Which military plan has ever worked 100%?

Pearl Harbor didn't catch the American carriers and the third wave that would have torched the strategic oil reserve didn't get launched.

They SINK 75 % of the US Battleships for what? 10 fighters and bombers/TPB?

I do not how you call that ... but IMHO was an excellent plan executed flawlessly.

The little fact that it was a suicide of their nation does not enter in the equation.
 
The attack on Yugoslavia in April 1941.

For an operation that was made up on the fly, the Germans performed superbly: Yugoslavia captured in 11 days for less than 200 Germans killed.

Eh, the Germans had been planning for a possible Yugoslav action before the invasion, and the actual result dramatically simplified their overall logistics for the invasion of Greece. Otherwise yes, this is a pretty good candidate, too.
 
They SINK 75 % of the US Battleships for what? 10 fighters and bombers/TPB?

I do not how you call that ... but IMHO was an excellent plan executed flawlessly.

The little fact that it was a suicide of their nation does not enter in the equation.

No, they sank two battleships, permanently. The rest settled onto the shallow bottom of Pearl Harbor and were all repaired, I the ship repair facilities that went virtually unscathed.

As for perfect, some of Hannibal's battles were close, particularly Cannae. Outnumbered 2:1 and still annihilated the Roman army with only a few thousand losses.
 
They SINK 75 % of the US Battleships for what? 10 fighters and bombers/TPB?

I do not how you call that ... but IMHO was an excellent plan executed flawlessly.

The little fact that it was a suicide of their nation does not enter in the equation.

But they failed their overall objective. The object was to strike a devastating blow which would cripple the morale of the American people, not the Pacific Fleet. This was, of course, an insane assumption to make (that launching an attack on the Pacific fleet, however devastating, would make America less eager to fight), and no amount of tactical success would have made Pearl Harbor an operational success. Had they actually cared about results, they would have targeted the oil, among other things. Because its main objective failed, despite completion of most of the steps, Pearl Harbor cannot be described as being a hundred percent worked military plan.
 

Daffy Duck

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Getting back to the original question...Two military plans come to my mind.

-The Mongol siege (and destruction) of Baghad
-Mongol invasion of Khwarezmia

Both saw utter destruction of their conquered territories.
 
The passengers on Flight 93 made a plan to disrupt the plans of the hijackers. They succeeded.


Their sacrifice was compared by Bill Clinton to that by the Spartans at Thermopylae, another example of a group of people going into a situation with a straightforward goal that would likely engender their destruction, and doing so effectively.
 
Soviet invasion of Manchuria, British invasion of Italian East Africa, Operation Renntier.

The passengers on Flight 93 made a plan to disrupt the plans of the hijackers. They succeeded.

I think they also wanted to try to bring the plane down without people getting killed, but I could be wrong.
 
Operationally? Fall Gelb was mentioned already (unless you want to find fault in it working better than planned).
Well, the Dutch part of Fall Gelb didn't go as plan as the paratroopers failed to secure the airports near the Hague and use those as a staging area for glider troops to sweep through the city and capture the Queen. Sure, they steam-rolled into France (that'd go for 100%, perhaps), but they were so fed up with their failure in the Netherlands (the sweep through Brabant and Utrecht worked, the one from the North didn't) that they felt they had to bomb Rotterdam. Sure, they won out in the end, but with greater difficulty and less gain (Wilhelmina made it off to England) than they expected.

Definitely not a 100% success operational rate, unless I'm completely misunderstanding terminology again.
 
Bellisarius' campaign against the Vandals in North Africa?

British seizure of Diego Suarez on Madagascar (Operation Ironclad ), 1942. They achieved their objective swiftly and efficiently, but then had to fight a low intensity conflict with the Vichy governor's forces for several months.

Battle of the Bismarck Sea (1943).

Washington's Continental Army captures Trenton on Dec. 26, 1776.

Battle of Yorktown in 1781.

Operation Dragoon, 1944.
 
Amazing,

But even more amazing. Nearly for every one of the candidates, something can be raised as an objection.

Anvil/Dragoon: yes, from a tactical point of view, excellent. Strategic point of view? actually not. It focused German troops in France. A better option would be to threat an invasion in either the Adriatic or the top part of Italy. That would have drawn German troops away from France, using North-South lines of communications, not s developed as the german East-West and French North-South (at least that is what Brooke says).

East Africa: the battle of 100 days, mostly carried by South Africa. A candidate.

HOWEVER, the demolitions forced the commander Brink to make some alternative plans.

Bismarck Sea: I didn't know it was so successful!

Ivan
 
Amazing,

But even more amazing. Nearly for every one of the candidates, something can be raised as an objection.

Anvil/Dragoon: yes, from a tactical point of view, excellent. Strategic point of view? actually not. It focused German troops in France. A better option would be to threat an invasion in either the Adriatic or the top part of Italy. That would have drawn German troops away from France, using North-South lines of communications, not s developed as the german East-West and French North-South (at least that is what Brooke says).

East Africa: the battle of 100 days, mostly carried by South Africa. A candidate.

HOWEVER, the demolitions forced the commander Brink to make some alternative plans.

Bismarck Sea: I didn't know it was so successful!

Ivan


Disagree, the troops in Italy were not going anywere and would have been stymied at the alps anyway and were being held in check by only a couple of divisions

Dragoon liberated 50 percent of france for less casualties than the allies took on June 6 alone and lead to the isolation and eventual capture of 12 German field divisions

it was 100 percent effective
 
Eh, the Germans had been planning for a possible Yugoslav action before the invasion, and the actual result dramatically simplified their overall logistics for the invasion of Greece. Otherwise yes, this is a pretty good candidate, too.

There were plans, but remember that up to March 27, Yugoslavia was a German ally. The timeline:

- March 27, the anti-German coup happens.
- March 29, OKH issues its initial invasion orders.
- April 6, the attack is launched.
- April 17, Yugoslavia unconditionally surrenders.

That's two days to plan the invasion (or at least massively update existing plans), a week to prepare, and then a week and a half to win, with total casualties of just 500 men compared to nearly 400,000 for the Yugoslav army.

The Germans were helped by the fact there were a lot of troops in Eastern Europe already to prepare for Barbarossa. Ironically, the invasion of Yugoslavia served to confirm to Stalin that all those troops were actually not intended to fight Russia, but to clean up the Balkans.
 
Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968.
Soviets special units captured political leadership and by doing so disabled any response from Czechoslovak army.
 
There were plans, but remember that up to March 27, Yugoslavia was a German ally. The timeline:

- March 27, the anti-German coup happens.
- March 29, OKH issues its initial invasion orders.
- April 6, the attack is launched.
- April 17, Yugoslavia unconditionally surrenders.

That's two days to plan the invasion (or at least massively update existing plans), a week to prepare, and then a week and a half to win, with total casualties of just 500 men compared to nearly 400,000 for the Yugoslav army.

The Germans were helped by the fact there were a lot of troops in Eastern Europe already to prepare for Barbarossa. Ironically, the invasion of Yugoslavia served to confirm to Stalin that all those troops were actually not intended to fight Russia, but to clean up the Balkans.

The Germans, without that declaration, would have been made to attack directly into the teeth of an Anglo-Greek force which would have had lines that were somewhat stronger than IOTL. I highly doubt this would have made a significant difference in time but given the nature of Barbarossa and its contigencies even a few days' delay in launching that invasion would be critical from a strategic sense, in that it means the Germans will be further west by the time of the Rasputitsa, while the Soviets will be able to make better use of their reserves as opposed to just throwing them at the Germans in order to buy time.
 
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