was sure that Tryon was going to be an example. Losing a powerful battleship in peacetime to an elementary math error is, as far as I'm aware, unique.
@@matthewcraver9917 And of course it could have been far worse. Some believe that if what he had been trying to do was carried out then each pair of battleships in the two columns would have collided!
Just because of how monumentally stupid it is, there are some who say Tryon gave the order explicitly so it wouldn't be followed (because that would be stupid). He tried to promote commanders thinking for themselves and wanted to give them some "practice" in disregarding orders, starting with an intentionally impossible one. Unfortunately for him, the Vice Admiral aboard Camperdown wasn't even ready to do that.
@@captainloggy140 That is another theory, though of course it is just as speculative as the one I mentioned. But if that is what Tryon was attempting to do it shows he did not really know Admiral Markham and how he would react. If a commander wants to give orders in that way he needs to know his subordinates and how they are likely to react, and not just to hope they will somehow read his thoughts. When Admiral Parker sent the famous signal to Nelson at Copenhagen, he confided to his flag captain that he did not expect Nelson to take any notice of the signal. As we know, he turned out to be right. Sadly for everyone involved Tryon was not.
Admiral Plumridge is just...... wow.
Fun fact: through his maternal niece he is actually a distant relative of none other than David Cameron. So causing massive financial, political and reputation loss to Britain can be considered a proud family tradition.
The winner of that year's Upper Middle Class Twit of the Year Award
Plumbridge seems aggressive and sensible to me ,I can't understand why he's being criticised.
@@jeraldsamuel5598 His actions WOULD have been sensible... if he was actually attacking an ENEMY. but he was attacking an ALLY.
@@Moonhermit-
So who is that racist communist idiot Corbyn related to on the naval side of things 👈😑
With that German DD story I'm surprised there were any survivors in the water after setting off a whole bunch of depth charges around them.
Jean II d'Estrées was nephew of Gabrielle d'Estrées (mistress of King Henri IV, who got his childless marriage annulled for her (and to legitimise their three children), but she died suddenly before the marriage (eclampsia with a stillborn son); poison was suspected. Henri wore black in mourning (something no King of France had done before) and gave her a Queen's funeral).
In 1663 Jean's 90-year old father was created first Duc d'Estrées; the dukedom went down the line of his older brother.
D'Estrées is simply a family name and derives from _strata_ (a northern French word for the Roman roads in the area). There are a number of villages in northern France which include '-d'Estrée' in their name (equivalent to '-on-Street' etc in England).
By the First Punic War the Republic effectively is only starting to have their own fleet and probably majority of those minor commanders in the engagements won still are Socii Navales from the Greek cities of the Graecia Magna. As those cities were required to supply ships and crews instead of land troops. That proportion is gradually smaller and smaller towards the end of the war as Romans get naval experience, but that's still some people who have an idea what they are doing at sea. That battle, however, is fought by an equivalent of a Consular army (actually, it is a Consular army except put on ships). It had to be led by a Roman Consul and what idea a land commander might have about fighting this?
There is a fairly good reason as to why the romans decided that assigning a consul without any fleet experience as the commander of a fleet was the best option:
- There were no romans that had fleet experience -
Admiral Halsey during both Typhoon incidents should be up there
I think that would fall under to ten naval cock ups.
Thing is, he didn’t actually die…
I was expecting Halsey to be on the list, was disappointed that he wasn't. I imagine if Taffy-3 hadn't pulled off the upset of the century he probably would have been. Saved him from looking like the complete horse's ass he was.
@@chrisschmalhofer4348 No offense meant, but did you watch the clarifications part of the video?
To be fair to Halsey during Samar, he would have been right to go after the Japanese carriers had they their full complement of aircraft. I dont think Halsey quite realized how desperate Japan was to throw their surface ships at the problem, and when he was told of what actually was happening, he didnt mess around and immediately ordered Admiral Lee to steam back.
Reading the name 'Naval Darwin Awards', you do not know how hard I laughed and now my roommates are looking at me like I am crazy
Yikes
cringe dude
not sure it's that funny but ok
I have to wonder how many of them uttered the famous last words "hold mah beer" or "watch this"
Yeah. No time to watch now but later on today… 💪
During one battle Won Gyun also apparently suggested killing the civilians from HIS side and pretending they were the enemy dead to pad up the Korean kill count (even though the Koreans already had killed/captured enough Japanese sailors and destroyed enough ships for a definitive victory). Thankfully Yi was in charge during that particular battle.
As an Italian a honourable mention: the high ranks and chief of staff (SUPERMARINA) of the Royal Italian Navy (Regia Marina) during WWII (Capo Gaudo e Matapan) though it has been covered in another episode
Naaah... Its not the Italian Navy Fault that their political leadership forced them into a war they knew they were not in a situation to fight and Then the same political leadership forced them to perform offensive operations they perfectly knew were barely feasible and got defeated. They knew it from the beginning it was going to be ugly.
That or the person in control of shell quality control and the night watchmen.
Aw yeah boy
The Honda point disaster 1923 deserves a Darwin Award
Foggy night
Using dead reckoning for navigation when the ocean currents were abnormal do to the recent Japanese earthquake
Running twenty knots into a channel you can’t see do to fog and partly do to being miles from where you thought you were at night
Seven ships lost when sensible precautions could have prevented the loss
I live in Kotka, Finland. The site of the battle of Svensksund is right off the coast where I used to live, a lot of the old Russian fortifications on the island where the city center sits were blown up by the British during the Crimean War. According to legend the whole town (that mostly existed to serve the garrisons of the various forts around the island and the surrounding islands) was pretty much razed, and it was only thanks to an old widow named Maria Purpur that the old Orthodox Church that sits on a hill in the middle of the island at a place which is now a quite popular park was spared. All the fortifications have pretty much been razed, the old Fort Slava only has a fragment of it's original wall left, parts of which have been restored, but it's mostly a pile of rubble now. There are still to this day old powder magazines from that time, buildings made out of huge blocks of granite, some of them blown to bits, others partially restored. Much of the walls of Fort Catherine on the city island itself have likewise been restored, as well as much of Fort Elizabeth on Varissaari. A good chunk of my family comes from Finland Proper, mostly fishermen and farmers from the coast quite close to Åland, so it's possible that some of them may have lived through these events.
This was fantastic I hope there will be a part 2 👍
The loss of HMS Victoria and the behavior of Vacca, Albini and Persano at Lissa look to me two outstanding, very honorable examples of naval stupidity.
124k views in one day! Congratulations Drach, I'm not sure if this is usual for your channel, but I'm pleased to see such an academic channel have a video blow up like this!
Wow. As a Korean, and a huge fan of your works, this is already a great start! :D
Vice-admiral Beatty & Admiral Marcel-Bruno Gensoul.
We know why they deserve this Award.
I was expecting Beatty to be here honestly
@@sirjohnbarlow7261 Eh,he certainly caused lot of confusion among his fleet,but he still got strategic victory against German high seas fleet(yes,at high price in casualties and lost ships).
So far as can be determined, not only did Plumridge NOT have anyone with the fleet who could speak Finnish, no one of rank knew that the Finns were not simply Russians.
Meanwhile, Finland was not at all part of Russia--it was a personal possession of the Czar, was not subject to the Russian bureaucracy, had its native social organization (not Russian aristocrats imposed on it), AND the Finns were exempt from the draft! Given that men in Russia mutilated themselves to avoid the draft, this was a big deal.
Because of Plumridge's wanton destruction, the Finns *volunteered* to give up their exemption so that they could serve in the Russian military.
So, yeah, it's even worse than the story Drach told.
It's got to be the Battle of Lissa again. Yes you've already done the battle, but it could do with a longer and more detailed account of it. Besides, we all love you Uncle Drach and want you to tell us another story.
What a wonderful video to introduce me to your channel, stoked to get into your backlog!
At 29.30 - Aircraft carrier Royal Oak? That's a new one! Ark Royal possibly? And it would have been good to know the years of some of these actions.
29:22 those were T II or G7E
They had that kind of problem like the American torpedoes but it was fixed in Norway campaign
I feel like if you decide to do another Darwin Awards episode, a good criteria might be that the officer responsible for the failure either died or was permanently stripped of command. That seems like it would fit with the self-sabotage nature of most Darwin Awards.
Not doomscrolled through all the comments to see if this has been mentioned, but a bit of and opsie in the segment on German WW2 torpedoes. To whit:
28:01 "Now another incident most have heard of is the sinking of the battleship Royal Oak in Scapa Flow..." - so far, so good, but:
29:21: Less than two weeks into the War, U-39 had managed to penetrate the destroyer screen around the aircraft carrier HMS Royal Oak..." - Ummm
Methinks you mean HMS Ark Royal, old chap.
As soon I as herd Won Gyun was a contemporary of Admiral Yi, I knew who he was. That's one of my favorite naval conflicts of the period, so I may not have reconginzed the name imidatily, once I heard the context I knew who he was.
The "Great Blunders" series by Geoffrey Regan was one of my favorites when I was younger. I lost my copy of Naval Blunders ages ago so I don't remember it very well, but I still have Great Military Blunders still lying around somewhere.
HMAS Sydney v Kormorant. Impossible victory by commerce raider against a modern cruiser.
Captain Burnett definitely qualifies, with dispropotionally tragic result for Sydney`s crew.
It was a stalemate which sunk both ships.
oh hey, my great-uncle was on sydney. still have the memorial plaque my grandma passed down.
@@questionmaker5666 Not quite a stalemate. Both ships were sunk.
All of Sydney's crew died, whereas Kormorant crew mostly survived.
Sydney, if properly handled should have demolished Kormorant with little damage.
It was Sydney's lack of preparation that created the conditions for a defeat.
Showed a friend, who was new to boating here in the Pacific, how to leave port. He promptly put the boat on a shallow reef. Had to reverse drive it out of the danger zone because I knew where the razorsharp corall towers are. Otherwise we would have had to swim through tigershark alley... He now understands that red and green buoys are not a mere suggestions out here. My tunaboat got swamped on a shallow reef in Kahului harbor with 2 inches of depth under the prop. My mother was on a scuba boat. Engine failed and the boat got pushed on a reef. 10 mins of destruction later...all that was left was the engine block sitting on the reef. We all get into situations sometimes. It gets messy and costly if your ship mastering abilities dont match the Exxon Valdez or mastering a flotilla.
How do you fix a leaking fishing boat? You add a third and fourth bilge pump.
I nominate for your Darwin awards whoever decided to keep the ammo flash hatches open on British battlecruisers; I almost hope they were aboard when the whole ship went up.
Early WW2 torpedoes - summed up like this “where was the Ka-boom! Where was the earth shattering Ka-boom!”
In the Martin the Martian voice of course.
That isn't very accurate. There was a very healthy mix of no ka-boom and ineffective ka-booms from overly sensitive magnetic detonators.
Not just naval Darwin awards for Admirals but PhD's in hindsight for everyone. Thanks, Drach!
"There and Drach again"......Drachinifel, The Bilbo Baggins of naval yt-canals. Cheers!!!
Your ability to describe eloquently disasters and or things going awry and not least sheer idiocy borders on genius. You have a way with words i evy
And to think Drach used to use the computer voice.
I'd like to nominate an incident -- not sure of the names of the people responsible but I'm sure they will yield to fairly easy research. The first class of monitors designed for WW I were tank tested. The Admiralty received a letter reporting that the design was faulty, and the ship wouldn't come anywhere near it design speed of 12 knots because the stern form was so poor that there would be separation, adding lots of resistance and interfering with the action of the rudder and propellers. The letter was signed by Robert Froude.
When you get a letter from the son of the man for whom the Froude number was named, and he tells you your hull is no good, you need to go back to the drawing board and start over. However, the Admiralty responded that they were already cutting steel and the ships were needed for the war effort and the construction would go forward.
The first ship went out on trials and indeed, it failed to make 12 knots, and worse, when it slowed below 5 knots to maneuver to its moorings it became uncontrollable and needed a tug to prevent it from hitting anything. The entire class of early monitors had to be escorted by a tug whenever they were underway.
I learned about this from the book, "Big Gun Monitors," by Ian Buxton. I think a second edition has since come out but I'm recounting my (admittedly long ago memory) of what the earlier edition said. This might be a good candidate for another episode of the Naval Darwin Awards.
Love you Drach thanks for all you do
Another fun fact about the battle of Drepana is that Pulcher's sister, Claudia, became infamous when, stuck in a blocked street by poorer citizens, she wished out loud that her brother would lose another battle in order to thin the crowd.
I remember from the past a story about the French Admiral D'Estrées, he was fighting alongside the English against the Dutch fleet at the battle of Texel (Kijkduin). The story goes that he was instructed by the French king Louis the 14th, too try and keep the French fleet as intact as possible and he had to try and learn as much as possible about the way the English and Dutch were fighting there naval battles. The English and French lost the naval battle and lost around 2000men after which the English went off to sign the westminister peace declaration. However the french admiral had to offcourse explain to Louis the 14th that they lost the battle, but he added to say that he did learn a lot. :)
Only I cannot find the exact source anymore which is a pity.
I clicked this video purely because of how great the title was.
Not sure if you’ll see this, but apparently there is a study on how Admiral Yi Sun-sin was seen in Japanese records and literature after the Imjin War, written by a certain Kim Joon-Bae.
Something to keep in mind if you ever plan to do an Admiral Yi video.
Had a laugh the other day when my buddy Sarah stuck you in the Bowfin's torpedo tube LoL Keep up the brilliant work please
I'd love to see a video on the impacts on the war if german torpedo's had worked properly. I know alternate histories are a bit of a dark art but it seems like a pretty mininal change could have had a major impact on the war
As a WWII history buff, there are SO many of these cusp events that really impacted the outcome of the war. As a friend of mine said, "In an alternate universe, the (Germans) won the war handily- but in ours, fate conspired against them." However, a large number of these events resulted from highly questionable decisions made by Moustache Guy. "Let's delay the Prokhrovka offensive unitl the Russians can turn the entire region into the world's largest tank trap."
I highly recommend Kenneth Macksey's "Invasion: The Alternate History of the German Invasion of England, July 1940." Macksey wrote it in the style of an actual history book, with period photos, tactical maps, etc. Brilliant work, and probably what happened in that alternate universe.
if the Germans had good, reliable, powerful torpedoes and the allies didn't? well that sounds like a scary war indeed.
@@ostlandr thanks for the recommendation! Sounds great!
The result may well have been the creation of more effective anti submarine methods earlier in the war.
Can't believe this list did not include the disastrous voyage of the Imperial Russian Baltic Fleet. It has to be the biggest cluster fck in the history of clusters!!! The levels of incompetence and idiocy reached was truly awe inspiring!! How did you miss it?!?
Never knew about the Theodor Reidel incident. Sounds like Germany’s Battle of May Island.
My thoughts exactly. Thick fog, and ships with screaming crews running into each other for absolutely no reason. But you have to take into account that a german destroyer may have been a tad more manueverable than a K-class sub, so you have to admit there was a little more enthusiasm and initiative among german sailors that caused the mayhem of Operation Wikinger, as opposed to british sailors struggling to operate patently unusable vessels....
Lol Drach’s description of the Darwin Award in the intro is classic
Admiral Tryon & HMS Victoria - surely an actual Darwin recipient.
HMS Victoria. Histories biggest lawn dart. And Admiral Tyron is the poster child for the Naval Darwin Awards. At least he paid the price for his folly. No scratch that. His crew paid the price. He got his just rewards.
Tryon successfully reproduced before he died, so nope. Not an actual Darwin Award winner. He still has descendants alive today.
Not forgetting Sir Alec Guinness' portrayal
Unless one follows the line of thinking that Tryon gave a potentially catastrophic order in order to jolt the Royal Navy away from blind obedience to orders.
34:00: To explain the poor choice of leader, it helps to understand that Roman culture didn't make such a clear distinction between politics and war. Command is command, to them: Commanding a city, commanding an army, they are both positions of power. So someone who is skilled in one would be regarded as probably skilled in the other. Doesn't matter if you are organising an army on the battlefield or an army of workers to construct an aqueduct.
Rome: A historical example that Failing upwards will eventually result in absolute success.
I would like to say that you're wrong, but they supposedly had to evacuate the entire city several times.
Reading the comments I have to congratulate Drach for burning the Kamchatka into the minds of the naval minded part of human conscientiousness.
Naval Darwin Awards and the first recommended video is the Russian Second Pacific squadron. TH-cam's algorithm is sometimes spot on.
The Mark 14 video is how I discovered this channel!
Regarding Torpedo issues, you've already well documented the MK14 and now the German torpedo problems. But what problems did the British experience with their torpedoes? I know that failures of the British torpedoes prevented the accidental sinking of HMS Sheffield when a flight of Swordfish mistook her for Bismarck, but other than that I haven't read or heard much on the British torpedoes.
Had a good laugh! Hope you do more of these.
its quite amazing how the Romans almost completely lost their entire fleet only to quickly rebuild it from almost scratch like 3 times in such a comparatively short time.
they had forests and very cheap labor (slaves)
The Romans had their nit-wits too
Ex-Navy officer here. Damn that title! I laughed so hard I woke the dogs! :-)
Idk if this count as a Naval Darwin Award, where is the U-1206 story the U boat that was sunk by its toilet
The discord notification sound in the background at 10:06 confused me for a solid minute before I rewinded and realized it came from youtube
"Drapana" is the same as "Drapanum"; The important part is the base/root word. It's the same as how "go", "goes", and "going" are all variations of "to go" with the ending indicating tense. Latin does this with all words, not just verbs. Latin word endings also indicate a word's relationship to the rest of the sentence, not just tense as they do in English.
On the evening of September 8, 1923, seven destroyers, while traveling at 20 knots (37 km/h), ran aground at Honda Point (also known as Point Pedernales; the cliffs just off-shore called Devil's Jaw), a few miles from the northern side of the Santa Barbara Channel off Point Arguello on the Gaviota Coast in Santa
Award for greatest title ever goes to Drachinifel!
I`m dying of laughter. Congratz on a very detailed humourous narrative. Thank you.
I'm completely shocked that the captain of the Kamchatka is not on this list.
I'm only up to Anson's circumnavigation and Kamchatka isn't even the running.
i knew about the Consular chicken story but I did not know the details of the naval engagement. thank you Alex!
I think Hubbard's stunts off the Oregon coast and Coronado islands in '43 deserve honorable mention here.
Do you want Tom Cruise to yell at you?
@@jeffreyskoritowski4114 Bring it on
Thank you for timestamping this video! It's so long, and I have so much stuff to do, that I have no way on watching it whole anytime soon - but now I can watch some bite-sized pieces over the coming days!
As a side note to this marvelous list, you really should have the closed captions on. Admiral Doenitz is now Admiral Donuts. 🤪HMS Warspite is War Spike, and other delightful bits. This was fun and informative.
Fun video! Thanks for compiling quite a few events from different eras.