GREAT MILITARY DISASTERS
An Historical Survey of Military Incompetence
Geoffrey Regan
New York: M. Evans & Co., 1987
320 pp., $22.50
The Greeks might have won their 1920-22 war with Turkey had their commander in chief been sane. Unfortunately, General Hajianestis, who conducted the campaign from his yacht, spent most of his time in bed, convinced that his legs were made of glass and would shatter if he stood on them. When alert enough to remember the war, he fired off mad and contradictory orders. He was finally replaced by General Tricoupis, who unfortunately proved unable to assume command because he was already a prisoner of the Turks.
In 1905, when Czarist Russia went to war with Imperial Japan, the Russian Baltic Fleet under Admiral Rozhestvensky was ordered to Tsushmia Strait. To reach it, the fleet had to sail eighteen thousand miles around Europe and Africa, across the Indian Ocean, and up the Asian Pacific coast, a nightmare voyage for the Russian admiral, who was forced to contend with incompetent and perfidious subordinates, corrupt superiors, and "the antagonism and mockery of the world." Among his many worries was his knowledge that the Japanese fleet he was sailing to meet had already defeated a naval squadron far stronger than his. But throughout the voyage Admiral Rozhestvensky's deepest anxieties were reserved for the unseaworthy condition of his warships.
Russian naval architects at the turn of the century, like some American weaponry experts today, seem to have striven for perfection by afterthought. Too many ideas had been added to the warships' original designs. Consequently, Rozestvensky's best battleships were alarmingly top-heavy, and when they were fully loaded, all but two feet of their main armor plate was submerged. As a result, they were inordinately slow and so unstable that he had been ordered to strip weight from his superstructures and even to avoid hosting all but essential signals.
Warships in danger of capsizing when signal flags are raised were not likely to strike terror into the Japanese or to calm the fears of the Russians sailing them. Indeed, Russian morale was predictably low, and throughout the voyage panicky lookouts spotted Japanese torpedo boats in unlikely places.
In the North Sea, at the very beginning of the voyage, with no Japanese warship within then thousand miles, the fleet fought off a "full-scale attack by Japanese ships"--in fact, a British trawler fleet. Gunfire sank one trawler and damaged others; the Russians managed as well to inflict considerable damage on each other. Further on, one vessel fired three hundred shells in a one-sided battle with a Swedish merchantman, a German trawler, and a French schooner, and then threw the fleet into an uproar by signaling "Do you see torpedo boats?" in place of the intended code flag "We are all right now."
Gunnery practice en route failed to inspire Russian confidence. The destroyers were unable to score a single hit on a stationary target. The battleships, firing at a moving target, scored one hit--on the ship towing the target. The firing of torpedoes was equally disastrous. It was reported that of the seven that left
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