Worst Military Underperformance

As we seem to have strayed away from the OP 1900.

I offer the performance of the British against the English. Regularly defeated by the English. From Hengist in the 5th century to Hingston Down in 838.

I note reference to Agincourt but who won the war? A swap from occasional huge mobs of noble hooligans to a more professional bite and hold which did not provoke an arrival of an English (or 'other French') army until Castillon in 1453 finished the issue.
Depends of the "scale" of your point of view. On a tactical point of view, the French underperformed during most of the HYW. On a strategic point of view, the English underperformed during most of the HYW. But Agincourt, at the scale of the battle, is an utmost and total humiliation for the French: they had the men, the training, the moral, a solid plan and a solid general. Even the mud problem wouldn't have mattered if the French noblemen had OBEYED to Boucicaut's orders. Boucicaut wanted a cautious and gradual frontal attack against the English to block them, thus giving the time to another corps to flank Henry V's host. But did Alençon and cie listened to this? Nope, they charged without orders and discipline and then the mud became a problem. When you have every card and throw it all because it lacks "panache", I call this a "worst underperformance ever".
 
How that is different from usual performance of Iraqui army??
30 000 soldiers, with 30 000 police, who are massively better trained and equipped than the opposing force collapse in the face of possibly as few of 800 militiamen with ragtag equipment.
 
30 000 soldiers, with 30 000 police, who are massively better trained and equipped than the opposing force collapse in the face of possibly as few of 800 militiamen with ragtag equipment.

If they were anything like the Iraqi police when I was there half of them were probably working for the militia...
 
Fall of Mosul to ISIS?

We have a winner - 2500 fully equipped Iraqi soldiers with a dozen (approx?) M1A1 Abrams MBTs plus other heavy weapons vs 200 black pajama clad ISIS Fighters in 20 technicals

The Iraqi troops fled so fast that they not only divested themselves of their uniforms and weapons but abandoned their tanks with such haste that they left the engines running

Contemptible performance which can only be down to very poor leadership.
 
We have a winner - 2500 fully equipped Iraqi soldiers with a dozen (approx?) M1A1 Abrams MBTs plus other heavy weapons vs 200 black pajama clad ISIS Fighters in 20 technicals

The Iraqi troops fled so fast that they not only divested themselves of their uniforms and weapons but abandoned their tanks with such haste that they left the engines running

Contemptible performance which can only be down to very poor leadership.

I've lost count of the times in history where the Iraqis have managed to place the proper forces in the proper place according to accepted military practice only to have those forces completely fail to perform their expected tasks and collapse in the face of the enemy.
 
I've lost count of the times in history where the Iraqis have managed to place the proper forces in the proper place according to accepted military practice only to have those forces completely fail to perform their expected tasks and collapse in the face of the enemy.

They're the new Italians.
 

Deleted member 1487

I've lost count of the times in history where the Iraqis have managed to place the proper forces in the proper place according to accepted military practice only to have those forces completely fail to perform their expected tasks and collapse in the face of the enemy.
Well that's the problem when you have a force that doesn't want to fight for a dictator and doesn't have a material reason to die in those particular wars.
 
They're the new Italians.

Or the new Chinese. Someone here talked about the underperformance of the Americans versus the Chinese in the winter of 1950/51 and a underestimation of the enemy factored into that. Back in the 1940s, if you went up to a American military man and said "Chinese military effectiveness" he would have assumed you were revealing the punchline to a joke. And the Chinese military had been a joke for the past century, earning itself global derision and a near uninterrupted string of embarrassing defeats. When MacArthur during the Korean War dismissed the prospect of Chinese intervention with the line "If they cross the Yalu I will make of them the greatest slaughter the world has ever known," he was speaking based on his personal experience with the armies of Chinese warlords. Unfortunately, since the China experts were in the process of being purged by rabid anti-communists who blamed them for "losing China" there was no one to tell him that the Chinese communists would be a very different beast indeed (although given it's MacArthur we're talking about, he probably wouldn't have believed them).
 

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The Rout of Moy- 1700 English soldiers scared by a mere 6 Highlanders into thinking they had run into a Highland army that didn't really exist- which they then ran away from.
 
howabout John Hood

John Bell Hood certainly earns the prize for "Confederate Officer who did the most to help the Union win the war in an unintentional role."

Maybe that's why the US Army named Fort Hood after him.

Speaking of that era. I'm surprised General Custer hasn't been mentioned. He left his machine guns at home.
 
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Eighth Army at Gazala. Divide your army up into formations that cannot support each other; utilise your armour in packets small enough for an outnumbered enemy to be able to defeat them consecutively; lose your main forward logistics centre and strongpoint (35k prisoners). All in all, about 50k British/Empire/Allied casualties, to about 6k Axis.
 
The Imperial Russian Army during the Crimea War:
  • The logistics were so awful the French Imperial Navy went quicker from Marseille to Sevastopol than did the Imperial Russian Army for crossing the 80 kms separating Odessa from this same city
  • Entire units starved and froze to death after their commenders embezzled their supplies
  • The troops were mostly illiterate serfs forced to serve for 25 years
A thread has been made here about this.
 
Eighth Army at Gazala. Divide your army up into formations that cannot support each other; utilise your armour in packets small enough for an outnumbered enemy to be able to defeat them consecutively; lose your main forward logistics centre and strongpoint (35k prisoners). All in all, about 50k British/Empire/Allied casualties, to about 6k Axis.

32K of those was POWs from Tobruk which was was surrendered for reasons that I've never understood - even with the help of diagrams and maps etc.......sadly while the Infantry and Artillery performed well the British armour was utterly Gash and denied those infantry and Artillery units the support that they expected.
 
32K of those was POWs from Tobruk which was was surrendered for reasons that I've never understood - even with the help of diagrams and maps etc.......sadly while the Infantry and Artillery performed well the British armour was utterly Gash and denied those infantry and Artillery units the support that they expected.

Well, yes, I assume that Tobruk was what he was referring to as "losing your main forward logistics centre". Not exactly an inspiring sequel to the previous siege.
 
Or the new Chinese. Someone here talked about the underperformance of the Americans versus the Chinese in the winter of 1950/51 and a underestimation of the enemy factored into that. Back in the 1940s, if you went up to a American military man and said "Chinese military effectiveness" he would have assumed you were revealing the punchline to a joke. And the Chinese military had been a joke for the past century, earning itself global derision and a near uninterrupted string of embarrassing defeats. When MacArthur during the Korean War dismissed the prospect of Chinese intervention with the line "If they cross the Yalu I will make of them the greatest slaughter the world has ever known," he was speaking based on his personal experience with the armies of Chinese warlords. Unfortunately, since the China experts were in the process of being purged by rabid anti-communists who blamed them for "losing China" there was no one to tell him that the Chinese communists would be a very different beast indeed (although given it's MacArthur we're talking about, he probably wouldn't have believed them).
True, but the Chinese forces were underequipped and underfed. In those days, China's government was arguably even more corrupt than today. It's no surprise they were losing every battle.
 
True, but the Chinese forces were underequipped and underfed. In those days, China's government was arguably even more corrupt than today. It's no surprise they were losing every battle.
Also Macarthur was racist and couldn't believe those yellow men were a threat
 
If they were anything like the Iraqi police when I was there half of them were probably working for the militia...

Approximately 2.5K sleeper fighters activated when the approximately 1K conventional troops hit, yes a fair number of the police were from Western Mosul so you can imagine how many ended up fighting for the enemy when they arrived.

The 2nd Iraqi Army Division which bugged out was heavily made up of Mergas who had little interest fighting for Baghdad, moreso as the oil dispute heated up.

Iraq's armor was moved to around Fallujah outside of some training tanks. The Golden Division was moved to around Fallujah as well as were Iraq's two Cessna's which could fire Hellfire missiles.
 
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