Modern militaries use relatively standard camouflage patterns and netting to try to hide themselves from prying forces, but not all camouflage and disguise is so boring. Some military disguises that actually worked were outlandish and ridiculous.

10 Israeli Commandos Fooled Sentries By Cross-Dressing

In 1973, Israel launched Operation Spring of Youth as part of a larger operation targeting the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) as revenge for the massacre of Israeli athletes at Munich. The operation, which targeted PLO leaders living in Lebanon, had to be very stealthy.

The Sayeret Matkal special operations force tasked with carrying out the assassinations had to sneak past Lebanese security forces and PLO guards without arousing suspicion. To do this, the Israelis turned to a ridiculous disguise: cross-dressing.

After coming ashore on the Lebanese coast on April 9, 1973, some of the Israeli commandos put on dresses and wigs. Pairing up with some of the other commandos, they pretended to be loving couples.

After being driven to their targets by Mossad agents, the commandos blasted down the doors and entered the houses of their targets. Other commandos, some still dressed as women, guarded the outside of the residences. The operation was a complete success, with only two Israeli commandos killed.

9 Explosives Disguised As Flour That Could Be Eaten

With the OSS aiming to disrupt Japanese operations in Southeast Asia, they turned to chemist George Bogdan Kistiakowsky. He created the perfect explosive that could be disguised as, of all things, flour—and it could be used to bake as well.

The “Aunt Jemima” mixture of three parts explosive and one part flour could be sneaked past Japanese soldiers without suspicion. If they did get suspicious, a realistic looking and tasting loaf of bread could be made and eaten to prove to the Japanese that the flour was “just flour.”

Although the flour could be ingested, the original mixture would have made people very ill. This was amply demonstrated in an incident when a Chinese cook disobeyed orders and ate a muffin, becoming so ill that he nearly died.

Ultimately, a second version of “Aunt Jemima” was developed that was far less toxic than the first variant and could be consumed safely in quantity. In the end, more than 15 tons of the stuff was smuggled into Japanese-controlled areas with the Japanese none the wiser.

8 Dazzle Camouflage

By 1917, with German U-boats having sunk a good 20 percent of the British merchant fleet, Britain needed to stem the losses any way it could. Although previous attempts to disguise merchant ships had failed spectacularly or been impractical in hiding the ships entirely from U-boats, artist Norman Wilkinson’s “dazzle” camouflage was designed to obscure the bearing of the ship instead.

If a U-boat couldn’t tell where a ship was heading relative to itself, the U-boat couldn’t target the ship effectively with a torpedo. Geometric shapes in varying shades of black and white accomplished this by obscuring the bow and other angles on the ship that the U-boat normally used to determine the bearing of the ship.

Wilkinson proposed his idea to the admiralty, who were desperate to stop the U-boats. As a result, they put the idea into practice without much testing. Hundreds of ships were painted with dazzle camouflage, each with a unique pattern to keep the Germans from being able to identify ship classes based on their camouflage patterns.

In the end, there was no official measurement of their effectiveness. But anecdotal evidence and more recent research has indicated that the dazzle camouflage was effective.

7 Man Dressed Up As King’s Bride To Assassinate King

From 1665 to 1678, the Kongo kingdom in Africa was torn by civil war between two major noble houses after the death of the king of Kongo. Soyo, a third noble house, controlled another part of the country and regularly meddled in the affairs of the other two houses. After Pedro III, a later king of Kongo, was forced to flee his capital and then retook it by force, Manuel de Nobrega, a relative of the pretender king that Pedro III had dethroned, plotted his revenge.

De Nobrega decided that it would be impossible to dethrone Pedro III by force. Instead, de Nobrega tricked Pedro III by proposing that he marry a woman from de Nobrega’s clan to end the more than decade-long civil war and bring peace to Kongo.

However, de Nobrega secretly disguised himself as Pedro III’s bride-to-be. When Pedro III came to claim his bride, de Nobrega got close enough to shoot and kill Pedro III, ending the Kongo Civil War.

6 Israeli Commandos Sneaked Into Hospital By Pretending To Be Pregnant Woman And Relatives

The West Bank in Jerusalem is often the scene of violent clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security, with each side using deadly force on the other. In November 2015, 20-year-old Azzam Shalaldeh was suspected in the stabbing of an Israeli. Having been shot by the person he allegedly attacked, Azzam took refuge in a Palestinian hospital in Hebron.

While he was being treated, Israeli authorities wanted to arrest him. But Israeli security forces are not very popular in the West Bank, which made any overt attempt to extract him risky.

Elite Israeli soldiers from Duvdevan, an undercover unit that often mingles with Palestinians, entered the hospital by pretending to be a group of bearded relatives with a pregnant woman in a wheelchair who was going into labor. This disguise fooled the hospital staff, who let them in.

After gaining entrance to the hospital, the special forces dropped their disguises and stormed up to the third floor. They shot Azzam’s cousin before bundling Azzam off in the wheelchair.

5 Australian Commandos Disguised As Malay Fishermen Fooled Japanese

Operation Jaywick was a plan by the British and the Australians to sneak into Singapore and wreak havoc among the Japanese ships anchored there, disrupting Japanese logistics. To do this, a joint British and Australian special forces unit of 11 soldiers disguised themselves as Malay fishermen by dyeing their skin. Then they sailed a captured Japanese fishing vessel through Japanese-controlled seas.

The fishing boat Krait was loaded with canoes and weapons and sent on its way in September 1943. None of the crew could speak Malay, so they had to steer clear of the men on other Malay fishing vessels to avoid capture. In addition, the soldiers’ facial features looked rather different from the locals, even with dye.

After days spent avoiding Japanese patrols, the Krait was able to slip into an isolated anchorage and launch several canoes manned by commandos. Over the course of three days, they were able to get into Singapore, plant explosives on several Japanese ships, and escape. The disguise fooled Japanese forces in the area, and in mid-October 1943, the Krait was safely back in Australia.

4 The Elaborate Royal Navy Schemes To Trap U-Boats

After unrestricted submarine warfare was declared by Germany in 1917, the British sought many ways of striking back at U-boats or negating their effects. One of these ways was dazzle camouflage, but another was using Q-ships.

Q-ships—merchant ships that were secretly armed with cannons and machine guns—were fitted with watertight bulkheads that made them resistant to torpedoes and tricked U-boats into coming closer before being destroyed. This strategy worked because U-boats carried a limited number of torpedoes, which their captains tended to hoard. Given the unarmed nature of the enemy they were attacking, U-boats would often surface and use their deck guns to finish off merchant ships.

The Q-ships put on elaborate displays to make the U-boats come closer and surface. That way, the U-boats could be targeted by the Q-ship guns. For example, if a U-boat launched a torpedo that hit the Q-ship, the Q-ship remained afloat while half the crew pretended to be panicked, running around on deck and launching lifeboats.

The choreography inevitably included one last man running onto the deck in panic and a lifeboat having to go back to the ship to get him. They even used stuffed parrots to make the scenes more realistic because sailors usually kept a pet. The remaining crew would be at hidden gun stations until the U-boat surfaced. Then they would turn the tables on the U-boat by opening fire on it.

3 US Military Fooled By Wooden Logs And Haystacks

After the breakup of Yugoslavia and the coming to power of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia, the Balkans descended into an orgy of violence and ethnic cleansing. The state of Kosovo was particularly badly affected, and Bosnian Serbs strove to remove Kosovar Albanians from the province even if the cost was US-led NATO airstrikes on Serbian forces.

Things got even bloodier when the ethnic Albanians began to fight back, forming the Kosovo Liberation Army. NATO started large-scale air strikes in 1999. During that year, NATO claimed that they destroyed hundreds of tanks and killed thousands of Serbian soldiers. But they were mistaken.

The Serbian army had used primitive decoys to fool NATO aircraft. They made fake bridges out of plastic sheeting, artillery guns out of logs, and fake antiaircraft missile launchers out of milk cartons.

Amazingly, these ridiculous disguises actually worked. The Serbian army was mostly intact and withdrew in good order with nearly all of its equipment after the 1999 cease-fire was declared.

2 German Soldiers Disguised Observation Post As A Tree

During World War I, artillery and sniper observation posts disguised as trees were used by each side to spy on the other. In 1915, the French were the first to develop this strategy by drawing on the artistic expertise of some of their soldiers.

They painted trees in no-man’s-land, secretly created hollow steel replicas of those trees, and replaced the real trees with the fake ones in the dead of night. This was done to avoid having the enemy become suspicious of a new tree suddenly appearing in no-man’s-land. The British soon copied the French, and the Germans later followed suit.

The steel “trees” had elaborate exteriors that resembled bark and wood that had been subjected to gunfire and artillery shrapnel. Soldiers sat at the top of these trees in small seats in cramped conditions and likely used periscopes to see out of tiny holes in the fake trees. Steel mesh was used to disguise the holes.

1 Dutch Warship Escaped Japanese By Disguising Itself As An Island

After the Japanese invasion of the Dutch East Indies in 1941 and their decisive defeat of a combined Dutch, British, Australian, and US naval force, the remaining Dutch ships in the East Indies were ordered to flee to Australia. Many Dutch ships were either scuttled or fell prey to Japanese warships or aircraft patrolling their escape routes.

However, the HNLMS Abraham Crijnssen, a tiny minesweeper with little in the way of offensive armament or speed, was able to successfully escape to Australia because the captain came up with a crazy scheme. He disguised the entire ship as a small island.

Although the Abraham Crijnssen was a relatively small ship, it was still a big object—approximately 55 meters (180 ft) long and 7 meters (25 ft) wide. So the crew used foliage from island vegetation and gray paint to make the ship’s hull look like rock faces.

Moving only at night, the ship was able to blend in with the thousands of other tiny islands around Indonesia, and the Japanese didn’t notice the moving island. The Abraham Crijnssen was the last Allied ship that escaped the Dutch East Indies.

Sam writes and writes!

Underdogs have a special place in the hearts of many, whether it’s the upstart Celtic Iceni tribe led by Boudicca revolting against the Romans or the ice-veined Spartans fighting in one of history’s greatest last stands against the Persians at Thermopylae. Either through superior tactics or more technologically advanced weaponry, the outnumbered often achieve some form of victory, whether moral or outright. Here are 10 such examples of great historical underdogs.

10British East India Company
Battle Of Assaye

Arthur Wellesley, the major general of the British forces and future first Duke of Wellington, said this of the battle: It was “the bloodiest for the number that I ever saw.” One of the major battles of the Second Anglo-Maratha War, a conflict between the British East India Company and the Maratha Empire, the Battle of Assaye saw between 6,500–10,000 British soldiers face off against a 40,000–50,000 strong Maratha army.

Unfortunately for the British, their intelligence about the strength and location of their enemy was flawed. Not only were they in the wrong location, but they were much stronger than expected, having recently swelled by several divisions. Luckily for Wellesley, he was a better battlefield general than he was a strategist, as he quickly devised a plan to strike quickly, rather than wait for the reinforcements coming along under the command of Colonel Stevenson. (He had divided his army based on the faulty intelligence he had received, and the rest of his forces were miles away.)

However, the main reason for the British victory was the Maratha army simply didn’t believe that Wellesley would attack while being outnumbered so badly. This surprise led to a rout, one in which 5,000–6,500 soldiers of the Maratha army fell in battle. (The British lost about 1,500.) Later in his life, the Duke of Wellington reminisced about his many military triumphs and concluded that his victory at Assaye was the greatest of them all.

9King David IV And The Georgian Army
Battle Of Didgori

Otherwise known as David the Builder for his role as the architect of the Georgian Golden Age, King David IV of Georgia (the country, not the state) was faced with a problem that had plagued his country for years. The Seljuq Turks, Muslims from present-day Kazakhstan, had control over most of the Georgian state. (Various internal wars and earthquakes also helped to weaken the country’s resolve.) Ascending to the throne at the tender age of 16, David IV gathered together the various feudal lords in the area, formed an army, and began repelling the Seljuq occupiers, refusing to pay them any tribute.

Invigorated by the First Crusade’s success against Muslim armies, David IV initiated his plan to take Tbilisi, a great Georgian city and future capital of the country, which had been under Muslim control for nearly 500 years. So around 56,000 men began marching toward the city, camping at Mount Didgori, some 40 milometers (25 mi) from Tbilisi. Though contemporary records exaggerate the amount of forces facing the Georgians, conservative estimates put it at 100,000–250,000 men.

In a similar vein to Stalin and his infamous Order No. 227 (the “Not one step back!” order), David IV declared that retreat was not an option, barricading the route behind his men with trees and boulders. Then, in an act of treachery, he sent 200 heavily armed cavalrymen to the Seljuq leaders under the pretense that they were deserters. When they arrived, the Georgians attacked, killing the leaders and demoralizing the Muslim army. The Battle of Didgori was on, and it only lasted three hours, with the Seljuq Turks taking heavy losses, both as dead and captured, while the Georgians got off relatively light. (Actual casualty counts are hard to come by.) Tbilisi soon fell, and Georgia had its capital once again.

8Mexican Army
Battle Of Puebla

Picture it: Puebla, Mexico, 1862. The liberal Benito Juarez had been elected as president during the prior year, as the country began to fall into financial ruin, thanks to the enormous foreign debt they had accumulated over the years. Britain, France, and Spain each sent their own navies to Veracruz, demanding payment from the Mexican government. Deals were reached with Britain and Spain, who departed shortly afterward, but Napoleon III, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, saw an opportunity to establish a Mexican empire and refused to negotiate, landing an invading army instead.

Veracruz was stormed first, quite successfully, and the ease of the fighting convinced the French leaders that victory would come quickly throughout the country. Mexico City, the capital of the country, was the target, but a well-fortified city lay in the direct path the French decided to take: the city of Puebla. 6,000 French troops marched on the city, determined to wrest it from the hands of its ragtag band of 2,000 men. (As any military historian would tell you, a ratio of at least 3:1 is necessary for any sieging army.)

However, even with their superior numbers and artillery, the French were rebuffed in their assault. Starting at daybreak on May 5, the fighting lasted until early evening, with the French suffering five times as many casualties as the Mexicans. (Admittedly, the French only lost 500 people.) It was not strategically important—not only did the French ultimately take over the country for a short period, they even took the city itself a year later. But the victory served as a morale boost for the Mexican army, as well as the people of Mexico, who later created a holiday to celebrate the battle: Cinco de Mayo. (However, it is much more widely celebrated in the United States today than anywhere in Mexico, often under the misnomer of Mexican Independence Day.)

7Croatian National Guard
Battle Of Vukovar

When the president of Yugoslavia, Josip Tito, died in 1980, he left behind a fractured country, one cobbled together from formerly different states. (The six socialist republics were Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia, and Serbia.) Serbian nationalists seized the opportunity and tried to centralize control of the country in their capital city of Belgrade. However, most of the other states wanted to break loose, with Croatia being one of them.

On June 25, 1991, the Croatians declared independence, though sporadic fighting between nationalist groups and police had been taking place since the end of March. Two months later, Serbian forces marched on Vukovar with about 36,000 men, determined to take the city, an important regional center on the eastern border of Croatia. Unfortunately for the Croats, the defending force was only 1,800 strong, with some of the Croatian citizens of the city doing what they could to support the troops.

For 86 days, the defenders held off the Serbians, before they finally surrendered, having ran out of ammo. (Reinforcements from other parts of the country never came.) Casualties on both sides were high, with the Serbian forces losing nearly twice as many men; the Croatian defenders lost nearly all of their men to death or injury. The aftermath of the battle was even worse for the inhabitants of the city, as the Serbs butchered 200 Croats who had taken refuge in the city’s hospital and had been promised safe passage out of the city. Widespread executions by Serbian forces were reported throughout the city as well, as ethnic cleansing began to rear its ugly head.

6English Troops
Battle Of Crecy

Though not as well known or devastating to the French as the Battle of Agincourt some 70 years later, the Battle of Crecy was arguably the most important battle in the entirety of the Hundred Years War. Relatively little attention was paid to the English longbow in the country, a weapon widely seen as one of the most devastating weapons in medieval times. That all changed in 1332 under the instruction of Edward III; he realized a large mass of longbows, fired in unison, could defeat much larger armies.

For 14 years, he built up his army of longbowmen, training and equipping them at a much lower cost than the traditional aristocratic knights who had previously made up his army. In July 1346, somewhere around 10,000 men landed on the French coast, outnumbered by nearly three to one. In fact, the French king at the time, Phillip VI, was so confident in his numerical superiority that he made a list of English knights he planned to take prisoner once they had won. Unlike Agincourt, in which the terrain played a large role in determining the outcome of the battle, Crecy was won simply because no one had really seen the longbow in action, and its novelty proved to be the deciding factor.

The French, as well as many other countries, had often looked at archers as defensive troops, with the crossbow seen as the most superior ranged weapon. However, the English longbowmen could fire six to seven times more arrows per minute, contributing to them killing the French crossbowmen very quickly. Any who retreated were cut down by advancing French horsemen, who took it as a sign of cowardice. In the end, confusion and fear (as well as longbowmen) ravaged the French forces, and at least 10,000 of them met their demise. (An argument could be made this isn’t an underdog victory, as the English enjoyed such a strategic advantage, but it shocked all of Christendom nevertheless.)

5Irish UN Troops
Siege Of Jadotville

The year was 1961. Ireland had only been recently admitted to the UN, as the Soviet Union had vetoed them relentlessly due to their neutrality during World War II, and this was their first peacekeeping operation. Though they weren’t exclusively made up of Irish soldiers (there were Swedish and Indian men as well), the UN troops in the state of Katanga in the Congo numbered only 158 and were very lightly armed. Stationed at the wealthy mining town of Jadotville, the troops were ordered to defend the locals from Katangan militia and Belgian mercenaries.

Having dug trenches, the Irish forces used accurate shooting and timely mortar attacks to repel the 3,000–5,000 strong force trying to storm the town. Somehow, by the end of the fighting, 1,300 of the enemies were either wounded or killed, with only five of the Irish wounded. UN forces tried to make it to the city to provide relief, but they were unable to break through the enemy lines. Out of ammunition, the commander of the Irish forces, Pat Quinlan, was forced to broker a ceasefire. (Or surrender, depending on your opinion.) Much of the Irish population felt they had surrendered, ignoring them on their return and denigrating the memory of anyone who served in Jadotville. However, thanks to the efforts of one of the men, John Gorman, their reputation has since been revived.

Perhaps the most famous quote to come from the conflict was made by Pat Quinlan, the Irish commander of the troops: “We will fight to the last man. Could do with some whiskey.” (Unfortunately, Irish nationalism changed that quote; he had actually requested water.)

4Swedish Soldiers
Battle Of Fraustadt

Though not as decisive nor impressive a victory as the Battle of Narva, a fight in which King Charles XII led a force of Swedes to victory over a Russian army nearly four times its size, the Battle of Fraustadt and the subsequent Swedish victory was one of their best and last in the Great Northern War. Besieged by three separate countries (Russia, Denmark-Norway, and Saxony-Poland), whose leaders sensed weakness in Sweden’s young king, the Swedish army enjoyed several initial successes.

One of those successes took place in 1706 near Fraustadt, a town in western Poland. 18,000 Saxons, Russians, and their mercenaries entrenched themselves a short distance from the outskirts of the town, and 9,000 Swedes did the same. The Swedish general recognized he had a numerical edge in cavalry, nearly three to one, and used that to his advantage. Using a pincer motion and the classic aggression of Swedish generals, he sent his horseman around the enemy’s flanks until they reached the center rear of their main line of defense.

The Saxon and Russian army collapsed at this point, leading to a rout in which only about 1,000 Swedes were either killed or captured and almost 16,000 of the enemy met the same fate. In addition, about 500 Russians who were taken prisoner during the battle were executed as revenge for atrocities the Russian forces were said to have committed in the city of Courland.

3Eastern Jin Soldiers
Battle Of Fei River

Widely considered one of the most important battles in Chinese history, the Battle of Fei River pitted the Eastern Jin dynasty of southern China against the barbarous inhabitants of the Former Qin dynasty of northern China. While the numbers might be exaggerated (a claim you could make against virtually every battle in human history), traditional historical sources say 800,000 soldiers marched from the north to face only 80,000 Eastern Jin Soldiers.

However, the Qin army was mostly made up of random conscripted soldiers, many of whom felt no loyalty toward their commanders or even outright hatred. In addition, they were poorly equipped and even more poorly trained. Fu Jian, the leader of the Qin dynasty, had conquered nearly all of the northern kingdoms of China, with those in the south squarely in his sights. So his men marched toward the lands of the Eastern Jin, successfully capturing many of the border cities.

In 382, Eastern Jin forces, led by the general Xie Xuan, decided to make their final stand at the Fei River, a waterway that is now dried up. The Eastern Jin forces were on one side of the river, and the Qin army was on the other. Xie Xuan sent word to his enemies, asking them to retreat slightly to the west so as to allow his forces to cross the river and commence the battle. When Fu Jin, the emperor of the Qin dynasty, agreed, many of his soldiers believed they had been defeated and panicked. Seizing this opportunity, Xie Xuan struck, killing nearly all of his enemies. By the end of the fighting, there was so much death that one account says: “The dead were so many that they were making a pillow for each other on the ground.” Shortly afterward, the Qin dynasty, devastated by the loss, plunged into civil war.

2Polish Infantry
Battle Of Wizna

Often described as the Polish Thermopylae, the Battle of Wizna saw an extremely outnumbered Polish force defend the city of Wizna against the onslaught of the German army. Though this is commonly seen as the beginning of the German blitzkrieg, the invasion of Poland was conducted through more traditional military means. Nevertheless, the difference in strength was overwhelming: 700 Poles were in the city, facing off against 40,000 Germans. (In fact more recent historians have claimed there may have only been about 360 Poles in the city.)

The fighting broke out on September 7, 1939, and lasted for two and a half days. To boost morale, as the Poles had heard of the vast army which was bearing down on them, the commander of the Polish forces, a man named Wladyslaw Raginis, vowed to not leave any defended position alive. However, the Polish forces quickly found themselves out of ammo, with no hope of reinforcements. In addition, the German commander, Heinz Guderian, threatened to execute every one of the Polish POWs if they didn’t surrender. In the end, Raginis agreed, sending his troops out of the bunker. One of them, Seweryn Bieganski, recalled later: “The captain looked at me warmly and softly urged me to leave. When I was at the exit, I was hit on my back with strong gust, and I heard an explosion.”

While they were unsuccessful in keeping Wizna out of German hands, the defenders did allow Polish leadership and many other soldiers to escape to Western Europe, where they continued the fight against the Nazis.

1Korean Navy
Battle Of Myeongnyang

Originally an army commander, Yi Sun-Sin began his military career fighting the Manchu nomads who roamed Korea’s northern border. A short while later, he was made commander of the Cholla naval district and defeated the Japanese fleet in several battles, thanks in no small part to his kobukson, the famed “turtle ships” of the Joseon dynasty. Due to a plot by a Japanese double agent, Sun-Sin was arrested and tortured for refusing orders that he deemed to be too dangerous. (Which they were, as the double agent wished to destroy the Korean fleet.)

Spared the death penalty but demoted to a lowly rank, Sun-Sin bided his time until the Korean leadership called on him again. The Japanese had mounted another attack and seemed to have turned the tide. Thanks to the many defeats of the general who preceded him, Sun-Sin only had 12 ships left to defend the country with, and he decided to make a last stand in the Myeongnyang Strait, just off the southwest coast of Korea. Though sources differ, the vast agree that at least 133 Japanese ships met him there, determined to end the war once and for all.

Using his knowledge of the ocean around him, as well as the strength of his ships, Sun-Sin routed the Japanese, destroying 31 of their ships while losing none of his own. Part of the massive victory was because the Japanese tended to try and win naval battles in the same vein of the Romans when they faced off against the Carthaginians: They tried to board the enemy ships rather than ram them. This proved fruitless against the kobukson, and Korea was victorious.

Deception operations have been employed in warfare throughout history, with the earliest mentions being in works like Virgil’s Aeneid describing the Trojan Horse during the Trojan War. The Greeks invented smokescreens for use during the Peloponnesian War, and there are countless other examples of deception tactics that have both worked and failed. This list comprises some of the more important uses of deception that successfully tricked the enemy throughout the history of warfare.

10 Maskirovka
Russia, Battle Of Kursk, World War II

Maskirovka is a broad military doctrine of Soviet deception developed throughout the early 20th century. Its primary focus is denial, deception, and surprise. The practice utilizes several means of fooling the enemy, ideally suggesting to them that a smaller force is awaiting them “over the hill.”

It was most successfully employed at the Battle of Kursk during World War II, when a relatively large force of Germans unwittingly attacked what they believed to be a small force of Russian troops, which actually numbered more than four times their own. The Russian forces were able to achieve this, in part, by spreading rumors throughout their own ranks as to their capabilities and strength, which spread to the Germans through their counterintelligence collection means. Ammunition and supplies were moved only under the cover of darkness, while camouflage was utilized to conceal anything of military value. Additionally, the Soviets employed fake airfields, which enticed the Germans to bomb dummy aircraft, further confusing their assessment of the Soviet military strength and capabilities.

Prior to the battle, the Germans underestimated the Russians’ strength, thinking that they had fewer than 1,500 tanks and 400,000 men ready to fight. Unfortunately for German intelligence, the Russians’ deception worked, and they confronted more than 1.3 million fighting men, more than twice the estimated number of tanks, and nearly 3,000 aircraft. The resulting battle destroyed the German offensive and earned the Soviets their first victory against the Germans along the Eastern Front. For the remainder of the war, the Germans would be on the defensive all the way to Berlin.

The doctrine is still being used, most recently in the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and the taking of Eastern Ukraine.

9 Bluffing
England, Battle Of Fishguard, War Of The First Coalition

In 1797, during what has been called “The Last Invasion of Britain,” French Revolutionary forces crossed the North Sea and faced the British at the Battle of Fishguard, which wasn’t really a battle at all. Having previously landed successfully a few miles west of Fishguard with nearly 20 boatloads of troops, 47 barrels of powder, and 50 tons of cartridges and grenades, the French were ready to take the town.

France’s Commodore Castagnier sent a single French ship to reconnoiter the bay while flying the British colors. As soon as the ship was spotted by the British, they fired a single blank from a 9-lb gun. While the port had eight of these large cannons, they were severely understocked and had only three rounds. The French ship immediately hoisted the French colors and fled the bay. The British may have fired the cannon to signal the ship in some way, but regardless of their intention, they caused the French to reconsider their target and turn away from Fishguard. Had they not fired the initial blank to bluff the French scout ship, the port would likely have been taken.

8 Trojan Coffin
The Normans, Castle Siege

Many stories of the fabled 11th-century Norwegian King Harald Hardrada have been told throughout the years, detailing his bravery and ingenuity at combat. During his conquest on the road to becoming the king of Norway, Harald laid siege to an unnamed castle by camping outside and establishing his men for the upcoming battle. He also had erected a small tent a ways outside the main camp, where he lay sick and possibly dying. Before any battle took place, it was reported that the great king had perished from his illness, and his men ventured toward the castle to tell the news of their commander’s demise. They addressed a large gathering of priests and requested that they allow their fallen commander to be buried within the city.

The priests believed that they would receive rich gifts for accommodating the bereaved fighting men and acquiesced. They formed a large procession and took Harald’s ornate coffin into their castle, along with a small group of his men. Once they’d crossed the threshold and entered the castle grounds, Harald’s men immediately barred the gate, called the remaining men to battle, and the good King Harald himself leaped from the coffin and declared that everyone be killed. The castle was taken, and Harald’s legendary exploits continued toward the conquest of England.

7 Elaborate Hoax
Union Army, Reclamation Of The Indianola, US Civil War

After losing one of its most prized ships, the recently constructed ironclad USS Indianola, the Union Navy conducted the most successful hoax operation of the US Civil War. The Indianola was a considerably formidable vessel, though it was plagued with problems during its construction, and it saw several successful combat operations.

Attempting to pass the city of Vicksburg, the ship engaged in a battle against the Confederate Webb, which rammed the vessel, causing its starboard wheel and rudder to become inoperable. As the ship began to take on water, its captain, Lieutenant Commander George Brown, ordered it run ashore, where he quickly dumped the Union codebooks and surrendered to prevent a greater loss of life. The Confederates moved the Indianola to the eastern bank of the Mississippi and established a 100-man salvage crew accompanied by two pieces of field artillery in an attempt to salvage the valuable vessel.

Deciding to attempt a recovery operation, Rear Admiral David D. Porter ordered that an old coal barge be made to look like a larger ironclad intent on taking the Confederates: “It was built of old boards in twelve hours, with porkbarrels on top of each other for smoke-stacks, and two old canoes for quarter-boats; her furnaces were built of mud, and only intended to make black smoke and not steam. Painted on the side was the taunting slogan: ‘Deluded Rebels, cave in!‘ ” To ensure that the Confederates saw the vessel approaching, he launched it in broad daylight toward the Confederate defenses.

Seeing the “formidable vessel” approaching, the salvage crew first attempted to raise the Indianola before finally deciding to blow its magazines, scuttling the ship. The Indianola was eventually resurfaced and returned to the North toward the end of the war.

6 Fraudulent Document
Sultan Baybars, Capture Of Krak Des Chevaliers, The Crusades

Sometimes all it takes is a well-executed bluff to confuse and capture the enemy. During the Crusades, following more than a year of what can only be described as a peaceful siege, wherein Sultan Baybars’s (also spelled Baibars) army camped outside the castle of Krak des Chevaliers, using its resources without engaging, the time had come to engage the formidable fortress.

The castle was built to withstand long sieges. Its fortifications were almost twice the size of that of some European castles, and it featured a large moat, high walls, and a gate accessible only by a long, winding passage. While the sultan had a superior fighting force, which had successfully stood against the Mongols and won, the Hospitaller stronghold had the advantage of fortitude, and the fight would certainly be a bloody and costly one. Knowing this, Sultan Baybars, who by all accounts was a brilliant tactician, retreated and devised a plan that involved a single sheet of paper.

Baybars finally got to implement his plan in the most spectacular way in 1271 during the Eighth Crusade, when he delivered a letter to his enemy—from his enemy. After a ten-day siege that took down a portion of the outer wall of the castle, a letter drafted from the leader of the Hospitaller ordered the men inside the castle to surrender. The knights immediately capitulated and followed the orders of their leader by sending a party out to meet the sultan and arrange conditions for their surrender. The deception worked, and the castle was taken without the need for further siege or bloodshed, all due to a falsified signature at the bottom of a piece of paper.

5 Feigned Retreat
The Normans, Battle Of Hastings, Norman Conquest

The Norman Conquest of England in 1066 is a hotly debated battle in many historical circles. There is no consensus as to whether William II of Normandy, later called William the Conqueror, initiated a feigned retreat or an actual one. Whether or not the decision to withdraw his cavalry was made by William to engage the British doesn’t matter when you consider that no other feigned retreat has been as successful before or since that battle nearly 1,000 years ago.

During the battle, the British shield wall was established by the best men available and continuously held the line against the onslaught of William’s cavalry until finally, the cavalry turned and fled. As they withdrew from the shield wall, the men holding the line broke and followed them in one of the biggest blunders in military history. As they engaged, the cavalry—now able to hold their ground against a sparse force without horses—quickly fell back on their pursuers and devastated their ranks. Simultaneously, the remaining forces were engaged, and due to their weakened lines, they were quickly destroyed. The successful feigned retreat by the cavalry won the battle and brought about the end of Anglo-Saxon rule in England.

4 Baiting An Attack
US Army, Vietnam War

Oftentimes, the best deception operations are carried out due to accurate and timely intelligence that helps commanders to make decisions to thwart an enemy’s attack. Other times, this information has been used to bait an attack so that a counterattack can be implemented to achieve a positive result for the defensive force. This occurred during the Vietnam War, when the commanders of the 2nd Battalion, 27th Infantry Division, learned through intelligence that the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and elements of the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) were planning to attack an unnamed firebase as a test or probing operation.

Knowing this, the Americans established Diamond I Firebase 25 kilometers (16 mi) outside of Tay Ninh, an area that would make it enticing to attack. They placed ground sensors throughout the base and also reinforced it with a significant amount of artillery. The result: “Rather than the PAVN and NVA regiment having an easy battle, it was twice repulsed [and] suffered heavy casualties.” The attack took place on February 24, 1969, and cost the Vietnamese 118 soldiers and two captured.

3 Wolves In Sheep’s Clothing
British Royal Navy, World War I

During World War I, the German Navy maintained a highly successful fleet of U-boats (aka Unterseeboots) that operated in the Atlantic Ocean. While submarines were technically invented and used as early as the US Civil War, they did not see widespread use in naval combat until 1914, and the Germans were quite adept at being sneaky under the sea. The biggest problem that a surface vessel faced during this time was a complete inability to locate a U-boat. Sonar was developed very early in the war, but it wasn’t anywhere near as effective or efficient as it is today, so navies like the British and French utilized hydrophones, which had a short range and weren’t very effective if a U-Boat’s crew was well-trained and quiet.

Because of this, Q-boats were established. These were heavily armed vessels of all sorts that were “dressed” as merchant ships. Their job was to sail the seas and entice the U-boats to surface and attack only to find that their “prey” was much more skilled at defense than they originally thought. To further sell the deception, the ships would fly false colors would be flown, and when a U-boat approached, part of the crew, known as the “panic party,” would appear to abandon the ship. Once the submarine was in range, hidden guns were revealed, the White Ensign (the flag of the Royal Navy) raised, and the U-boat was sunk.

The use of Q-boats led to the sinking of ten U-boats, so it was successful, although most of its success came by forcing Germany to completely change how it conducted naval warfare—albeit too late for them to effectively win the war.

2 Left Hook
US And Allied Forces, Operation Desert Storm

Operation Desert Storm saw one of the most successful uses of deception via radio signals ever employed in warfare. The Iraqis’ attention was on an amphibious training maneuver by the United States Marine Corps, leading them to strongly believe that the Americans would invade along their coastline. They subsequently prepared for this eventuality.

Additionally, the 18th and 5th Corps Headquarters began their maneuvers through the desert in a massive flanking maneuver known as a “left hook,” where they were able to effectively outflank the Iraqis and attack while also blocking any avenue of retreat back into Iraqi territory from Kuwait. During these maneuvers, the Corps’s signals units broadcasted mimicked signals, which effectively made the Iraqis believe that the units were completely stationary.

As the units continued to move toward the Iraqi lines, the Iraqi forces moved away from them toward the coastline in order to repel their invaders. The result was a ground war that lasted only three days and caused the Iraqis to completely withdraw from Iraqi-occupied Kuwait. Most of their army surrendered to the Americans and Allied troops who had cut off their escape. After 100 hours of combat on the ground, President Bush declared a cease-fire and the successful liberation of Kuwait on February 27, 1991.

1 False Flag
Germany, Operation Himmler, World War II

Following Germany’s successful expansion into the neighboring countries of Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939, Hitler needed to continue to create Lebensraum (“Living Space”) for his idealized expansion of Germany. Hitler knew that he couldn’t easily get away with such expansion into the likes of Poland without the rest of the world raising a eyebrow, so he devised a false flag operation to allow for his entrance into the bordering nation.

Along the border town of Gleiwitz, several Jews were taken from a concentration camp and dressed in German border guard uniforms. They were taken to a nearby radio tower in Germany and shot and killed just outside the border of Poland. This action, which could become known as the Gleiwitz incident, along with 20 other less serious matters, were then used by the fuhrer’s propaganda campaign to forward his cause to take Poland.

Hitler immediately cited Polish aggression and invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, saying, “This night for the first time Polish regular soldiers fired on our own territory. Since 5:45 AM, we have been returning the fire [ . . . ] I will continue this struggle, no matter against whom, until the safety of the Reich and its rights are secured.” While it is certainly true that German aggression was ongoing up to this point, the war can be said to have officially begun with the invasion of Poland, since two days following the attack, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany.

Jonathan is an amateur graphic artist, illustrator, and game designer with a few independently published games through his game company, TalkingBull Games. He enjoys researching and writing about history, science, theology, and many other subjects.

Outnumbered, cut off from any hope of rescue or support, operating secretly. The dramatic potential of troops or pilots conducting a raid has been well explored by film, television, and literature. The scenario even offers all the, for want of a better word, “fun” of being in the military without many of the responsibilities, such as looking out for the well-being of civilians or many other parts of protocol. It also offers the persons involved the potential for much more glory than most regular operations since the numbers are small enough that there’s less credit to spread around and less commotion for an individual’s contribution to be lost. 

Most raids are good primarily for wasting the enemy’s resources or extracting a specific target. Some, however, have changed the very shape of history and the courses of wars. While some are still kept under a shroud of secrecy that may never be lifted, some are so devastating in their impacts that they can’t be kept under wraps by either side. 

10. Operation Flipper

No one could say that the mission that Colonel Robert Laycock and his 59 other commandos were sent to on November 10, 1941, was unambitious. They boarded the submarines H.M.S. Torbay and Talisman intent on sneaking into Axis-controlled Tunisia, raiding Sidi Rafa. There they would kill Lt. General Erwin Rommel himself while also destroying the Italian high command in North Africa, effectively liberating the continent for the Allies. 

They didn’t even make landfall before things began to go wrong. A storm struck on November 14 and forced the Talisman aground, with only seven commandos arriving for the landfall. Despite around 50% of the personnel being knocked out without a shot being fired, Laycock decided to go ahead with the plan to assassinate Rommel and attack the Italian HQ. The weather continued to be a problem as they were bombarded with rain, but by November 17, they launched their two-pronged attack. 

While the commandos killed three German colonels and destroyed a supply dump, it turned out Rommel hadn’t even arrived, as the same weather that had given the commandos so much trouble had convinced him to stay in Rome. It turned out to be a steep price to pay as only two of the commandos returned to British lines at all, and that took them five weeks of subterfuge. A very loose and flattering film adaptation of the events called Raid on Rommel was released in 1971.  

Hopefully, this entry has gone to show that just because a raid was daring does not at all mean it was successful.

9. Raid on Boulogne 

As Napoleon Bonaparte said, if the French could be masters of the English Channel for six hours during the 1800s, they would be masters of the world. This was no idle boast to the British military, who watched the French draw together a navy with alarm. By 1804 the time had come to act, and the target was the 150 French ships in the fortified port of Boulogne. The British navy sent a flotilla of ships heavily laden with torpedoes, a brand new weapon designed by Robert Fulton. The raid actually inflicted light French casualties (about 14) and little damage on the French fleet. 

And yet it had an effect far out of proportion to material damage in one area: Morale. Spooked by the torpedo explosions, the morale of the French military sank, and the initiative to launch an invasion of the United Kingdom was replaced by panic. Ports were refortified instead of being prepared for an attack. Great Britain might have been saved by the Raid on Boulogne. Not bad for a raid that hadn’t cost the British a single casualty. 

8. The Great Raid of 1840

On March 19, 1840, leaders of Comanche and Penateka tribes in Central Texas were engaged in peace talks with Texas leaders. Owing to one freed hostage’s account, the Texan authorities threatened that unless all hostages were returned, every Native American participant could consider themselves a hostage. When the Comanche refused, a fight broke out which left more than 30 Comanche, including women and children, dead. So it was that by August 6, 1840, between 600 and 1,000 Comanche men under the command of Buffalo Hump rode into Texan territory in reprisal. 

First, they sacked the community of Victoria, killing fifteen as the rest huddled in the Southern district. The war party rode along the Guadalupe River, coming to a stop in and sacking the community of Linnville, outside San Antonio. The Comanches then retreated on August 8, but they made the mistake of carrying an oversized haul of loot and stolen horses with them, which slowed the party down enough for the Texans to organize a war party of their own. They caught up to the Comanches at Plum Creek and were estimated to have killed eighty of them in a surprise attack. As a result the Comanches never attempted anything like such a large and elaborate raid again, reverting to tried and true small-scale guerilla tactics.  

7. Morgan’s Raid

us is not an unabashed fan of Confederate raiders, considering what those under commanders like William Anderson did at Centralia.  Still, there’s no denying the daring and significance of many of their raids, especially in regards to lengthening the Civil War. Surely the one that John Hunt Morgan began on June 11, 1863, at the head of 2,400 cavalrymen was one of the boldest. He had been ordered to move from Sparta, Tennessee, and invade Kentucky to distract the Union armies, but he was not to cross the Ohio River under any circumstances. So on July 8, Morgan crossed the Ohio River with around 1,800 cavalrymen as the rest continued operations in Kentucky. While he was far from the largest Union armies, there were 100,000 Union troops against him, albeit widely scattered. 

It turned out Morgan’s orders had been much more reasonable than he would have liked, for the Union command quickly figured out where he was going. At Fayetteville, West Virginia the 23rd Ohio and 13th West Virginia Volunteers led by future president Rutherford B. Hayes ambushed Morgan on July 19th and cut his numbers in half. The Federals chased them to Salineville, Ohio, and captured Morgan and the remnants of his command on July 26. As we’ll see in a bit, that was nowhere near the worst thing to happen to the Confederate military that season.    

6. Belov’s Raids

TopTenz has written before about how the winter of 1941-1942 actually didn’t stop the Third Reich’s capture of Moscow and was quite bad for the Red Army’s counterattack. Still, one force of the Red Army came away from the largely disastrous counterattack with a massive credit under their belt. It was the 1st Cavalry Corps under General Pavel Belov. A large number of German divisions were positioned in a salient point in the Rhzev area, and Belov’s cavalry was sent behind the front in an attempt to cut the salient supply lines. 

The corps would find itself cut off, surrounded, and badly outnumbered. Yet Belov’s forces were sufficiently resourceful that they tied down seven divisions for six months, aided in no small part by the many partisans that were rallying against the Axis army as their extermination operations were making it clear they were not the heroic liberators many initially took them to be. Ultimately, Belov and roughly 2,000 under his command would break back out of the encirclement, and Belov would go on to become one of the most acclaimed Soviet commanders of the war.   

5. The Whitehaven Raid

For most of the American Revolution, it was taken for granted that all the fighting would take place in American territory as the crown had such an overwhelmingly superior army and navy. In 1778, John Paul Jones, who a year later would very famously capture the British ship Serapis after yelling “I have not yet begun to fight,” made to bring the fight to the home country by raiding the port town of Whitehaven in northwest England with its 400 merchant ships. Having sailed the Atlantic, Jones set out with thirty commandos in two boats to conquer the two forts and burn the merchant fleet to the waterline. 

For Jones’s boat, things went relatively smoothly. They landed, took their objective fort, and ruined the guns so that they could safely escape. The other boat, however, had problems that sounded like something out of Black Adder. First, the tide gave them so much trouble that they fell three hours behind schedule. Then when they belatedly made landfall, they went to the local pub and got drunk off liquor. When Jones caught up with them and understandably raged at the neglect of duty, he attempted to set fire to the town and ships, but the town’s fire brigade, bolstered as was English tradition since the 1666 London Fire, dutifully put the fires out promptly. Jones and company got away having neither suffered nor inflicted much damage, yet their exploit sent a wave of terror through the Isles that led to many sea towns being put on the alert for years afterward.    

4. The Doolittle Raid 

Anyone who’s seen Michael Bay’s 2002 film Pearl Harbor knows the Doolittle Raid was how the US Armed Forces saved face after the humiliation of four battleships being sunk and about 2,000 lives being lost during the sneak attack. On April 18, 1942, 16 B-25 Mitchells took off for Tokyo, starting more than half again over the original distance they originally intended. There would be no returning: They had to fly for China and hope they could land in airfields controlled by the Allies. 

The bombing killed 50 Japanese people, mostly civilians, and wounded about 400 others, but did little structural damage. So when the bombers were found to be too low on fuel to reach their airfield objectives and had to crash land, Commander James Doolittle’s belief that he would be court-martialed for losing 16 planes and three personnel while inflicting little damage on the enemy seems understandable. Considering the boost the attack had for US morale and the way it disrupted Japanese public sentiment to a point where it changed military strategy, it’s also understandable that he received the Medal of Honor instead. 

Initially ignored but increasingly more mentioned, the raid cost China’s population by far the most of any nation involved. Both because it revealed just how vulnerable Japan could be to air attacks from China and simply thirsty for revenge, the Japanese military launched a series of reprisals that by some accounts left hundreds of thousands of Chinese dead. If Doolittle’s men had given any sort of American gift to a Chinese person in compensation for kindness, they were very likely unknowingly giving that person a death sentence. It also seemed to influence the decision for just where to place the infamous Unit 731, as it was quite close to Chuchow, the Doolittle raiders’ intended destination. Such are the greatest sacrifices in war often overlooked.  

3. The Osel Air Raid

When the Third Reich launched Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941, and invaded the Soviet Union, they caught the Red military completely off guard, destroying 1,200 Soviet plans in a single day. By July they were launching bombing runs on Moscow itself. General Secretary Joseph Stalin caught wind of the effect the raids on Moscow were having on Soviet morale and so ordered air raids on Berlin itself in retaliation. 

This was no idle command, as Berlin was the best-defended city in Europe and tore through squads of Allied aircraft on the regular. So when 15 Ilushyin DB-3 bombers took off from Osel, Estonia for Berlin on July 7, 1941, the years’ obsolete planes were generally regarded as being sent on a suicide mission. Such was their condition that the crews needed to perform wing repairs on them in midair. 

Fortunately for them, Berlin’s anti-aircraft guns were pointed toward the United Kingdom and it was Reich policy to keep all peacetime lights on at night. When the DB-3s flew over the capital, they were largely misidentified as errant Luftwaffe aircraft and sent signals asking them who they were. Five bombers were able to reach their targets and put the fear of the proletariat into the Reich. Not that it had much material effect, as subsequent raids quickly found themselves running into fully alerted anti-aircraft, and as many as eighteen bombers would be lost in a night until the Wehrmacht conquered Osel in August 1941 and the raids ended. Still, the raids boosted Soviet morale at a time when any support was desperately needed. 

2. Harper’s Ferry Raid 

20 men versus the institution of slavery in the United States. That was what John Brown could bring to muster against the Virginian Harper’s Ferry Armory on October 16, 1859, with the intent of arming a slave revolt that would spread throughout the South. Brown hoped that if he seized the thousands of small arms in the armory, enough of the 18,000 slaves in surrounding counties would rise up that they could overwhelm all militias and marines sent to put them back down. Both Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman had denounced the plan, with Douglass warning Brown he was leading his insurrectionists into a “perfect trap.” 

While the raiders did seize control of the armory and took eleven hostages, one of the first people they killed was a free black porter named Hayward Shepherd, which likely contributed to the fact far fewer slaves rose up in revolt than Brown needed. Over the next two days, Brown’s men were surrounded by thousands of militia members and several attempts to negotiate their release resulted in an abolitionist being shot dead. By October 18, a force of 90 marines broke into the armory and captured the remaining raiders in less than three minutes. Brown and other captured raiders would be put to death on December 2, 1859. Only five of the original group lived to tell the tale.   

Once again, short-term failure turned out to be a long-term triumph because of how Brown conducted himself through his trial and execution. His belief that his martyrdom would provide the impetus needed to cleanse the sins of the nation with blood left him fearless in the face of the gallows. Millions throughout the nation were inspired on both ends of the political spectrum, with even many slavery supporters offering him a grudging respect. No less than John Wilkes Booth, who witnessed the execution, would despite his admiration for the Confederacy write admiringly of Brown for years after his execution and say that Lincoln wasn’t fit to follow in the footsteps of that “rugged old hero.” 

1. Grierson’s Raid

On April 17, 1863, Union soldiers under Ulysses S. Grant were in a tight spot. They had just run the guns at Vicksburg, Mississippi, and were to a significant degree cut off from their supply lines. If the Confederate troops under General John Pemberton moved swiftly, they could catch Grant with his back to the Mississippi and potentially destroy him as they almost did at Shiloh the year before. But Confederate eyes were largely turned away, following a force of 1,700 cavalrymen under the command of Benjamin Grierson. Their ride would take them from Tennessee, through Mississippi, and down to Louisiana. 

They would ultimately ride 600 miles in sixteen days while the raiders were outnumbered more than 20 to 1, inflicting hundreds of casualties while suffering less than 20 themselves. More importantly, they kept the Confederate Army too occupied to move south against Grant and thus allowed the Vicksburg victory that essentially did more than anything to doom the Confederacy. Pretty good results for a raid led by a man who before the war was a music teacher that despised horses. 

Dustin Koski cowrote the post-apocalyptic supernatural comedy Return of the Living with Jonathan “Bogleech” Wojcik. 

There’s nothing quite like the prospect of a battlefield advantage to convince a general or politician to plow some money into a military project that might just work. As this list shows, however, innovation is always a gamble. For every radar or bouncing bomb, there are a handful of expensive, clunky duds.

Some of the most fascinating projects are the ones that almost came to fruition, whether through the determination of a convinced individual or the sheer possibilities that it could offer—if it would only work the way it’s supposed to. From a rocket-powered drum to a chicken-warmed nuke, these are the strangest military inventions to almost see deployment on the battlefield.

10 The Puckle Gun

Invented in 1718 by British lawyer James Puckle, the Puckle gun was the world’s first patented multi-shot weapon. It fired at triple the rate of a soldier armed with a standard single-shot flintlock rifle or musket—yet with the same kind of accuracy and range.

It could even fire peculiar square bullets designed to cause maximum pain. The Puckle gun was massively ahead of its time. If it had been adopted and deployed by a major military, it would have changed the face of warfare, much like the Gatling gun did a century and a half later.

However, the Puckle gun was a victim of its own cleverness. It was unreliable and expensive to make. Its many complicated components made mass production impossible. Worst of all, it was impossible to fold into the military tactics of the time.

Even though it wasn’t a large weapon, it had to be stationary to fire. In addition, the time it took to break it down, move it to a new location, and set it up again proved simply too slow for the military leaders of the era. As a result, it was never adopted by a major world power.^[1]

9 Pigeon-Guided Missiles

The pigeon-guided missile is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a World War II–era missile with three pigeons in the nose cone, with each bird trained to tap at the outline of a German Bismarck–class battleship. If the pigeon pecked in the center of its little screen, the missile flew straight. If it pecked off-center, the missile would alter course to get back on track.

Despite sounding ridiculous, the pigeon-guided missile was both fully functional and incredibly reliable. B.F. Skinner, the brain behind the idea, was a professor of psychology at Harvard University who was renowned for his behavioral experiments with rats. After developing the missile, he stated that he’d never use rats again because pigeons were so trainable.

The idea was fully tested but never used in combat. Skinner blamed the reluctance of generals to get behind the idea of a pigeon guiding an explosive. But in truth, he was beaten to the punch behind the scenes by another invention, radar-guided missiles.^[2]

8 The Bat Bomb

“Think of thousands of fires breaking out simultaneously over a circle of [64 kilometers (40 mi)] in diameter for every bomb dropped.” This was the fevered dream of Pennsylvania dentist Lytle S. Adams, who imagined Japan being devastated by a series of fires started by tiny incendiary devices delivered by hundreds of bats.

The idea didn’t arrive from nowhere. Adams was a keen spelunker and had been impressed by the bats he had seen on a recent trip to Carlsbad Caverns. When he heard the news that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor, he cooked up his zany scheme and took it to his friend Eleanor Roosevelt.

As a result of Adams’s connection to Roosevelt, his bizarre plan was heard at a higher level than might be expected for a scheme that involved strapping bombs to bats. The National Research Defense Committee certainly warmed to the idea. Over time, “Project X-Ray” had over $2 million invested in it to solve the problems of bat transportation and simultaneous release.^[3]

The bat bomb might have been a success if it had been fine-tuned enough, but the US military decided to move all its development resources to a far more powerful weapon. In the end, the atomic bomb was simply a higher priority than the bat bomb.

7 The Great Panjandrum

The Great Panjandrum, two 3-meter-wide (10 ft) rocket-powered wheels attached to a drum filled with explosives, was as peculiar and powerful in practice as it sounds. The Panjandrum was supposed to accelerate across a beach to the speed of a car and blow a massive hole in the German defenses that British troops and tanks could roll through.

Unsurprisingly, the rocket-powered speeding explosive was unpredictable in practice. The Panjandrum was critically unstable and could never be relied upon to go entirely in the direction in which it was pointed.

The designers tried adding a third wheel and steel cables for steering, but nothing really helped. On top of that, when the Panjandrum reached its top speed of 97 kilometers per hour (60 mph), the rockets had a habit of detaching.

Despite this, the Panjandrum was tested in front of top members of the military in January 1944. The test began well. The Panjandrum rolled through the surf in a straight line and began to accelerate. As it started to reach higher speeds, though, the rockets began to detach and fire off in all directions.

The Panjandrum became a spinning wheel of flames that nearly ran down the official cameraman. As the Great Panjandrum disintegrated into a flaming pile of wreckage on the beach, so did any hopes of it ever seeing real battlefield usage.^[4]

6 Hajile

Hajile was created by the same minds that brought you the Great Panjandrum, and in terms of explosive failure, it reaches that high bar. An early retrorocket design, Hajile was created with the hope of using a rocket to slow the descent of supplies dropped from planes. This idea was recently used successfully to land the Curiosity rover on Mars (similar to image above), but the Hajile project was anything but a success.

The Hajile project was named as the reverse of “Elijah,” who ascended to heaven on a column of flame in the Bible story. Hajile was originally tested on concrete blocks with rockets strapped to them. When a dangling weight below the block hit the ground, the rockets would fire to slow the descent of the payload.

However, the first three tests were disasters. Twice, the rockets failed to slow the descent enough. On the third test, too much fuel relaunched the payload several dozen feet in the air.

The device was tested until it was successfully used, and eventually, two jeeps were donated by the United States Navy for real-world testing. One crashed into the ground at 48 kilometers per hour (30 mph), and the second was successfully landed with minimal damage as long as you count an upside-down jeep as a success.

Deeply unreliable, the project was shelved as World War II drew to a close.^[5]

5 Nellie

“Nellie” (aka the “White Rabbit”) was a machine doomed from the start as it was designed to solve an obsolete problem. Nellie was an armored vehicle made to cut a trench through defensive works so that other machines could advance through the trench and bypass the defensive line.

As a pet project of Winston Churchill, work continued on the White Rabbit long after it became clear that it was not the only solution to the problems that tanks faced due to defensive structures.

As time went on, it became clear that Nellie wasn’t even a particularly good solution to these problems. It had a turning circle of 1.6 kilometers (1 mi) and was almost unable to be steered. Conditions inside the cramped cockpit were unbearable. Perhaps worst of all, serious questions were raised about the advisability of using a near-stationary machine with a long guiding trench behind it in the era of bombing runs.^[6]

Despite Churchill’s enduring belief in the project, it was finally formally shelved in 1943. Churchill acknowledged that the project would have been mothballed years earlier if not for his promotion. In the end, he declared that he was “responsible but impenitent” for his misguided enthusiasm.

4 Maus

The Allies weren’t the only ones in World War II who had some bizarre ideas up their sleeves. Adolf Hitler particularly desired an indestructible superheavy tank. He proposed it in 1942, but few others at the top of the German military shared his enthusiasm for the idea. The Maus (“mouse”) was a 200-ton behemoth of a tank designed by Ferdinand Porsche, but it was plagued with mechanical problems from the start.

The driveshaft especially suffered from constant failures. Despite a massive Daimler-Benz aircraft engine powering the motors, the tank’s top speed was only 19 kilometers per hour (12 mph). It featured armor that was more than 23 centimeters (9 in) thick, but the Maus didn’t have a single machine gun to make it suitable for close combat—and the considered opinion of the top German brass was that it would find itself in close combat often.

There were plans to make 150 of these tanks, but the concerns of the generals couldn’t be overcome. In the end, only two prototypes were completed.^[7]

3 The Coleoptere

The Coleoptere (“beetle”) is one of the strangest-looking aircraft ever designed. With a ring-shaped wing wrapped around a fuselage, it was capable of vertical takeoff and landing. In fact, the designer theorized that it might be capable of supersonic speeds once it was airborne.

However, the Coleoptere had problems from its very beginning. In early hovering tests, pilot Auguste Morel complained that it was nearly impossible to determine his vertical height. He had to listen for changes in the engine’s hum to gauge the aircraft’s altitude. Even later versions of the Coleoptere had a distressing tendency to spin vertically.^[8]

The only time that the Coleoptere achieved horizontal flight (instead of a vertical takeoff and landing) was accidental. On its ninth and final flight, the aircraft wobbled wildly during descent and ended up accelerating away horizontally—and briefly. The pilot ejected, the Coleoptere wrecked and burned up, and the project was discontinued.

2 The Blue Peacock

At first glance, the Cold War design of the Blue Peacock doesn’t seem too strange. A massive nuclear mine, it was designed to be buried by British forces in West Germany and detonated to stop a hypothetical Soviet invasion of Western Europe.

However, the design suffered from a major flaw. Buried deep underground, the device would inevitably get cold, and if it got too chilly, the detonator might not be able to set off a nuclear explosion.

The proposed solution is where things take a turn for the weird. The scientists in charge of the project suggested that chickens be buried inside the casing of the bomb with enough food to keep them alive for a week. The body heat produced by the chickens would be enough to keep the device functional.^[9]

Perhaps the oddest part of the whole story is that wrapping a nuclear bomb in chickens isn’t what got the project shelved. In fact, it was fully accepted as a sensible solution to a peculiar problem.

The problem wasn’t the political tangle of burying nuclear bombs in an allied nation, either. It was simply that the British decided that the amount of nuclear fallout that would be produced by the Blue Peacock’s detonation would be unacceptably high.

1 The Gay Bomb

The idea of a “gay bomb” is a terrible marriage of awful science and rampant homophobia that seems like it belongs firmly in the 1950s. But as recently as 1994, the US Air Force’s Wright Laboratory requested a jaw-dropping $7.5 million to develop a chemical aphrodisiac that could be dispersed by an explosive and would cause “homosexual behavior” in enemy combatants.^[10]

The whole idea was a failure on a scientific level. First, there is no known or proposed mechanism for a chemical causing heterosexual people to suddenly change their sexual orientation. Second, there’s also no known or proposed aphrodisiac chemical that’s ever had a measurable effect on the human body, let alone such a drastic one.

It was also a failure on a conceptual level as there’s no evidence that a big gay orgy would actually reduce troop morale. To the contrary, we already have plenty of evidence of excellent career soldiers who happen to be homosexual.

As this is the case, the funding was never delivered and the whole project thankfully never made it past the concept stage.

AJ lives in Stafford in the UK and has equally deep and abiding loves for weird science, horror stories, and good bourbon.

Warfare has evolved quite a bit from the first time we looked at another group of people and decided to fight them. We’ve come a long way from charging headfirst into each other and hoping our weapons hit their intended targets. There may have been a time when just having superior battle tactics and higher numbers would have ensured victory, though now, a numerically inferior force could easily take on a much bigger one by just having a technological upper hand on the battlefield.

Nearly all of the biggest countries in the world are now working hard at gaining that upper hand, and some of the breakthroughs in military tech in recent times have started to resemble things straight out of science fiction. While we knew that these technologies would definitely be a regular part of warfare at some point in the future, we didn’t know that future would be here so soon.

10 EMP

The idea of a superpowered weapon that could theoretically release a burst of electromagnetic radiation (e.g. an electromagnetic pulse [EMP]) and incapacitate all electronics in a given area has existed in science fiction for a long time. Any army that has access to such a weapon would gain an automatic advantage in a battle, as even one working weapons system is better than thousands that are disabled.

Many countries have ongoing projects attempting to make such a thing, but it looks like the US Air Force already has it. Called the Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project, or CHAMP, the weapon was able to successfully target and disable the electronics of seven separate buildings during a test in Utah.^[1] Thankfully, it’s able to pinpoint specific targets instead of just bombarding a whole area with the pulse, ensuring that civilians won’t be affected during a live operation.

9 Hypersonic Missiles

The speed of sound isn’t anywhere close to the speed of light, and saying that overtaking it is any sort of a breakthrough in 2019 would be dishonest. We have many things that can breach the sound barrier like it’s nothing, though most of it is military tech, like jets and missiles, and also super-expensive to build. It’s not the same for hypersonic speed, though, which is at least five times the speed of sound and much more difficult to achieve.

It’s one of those things we thought we’d see farther in the future, but that was until China put its hypersonic missiles to the test.^[2] Unfortunately for all of China’s potential enemies, the tests were successful. Developing hypersonic missiles has been a top priority for the United States for some time now, so it would be interesting to see what they come up with now that China has seemingly taken the lead in that arms race.

8 Micro-Drones

Thirty years ago, few would have imagined that we’d have unmanned flying objects capable of carrying out military operations from a safe distance. Drones (aka UAVs) have already transformed the way we conduct warfare as well as other parts of life, like news reporting and drunken bets at tech school parties.

Despite their utility in warfare, there are some things that UAVs still can’t easily do, like carrying out an operation undetected. For that, they’d have to be minimized to an almost undetectable scale, something science fiction authors have played around with quite a few times. It sounds overpowered and kind of scary, as tiny armed drones no one can see could wreak havoc in the wrong hands. It’s a relief, then, that they’re still quite a bit away in the distant future, right? Well, no.

In January 2017, the Pentagon announced that it had successfully tested a group of 103 micro-drones, each about 16 centimeters (6 in) in length.^[3] They’re largely autonomous in nature and are capable of things like collective decision-making, changing formations according to situation, and “healing” themselves. And no, that’s not all; they also have plans to some day be able to fit advanced and deadly technologies on their minuscule drones, including tiny nukes.

7 Weaponizing AI

Many scientific and military experts have grave, and justified, concerns about artificial intelligence being allowed into the realm of warfare. Even if a full-fledged killer robot uprising isn’t really that big of a concern at this point, it poses many other ethical questions we need to answer first. How do we make sure that autonomous, self-learning weapons know the difference between combatants and civilians, when even we mistake the two every now and then? More importantly, how do we hold a machine accountable for its actions? Going to jail isn’t really a deterrent for it.

Despite those concerns, artificial intelligence is already a part of warfare to a larger extent than those concerned about it would be comfortable with. Take Israel’s “Harop” loitering munition system, which is essentially a suicide drone that can self-destruct if it’s able to lock on to what it perceives as a target, like enemy combatants or antiaircraft missile systems.^[4] It has already been successfully used on the battlefield, and the scariest part is that it’s capable of deciding what to dive-bomb entirely on its own. Reportedly, Germany also has completely automated missile systems capable of shooting down enemy missiles without any human intervention.

There’s a silver lining, though; AI developers aren’t as easily available for hire as general weapons experts, and many in Silicon Valley have explicitly refused to work with the military to try to ensure that AI’s use in warfare remains limited.

6 Mind-Controlled Weapons

Imagine simply linking your brain to a weapon, vehicle, robot, or what have you and being able to pilot it with a deftness and fluidity you’d never attain with a joystick, to be the fighter jet or Pacific Rim-style giant death robot. If you think that it’s safe to say that it’ll be some time before we can actually do that, you’d be wrong; the tech already exists.

In one study, neuroscientists developed something known as the “brainet,” where two monkeys were taught how to control a digital limb with the help of just their thoughts. While it has noncombat applications, especially in aiding people with brain damage or disabilities in their day-to-day tasks, it could also be used for military purposes. The US Department of Defense already has ongoing programs looking into creating mind-controlled weapons, and we could see them put to use quite soon.^[5]

5 Exoskeleton Suit

Anyone who has played first-person shooters is probably familiar with the concept of an exoskeleton suit, an exterior suit of powered armor that provides enhanced protection and capabilities. The idea, in various forms, has been explored quite a bit in fiction as well; just look at Iron Man.

While something as high-tech and awesome as Tony Stark’s duds will take some time to develop, an exoskeleton suit already exists. In 2018, Russia tested its RATNIK-3 prototype. The tests were largely successful; the tester was able to carry heavy loads and shoot a machine gun one-handed. The suit is made with a titanium framework to increase the soldier’s strength and stamina.^[6]

It has a limitation, though: It doesn’t have much in the way of energy storage, so it can only work for a limited time. They’re working on fixing that, though. Either way, the RATNIK-3 sounds like a working exoskeleton suit to us.

4 Seeing Through Walls

Gone are the days of face-to-face battles on large fields. The wars of today are largely urban in nature, which is partly due to the combatants being non-state actors and guerilla fighters. That also makes it all the more difficult, as booby traps and ambushes in densely populated urban battlefields can bring the best armies to a halt (as seen in Iraq and Afghanistan).

Many countries have been trying to perfect their own technologies for being able to scan an area before they move in, but that would require the ability to see through walls, and no one really has that. Or don’t they? Some recent breakthroughs have proven that not only is it closer than we thought, but the tech to see through walls already exists.

In 2015, a Czech radar manufacturer successfully built a device that can see what’s on the other side of the wall, as long as whoever is behind the wall is moving their limbs or breathing. If that’s not good enough, in 2018, a group of researchers from MIT developed an AI-type technology that can see anyone through walls with an accuracy of 83 percent, complete with a moving image of their stick-like form in real time.^[7]

In another breakthrough at the Technical University of Munich in 2017, researchers were able to do the same thing with Wi-Fi routers. We’re pretty sure we saw something like that in a movie once.

3 Seeking Bullets

You may not at all be surprised to hear that in a battle, enemy combatants, at least competent ones, are trained to make shooting them difficult. That’s exactly why a type of ammunition developed by DARPA, the research wing of the US Department of Defense, is so impressive and deadly. Known as EXACTO, it’s not just able to home in on a hard-to-hit, dug-in target; it also has the ability to change course midway depending on enemy movement and is accurate to a scary degree.^[8]

Not just that, they’re also actively trying to develop an auto-aiming rifle, which uses computation and advanced algorithms to only fire when the shot should hit, without the shooter having to rely on his judgement of wind conditions and visibility.

2 Freeze Ray

Unlike most other items on this list, which could aid good guys as well as rogue armies, the “freeze ray,” a weapon that can literally freeze someone in his tracks, has generally been portrayed in fiction as something villains use. Of course, we don’t really have anything that can do that from a distance and in a short burst of time, right? Well, a team from the University of Washington developed something along those lines in 2015.

It works by shooting a laser at a liquid and freezing it. We already had the tech to do this to solids in a vacuum, this was the first time it had been done to a liquid. Also, lasers generally heat objects up rather than cooling them down.

Future applications for technology of this sort extend far beyond freezing people in a battle, of course. The researchers think that it could theoretically be used to freeze and slow down the division process in living cells, possibly giving us a better understanding of the mechanisms behind aging and cancer.^[9]

1 Invisibility Cloak

The ability to become invisible whenever we want wouldn’t just be valuable for the military; a lot of us could make use of such an ability in many of our daily interactions. It has been imagined and discussed in science fiction since we started writing science fiction, and even in 2019, it still sounds like something from the future. Fortunately for military contractors as well as people who keep getting stuck in awkward conversations, invisibility cloaks are no longer the stuff of the distant future or science fiction. In fact, we’ve had at least one invisibility cloak since 2012.

A Canadian company called Hyperstealth Biotechnology Corporation has successfully built a material that can make you invisible. It’s also passive in nature, which means that it doesn’t reproduce your background on any kind of screen; it just “bends light around an object.”^[10] In other words, it’s an invisibility cloak exactly like you’d envision an invisibility cloak to be. The US military showed interest in purchasing it, because of course it did, and you might just see it deployed on a battlefield near you sooner than you’d have expected.

You can check out Himanshu’s stuff at Cracked and Screen Rant, get in touch with him for writing gigs, or just say hello to him on Twitter.

Though it may seem cowardly to some, the best military course of action is often to withdraw to fight another day. However, not all retreats are successful. But when they are, they can be nearly as beneficial as winning the battle outright. Here are ten examples of incredible military retreats.

10 Napoleon’s Retreat From Moscow
Russian Campaign

Determined to convince Tsar Alexander I to stop sending the United Kingdom raw materials which enabled them to continue the war effort against France, Napoleon decided to invade Russia, a decision which haunted him for the rest of his life. After he and his Grande Armee finally arrived in Moscow on September 14, 1812, Napoleon was disheartened to see that the Russian military, as well as the civilian population, had fled the city.

Although Napoleon expected to find supplies to aid his increasingly demoralized army, he found nothing. After only a month of waiting for a surrender that never came, Napoleon decided to retreat,^[1] leaving the city and hoping to escape the harsh Russian winter which was on its way.

However, hunger proved to be as much of an enemy as the Cossacks, who constantly tormented the Grande Armee as it slowly marched westward. In addition, wolves trailed Napoleon’s men wherever they went, picking off stragglers as far as the Rhine. (Some say this is why the forests of Central Europe are home to the number of wolves that they have to this day.) In all, of the more than 500,000 soldiers who went into Russia, fewer than 100,000 ever made it out.

9 The Allied Evacuation Of Gallipoli
World War I

Though he later disavowed the debacle that ensued, the future British prime minister Winston Churchill was one of the architects behind the World War I operation known as the Gallipoli Campaign. Originally designed to be a largely sea-based invasion, bad weather and subsequent losses due to mines prompted the war planners to decide that a land-based invasion would work better. However, the Allied forces sustained heavy losses, barely making it more than a few miles inland.

Eventually, after being bogged down just as they were on the Western Front, evacuation orders were drawn up. More or less the only thing that went right for the Allied troops during the campaign, most of those still alive were evacuated to safety.

Just before the last of the Australians left, Padre Walter Dexter walked through the cemeteries, scattering silver wattle seed and saying: “If we have to leave here, I intend that a bit of Australia shall be here.”^[2]

One of the reasons they were able to escape relatively unscathed was the work of an Australian named William Scurry. He rigged up a self-firing rifle contraption which convinced the Turkish fighters that they were still being shot at by soldiers after everyone had already begun to leave.

8 Highway Of Death
Gulf War I

After years of economic struggles (which were due to Kuwait and its policies in his mind), Saddam Hussein began the invasion of his neighbor on August 2, 1990. Uniformly condemned by nearly every other nation, the hostilities were quickly (in international terms) met with ultimatums, including the United States’ proclamation that Iraq had to withdraw its forces by January 15, 1991.

Iraq refused. Shortly afterward, Operation Desert Storm began. Thoughts of retreat began to enter the minds of many Iraqi soldiers as they were overwhelmed by coalition forces.

The main highway out of Kuwait City was their most likely escape route, which coalition forces quickly realized as well. On the morning of February 26, 1991, more than 1,500 Iraqi vehicles began their trek out of Kuwait.

Unfortunately for the Iraqis, they were “basically just sitting ducks” in the words of Commander Frank Sweigart. A cavalcade of bombs tore through the ranks, with subsequent fires engulfing many of the vehicles. (Those fires resulted in one of the more infamous photographs^[3] of the war.)

Though the retreat may seem to have been unsuccessful, as many as 80,000 troops are estimated to have successfully withdrawn according to the US Defense Intelligence Agency.

7 George Washington’s Escape From New York
American Revolutionary War

In 1776, the Battle of Long Island, the first large-scale battle which occurred after the United States declared its independence, saw George Washington face off against William Howe. Washington had surmised that the capture of New York would be one of Britain’s goals, and his 19,000 soldiers were moved to Lower Manhattan. Stationed on nearby Staten Island, Howe planned to use his warships to block the river while his soldiers marched on the Americans over land.

Howe’s plan met with instant success,^[4] partially due to his overwhelming numbers advantage. (He had around 32,000 men.) However, he paused after the first few days of fighting, intending to prepare for a final push.

Washington took advantage of this delay—as well as a fortuitous storm that drove British warships from the area—and he ordered a retreat of his men. In the end, 10,000 Americans took part in the fighting, with 8,000 of them escaping. This enabled Washington to snatch a stalemate from the jaws of defeat. Legend has it that a fog descended on the retreating Americans, with Washington said to be the last to leave.

6 Russian Retreats Against Napoleon
Russian Campaign

By 1812, Napoleon had earned a reputation as an incredible general, one whose lightning speed (for the age) confounded his opponents. Many of his adversaries were used to smaller-scale, more methodical forms of fighting.

After Tsar Alexander I decided to ignore the terms of the Treaty of Tilsit and begin trading with England, Napoleon decided enough was enough, with all-out war his only option. So he and his Grande Armee marched on Russia.

However, Russia’s leaders were no fools. They knew that the best plan was one used by Wellington: systematic retreats^[5] which would draw the French into a slow, drawn-out campaign and nullify one of their biggest advantages.

Napoleon’s fighting forces often lived off the land to supplement their supply trains. So the Russians instituted a scorched-earth policy, denying their enemies anything of use. (It also did irreparable harm to Russian citizens who were living in the area.)

However, Russia’s strategy proved invaluable in war. It slowly drained Napoleon of almost all his fighting men before he stumbled into Moscow.

5 The Great Retreat
World War I

In 1914, the Battle of Mons was the first taste of the new age of warfare for the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), which came to the aid of the French Fifth Army as the Germans attempted to outflank them in World War I. Badly outnumbered by nearly two to one, the BEF nevertheless persisted.

They were intent on inflicting as much damage on the Germans while keeping them from overrunning the BEF’s position. On the morning of August 23, 1914, the BEF got the chance to test their mettle as enemy artillery began to pound their line.

British rifle fire was so quick and accurate that the advancing Germans were certain they were facing lines of machine guns. While the “Old Contemptibles” managed to hold their own, the French Fifth Army did not fare so well, leading their commander to order a retreat^[6] early on August 24.

The British had no choice but to retreat as well. They began what has come to be known as the Great Retreat, a two-week march to the Marne River. Eventually, through a number of rearguard actions, the Allies reached the river. They turned around, halting the German advance and forcing a brief retreat of their forces in the Battle of the Marne. This bought time for an even more unlikely “victory” for the British later.

4 Mao Tse–Tung’s Long March
Chinese Civil War

The Red Army of the Communist Party of China was on its last leg, hounded into extinction by the Kuomintang Army, a rival force fighting for control of the country. On October 16, 1934, the leaders of the Red Army decided that a retreat was the only option. The 86,000 troops were surrounded in the Jiangxi province and, through subterfuge, managed to break out to the west to begin their escape. Their goal was the northwestern province of Shaanxi, a place which would allow them to heal in isolation.

Unfortunately for them, it didn’t take long for their enemy to notice the retreat had begun. Aerial bombardment and ground fighting whittled down the Red Army to half its original size. By January 1935, Mao Tse–tung had managed to garner enough support to take control of the army.

Though his ascent helped with the problem of lagging morale, it didn’t do much to change the army’s fortunes. People just kept dying. By the time they reached Shaanxi in October 1935, only 8,000 troops remained.^[7]

Though the retreat can’t be seen as a military success, the 6,400-kilometer (4,000 mi) journey did become a legend among the youth of China. This inspired many of them to join the Communists over the next decade.

3 Battle Of Chosin Reservoir
Korean War

In late November 1950, the Chinese Ninth Army began an overwhelming surprise attack on United Nations troops stationed at the Chosin Reservoir in eastern North Korea. In all, 150,000 Chinese troops were directed by Mao Tse-tung to encircle and annihilate the 30,000 men they faced. Initially successful in their attacks, the Chinese failed to complete the encirclement, allowing the United Nations forces to escape to the south in what proved to be an arduous journey for all involved.

Narrow mountain roads slowed the Americans and their allies, with the 1st Marine Division of the United States performing some of the most storied actions in the history of the Marine Corps.^[8] For over two weeks, the retreat continued, with both sides inflicting casualty after casualty upon one another.

By the time the United Nations troops reached the safety of South Korea, nearly 18,000 of their men were dead, wounded, or missing. However, it was very much a Pyrrhic victory for the Chinese, who lost twice those numbers. The astonishing number of deaths, especially among their elite troops, forced the Chinese to delay any more attacks, perhaps saving South Korea from being captured.

The most famous quote from this battle was uttered by General Oliver P. Smith, who said: “Retreat, hell! We’re not retreating, we’re just advancing in a different direction.”

2 Battle Of Dunkirk
World War II

In May 1940, the German blitzkrieg was tearing through Continental Europe like a plague. Poland, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg. All these countries had been conquered or would be soon by the might of the Nazis.

France was soon to follow, and it’s there that this story picks up. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) had joined forces with the French army, determined to keep the Germans out of the country. However, the speed and devastating skill of their foes soon proved to be too much as the Nazis quickly stormed through the French countryside.

The Germans were seemingly on the verge of taking the city of Dunkirk, the last port which could be used to evacuate the more than 300,000 Allied troops stationed there. In a stroke of luck for the Allies, Hitler ordered his men to halt on May 24.^[9] Hermann Goering, the leader of the Luftwaffe, had assured Hitler that the aircraft under Goering’s command could finish the job.

Though the delay only amounted to a few days, the Allies were able to fortify their defenses enough to allow nearly everyone to escape. In fact, many of the boats which helped secure passage back to Britain were privately owned: fishing boats, yachts, and lifeboats.

1 The March Of The Ten Thousand
Battle Of Cunaxa

Immortalized by the ancient Greek historian Xenophon in his work Anabasis, the March of the Ten Thousand is the story of a group of Greek mercenaries who went to war in Persia. They were hired by Cyrus the Younger, who planned to go to war with his brother Artaxerxes II and seize the throne. However, Cyrus was slain in battle, stranding the Greeks in enemy territory with no one to guide them out.

More than 2,700 kilometers (1,700 mi) from the sea, the Greeks were asked to surrender, a death sentence to be sure, and they refused. The Greeks were harried by the Persians for the entire journey to the Black Sea, but local tribes and the elements proved to be deadly foes as well.

After suffering through a snowstorm which thinned their numbers, the Greeks arrived at a town named Gymnias. They didn’t wait there long because a local guide assured them that they were only five days from the sea.

Five days later, Xenophon began hearing cries from the men at the front of the line. Fearing an attack, he rushed to the front, only to realize what the men were screaming: “The Sea, The Sea.”^[10] Though some of them died on the journey, most managed to arrive safely in Greece.

Often swept under the rug and given nonthreatening names such as “collateral damage,” the deaths of civilians at the hands of military forces can sometimes surpass even the deaths of fighting men. Given humanity’s long history of warfare, it’s no surprise there is an equally long list of military attacks on civilians. Here are ten of the worst examples.

10 Shimabara Rebellion

Christianity had begun to flourish in Japan during the 17th century, as the country had been slowly opening up more and more to foreigners (mainly Europeans) since 1543. However, the influence of nanbans (Japanese for “southern barbarians,” a term loosely applied to Europeans) began to worry the ruling shogunate, and the age of sakoku (“closed country”) began to take shape. Christianity was seen as one of those influences. There were many Christian peasants, and their dissatisfaction was the reason for the rebellion which occurred in the Shimabara Peninsula in 1637.

Like many before them, the local officials of the area were taxing the peasants heavily, utilizing their powers to abuse the civilians in any number of ways. The spark that lit the fire was the murder of the daimyo’s henchman, who was killed because he was torturing a local farmer’s daughter.^[1] (A daimyo was similar to a feudal lord.) Fighting broke out, and the peasants quickly assembled into a massive group. They were aided by former samurai, many of whom had converted to Christianity, who became leaders of the rebellion.

Unable to defeat the rebels with local forces, the shogun set 120,000 men to kill the civilians. Though they held out for a while, the rebels were eventually killed to the last person, women and children included. Estimates range from 20,000 to 37,000 deaths. As a result, Christianity, as well as other foreign influences, were increasingly forced out of Japan.

9 Bombing Of Dresden

Often seen, perhaps erroneously, as an act of revenge for the similar bombing of their own cities suffered at the hands of the Luftwaffe, Britain’s bombing of the German city of Dresden in February 1945 has been covered in controversy ever since. One of the reasons for this controversy is that the city was not of military or economic importance.^[2] Rather, the bombing was an attack on a culturally important city: the “Florence of the Elbe.”

The Nazis had been bombing British cities for a while by 1945, and in the eyes of some, the bombing of German cities was just their chickens coming home to roost. So, from February 13 to 15, 1945, British planes (with a few Americans) flew over the city of Dresden, devastating the area. Like many attacks during World War II, the death tolls are disputed, with ranges as low as 35,000 and as high as 135,000. However, what isn’t in dispute is the complete destruction of nearly every building in the city. Only a handful of the historic buildings in the city were ever rebuilt.

8 Guangzhou Massacre

Thanks to a number of natural disasters which resulted in widespread famine, Huang Chao led an agrarian rebellion throughout China, eventually culminating with his ascension to the throne. The Tang dynasty attempted, unsuccessfully, to defeat Huang’s forces, who managed to sack a number of provincial capitals. Huang then turned his sight toward Guangzhou, which had suffered at the hands of a rebellious army more than a century earlier. (Thousands of foreign-born merchants were killed.)

So, from 878 to 879, Huang’s men attacked the city, specifically targeting Muslims, Jews, and Christians, initiating a xenophobic pogrom, an act with which humanity is all too familiar. An otherwise nondescript Arab traveler named Abu Zaid Hassan wrote about the attack, claiming that as many as 120,000 people were massacred.^[3] As for Huang, his army was eventually defeated, and he died at the hands of his nephew. His entire reign lasted only four years.

7 Manila Massacre

Colloquially known as the “Pearl of the Orient,” Manila was a magnificent city, the capital of the Philippines, and it would suffer more than any Allied city outside of Warsaw. First occupied by Japan in 1942, the Pacific island chain endured years of military abuse, with hundreds of thousands of Filipinos perishing during the intervening years. Finally, in 1945, US forces arrived, with General MacArthur fulfilling the promise he gave three years prior to return to drive the Japanese away and retake the country.

However, the Japanese military refused to give up easily, and in a continuance of their policy at the time, they began to speed up their killing of civilians. During the Battle of Manila, which lasted about a month, around 70,000 Filipinos were raped and/or massacred by the Japanese army.^[4] A further 30,000 died in the crossfire between Japan and the US. In addition to the civilian casualties, vast portions of the city were destroyed in the fighting, some down to the very last building.

6 Firebombing Of Tokyo

While deserving of much of their attention, the nuclear weapons dropped on Japan at the end of World War II weren’t the only causes of devastating numbers of civilian deaths suffered there: Another example is the firebombing of Tokyo in 1945. Later known by the name “the Night of the Black Snow,” Operation Meetinghouse took place from March 9 to March 10, with US bombers dropping 1,665 tons of incendiary bombs on the city.

In all, 41 square kilometers (16 mi²) were burned, with as many as 130,000 deaths due to the resulting inferno.^[5] The smell of burning human flesh was so severe that the pilots in the air had to don oxygen masks to keep from vomiting. When asked about it later, Curtis LeMay, the major general in charge, said, “Killing Japanese didn’t bother me very much at that time. It was getting the war over that bothered me.” The firebombing of Tokyo is often cited as one of the most, if not the most, destructive acts of war in the history of mankind.

5 Siege Of Changchun

May 23, 1948. The People’s Liberation Army began surrounding the city of Changchun, one of the largest in Northeastern China, defended by Nationalist forces. Not wishing to attempt to force their way into the city, the Communists decided to starve the population out, hoping to push the defenders to surrender bloodlessly. The civilian population of around 500,000 was caught unprepared, and they quickly ran out of food.

It later became clear there was an ulterior motive to the siege: The Communists were purposely starving the citizens, whom they saw as the enemy. Stories of women sold to awaiting husbands-to-be for mere scraps of food were all too common. When the siege finally ended in October, a minimum of 160,000 civilians had starved to death. Those who had survived had only managed to live by eating virtually every edible thing in the city, down to the bark on the trees and the grass in the fields. A Communist soldier later remarked, “We’re supposed to fighting for the poor, but of all these dead here, how many are rich? [ . . . ] Aren’t they all poor people?”^[6]

4 Siege Of Jerusalem

Though Jerusalem has seen a number of sieges take place outside its walls, perhaps none was bloodier than the climactic battle of the First Crusade. Initiated in 1095 by Pope Urban II’s decrying of the persecution suffered by Christians in the Holy Land, tens of thousands of Western Europeans streamed into the Middle East like a deluge, massacring anyone who was in their way, soldier or civilian.^[7]

Facing little resistance, the wave of crusaders finally broke against the walls of Jerusalem on June 7, 1099. Finding it to be incredibly well-protected, the Christian forces began constructing three massive siege engines with which to defeat the defenses. After about a month, the crusaders finally broke into the city, and the slaughter began. A contemporary account of the fighting told a horrifying tale of senseless barbarism, of deaths so numerous that, “The blood was running up to ankles of the mounted Frankish knights.” Whether or not that was hyperbole, tens of thousands of the civilian inhabitants were murdered, even women and children.

3 The Harrying Of The North

“Harry” is defined as “to ravage, as in war; devastate.” The Harrying of the North, undertaken by William the Conqueror against Northern England, lived up to that definition in every conceivable way. The old Viking lineage which persisted in the North refused to bow to William, with numerous rebellions popping up until the Norman ruler could only come to one conclusion: He would destroy the entire place, starving out the enemy.^[8] That the civilians would also suffer was of no consequence.

So, in the winter of 1069, William’s men marched north, destroying everything in their way, down to the last blade of grass. Though the Harrying directly killed a large number of civilians, many more perished as a result of the enormous famine which resulted from the destruction of the land, livestock, and food stores. The campaign was so horrific that Orderic Vitalis, a monk who otherwise wrote glowingly of William, said the following: “I can say nothing good about this brutal slaughter. God will punish him.” Though the death tolls are often debated, contemporary reports say as many as 100,000 people died.

2 Massacre Of Novgorod

In late 1569, the grand prince of Moscow had begun to reach the peak of his paranoia, believing that the people of Novgorod were about to turn over their city to Poland. Better known as Ivan IV, or Ivan the Terrible, he decided that the citizens of Novgorod would need to be punished. So, along with his 1,500-man personal guard, the tsar marched on the city, ravaging smaller towns and villages along the way, warming up for what was to be the horrifying main event.

Arriving just after the start of the new year, Ivan IV began the horror with the priests and monks of Novgorod, having them beaten to death with staffs.^[9] He then moved on to the populace, setting up a special court in the city in which to extract “confessions” through torture. Often, the victims were then thrown into the Volkhov River to drown or freeze to death. Man, woman, and child alike met the same fate, and their blood ran so much that the snow around the city was painted red. When it was all over about five weeks later, at least 60,000 citizens were dead, and it took six weeks to clear their bodies.

1 Rotterdam Blitz

Expecting to remain neutral as they had during World War I, the people of Rotterdam in the Netherlands never expected the Nazis to come knocking. But knock they did. On May 10, 1940, the Germans attacked. They were ultimately repelled and locked into a stalemate with their Dutch adversaries. Unwilling to risk too many lives or time, Nazi general Rudolf Schmidt issued an ultimatum: Surrender or face the might of the Luftwaffe. The Dutch refused.

A few days later, May 14 to be exact, the bombing began.^[10] Between 80 and 90 German planes indiscriminately dropped their ordinance all over the city. Owing to the fact that they had virtually no antiaircraft weapons in the city, not to mention inferior air power, all the Dutch could do was watch as their city was leveled. In the end, nearly 1,000 people died, and most of the historic buildings within the city center were destroyed.

Though the deaths directly attributed to the Rotterdam Blitz are low, the argument could be made that it, along with the other Nazi bombing raids, unleashed the extensive destruction perpetrated by the Allies. As the British air marshal Arthur Travers Harris said, “The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.”

The ‘Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All Of Us’ call to action that was issued in September, 2019, fizzled out.^[1] So what happens in Area 51 stays in Area 51. But the government-labeled tin-foil hat brigade, which claims that aliens and their spaceships are hidden there, doesn’t seem so crazy anymore. About a week before the call to action, the United States Navy finally acknowledged that UFOs exist. After decades of denial, the Navy publicly stated that there are, indeed, ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.’^[2] Regardless of what they are called, the strange flying objects that Americans spot in the skies aren’t weather balloons and secret military aircraft, as they have been told.

Top 10 UFO Encounters That You’ve Never Heard About

It took the government almost as long to admit that there actually is a place called ‘Area 51.’ A Freedom of Information Act Request revealed its existence to the public in 2013. Officially, planes are tested and constructed at Area 51.^[3] The facility is actually called the Nevada Test and Training Range at Groom Lake, one of two military training areas at the Nellis Air Force Base Complex in Nevada.^[4] The remote desert site, about a two-hour drive from Las Vegas, is close to the UFO-themed tourist towns of Rachel and Hiko. Whistleblowers and witnesses continue to come forward about what is really going on at Area 51 and other military installations.

10 Malmstrom Air Force Base

Malmstrom Air Force Base, which deploys Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles, (ICBMs) is adjacent to Great Falls, Montana. In 1967, the Missile Combat Crew received reports from security patrols and maintenance crew that a UFO was hovering over one of the missile silos. Shortly thereafter, each of the ten missiles shut down, one at a time.^[5] While declassified documents prove that the nuclear weapons did, indeed, become inoperable, there is scant evidence of the UFO claim.^[6][7] However, evidence was gathered at an earlier UFO sighting. The Mariana UFO Incident took place in Great Falls in 1950. Nick Mariana, manager of a minor league baseball team, may be the first person to intentionally capture footage of UFOs. A bright flash caught Mariana’s attention as he was inspecting a baseball field. He ran to get a 16mm camera when he saw two silver disks flying at lightening speed over the city. He was able to get 16 seconds of color video footage. However, he later claimed that 35 complete frames were missing after the Air Force examined the film and returned it to him. These frames showed that the mystery objects in the sky were discs that were rotating.^[8]

9 Carswell Air Force Base

The 1947 Roswell Incident in New Mexico is perhaps the most famous UFO encounter. The first press release stated that a flying saucer had been found. The second press release claimed the object was a weather balloon.^[9] Operations officer Robert Shirkey saw an aluminum-like material with characters written on it being loaded for a flight to Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth, Texas.^[10] Flight crewman Robert Porter reported that the boxes holding the ‘pieces of flying saucer’ were as light as empty boxes.^[11] In later years, UFOs were seen around the base. In 1954, a T-shaped aircraft was spotted and picked up on radar. The blue, green, and white UFO hovered at 4000 feet over the nearby airport.^[12] Another sighting was recorded by the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database. In 1965, a witness saw a triangular UFO with three lights.^[13]

8 Wright-Patterson Air Force Base

Captain Oliver W. “Pappy” Henderson, a senior pilot at Roswell AFB during the Roswell Incident, flew a plane to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio shortly after the incident. He did not discuss the flight for more than thirty years because of his security clearance. But in 1977, he told his business partner about his assignment. He said he transported spacecraft wreckage and small alien bodies. He showed his partner a piece of metal from the wreckage. It resembled aluminum but was lighter and much stiffer. In 1982, Henderson told the same story to several of his Roswell pals while attending a reunion.^[14] Other military men confirm Henderson’s story. One of these men is Marine Lieutenant Colonel Marion M. “Black Mac” Magruder. On his deathbed, Magruder remembered that the alien he saw was ‘squiggly.’^[15]

7 Fort Dix

Major George Filer recounts six decades of investigating aliens and UFOs in John Guerra’s Strange Craft: The True Story of An Air Force Intelligence Officer’s Life with UFOs. Most notably, Filer recalls the shooting of an alien at Fort Dix in New Jersey.^[16] In 1978, a military policeman was following a low flying aircraft through the wilderness of the army base during the wee hours of a frigid January morning. A 4-foot tall, grayish-brown creature with long arms, a slender body, and fat head appeared in front of the MP’s truck and was then shot. The remains gave off an ammonia-like stench.^[17] Filer is a member of the Disclosure Project, which champions the release of all UFO information. In 2017, the Pentagon released footage of an extraterrestrial vehicle outdoing U.S. Navy fighters, confirming some of Filer’s descriptions.

6 29 Palms

29 Palms in the Mojave Desert in California was the site of a massive multi-regimental live-maneuver exercise in October, 2019.^[18] Military training is just one of the interesting activities at the Marine base, which is listed in Project Redbook. This database contains information about subsurface alien activity sites. It was compiled for those who want to explore the sites, with no claims of authenticity for any particular site.^[19] According to researcher Val Valerian, recovered alien technology is examined in underground facilities at the base.^[20] In addition, there have been many UFO sightings in the area since the 1950s.^[21] In May, 2019, a worm-like UFO was spotted over the town of 29 Palms.

Top 10 UFO Encounters That Involve Alien Humanoid Entities

5 Fort Meade

In his book, Above Black: Project Preserve Destiny, Dan Sherman writes that he was sent to Fort Meade in Maryland to train for his role in an above Top Secret-level Air Force program called ‘Greys.’ In 1992, he was recruited to speak to Grey Aliens, first encountered at the Roswell Incident. His mother was visited by aliens and was the subject of genetic manipulation. Therefore, Sherman could fulfill his duties as ‘Intuitive Communicator,’ and receive messages from the Greys. First, Sherman sat in a communications van in an unknown location to receive the messages from the designated alien. After some time, he began to receive what he calls ‘abduction data.’^[22] The National Security Agency, (NSA) headquartered at Fort Meade, declassified many documents in more recent years. Some of these reports note attempts to decode a ‘radio message’ received from outer space.^[23]

4 Edwards Air Force Base

Skeptics wonder why aliens speak to the ‘common man’ rather than leaders. In fact, one of our greatest leaders, Dwight Eisenhower, may have communicated with them. Depending on whose story you believe, the president either took a secret evening trip to Edwards Air Force Base while on a golf vacation or he went to the dentist for repair of a chipped tooth. Ike’s dentist insisted he saw the president on February 20, 1954. But Dr. Michael Salla believes that Ike met two blue-eyed aliens, who had colorless lips and white hair, at the base.^[24] Dr. Salla is a leader in the field of exopolitics, defined as ‘the political study of the key actors, institutions, and processes associated with extraterrestrial life.’^[25] Interestingly, the Associated Press reported that Ike died on February 20, 1954, but retracted the story two minutes later. Laura Magdalene Eisenhower, Ike’s great-granddaughter, has publicly stated that she believes that Ike met with extraterrestrials.^[26]

3 Kirtland Air Force Base

A declassified government report revealed that guards at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico saw UFOs in the Coyote Canyon area in 1980. During the same period of time, radar was jammed by an unknown source for six hours in the same area.^[27] Paul Bennewitz, a physicist, inventor, and UFO researcher, had begun to see odd lights in the sky a year earlier. These lights, which flew towards Coyote Canyon and the base, could be seen nearly every evening. Bennewitz filmed the lights as well as objects he saw on the ground and in the air. Over time, he collected more than 2600 feet of film. Bennewitz also taped low-frequency radio transmissions that he said were transmitted by the aliens, and he created a computer program to translate these transmissions.^[28] In addition, he claimed to have evidence that aliens were controlling people through electromagnetic devices.^[29]

2 Holloman Air Force Base

Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico is at the center of several UFO encounters. Project 1947, an ongoing gathering of articles and documents about UFOs seen between 1900 and 1965, presents one of these incidents.^[30] In 1950, electronics engineer Cliff Booth reported that he and another man had used an Askania theodolite to get photographs of a cigar-shaped UFO. While both men were convinced they had seen a ‘vehicle from outer space,’ photographs were blurry.^[31] Years later, filmmaker Robert Emenegger was prompted by the US Air Force to produce a UFO documentary. In 1974, UFOs: Past, Present and Future was released without its most sensational story. The Air Force reneged on its promise to give Emenegger footage of a UFO landing at Holloman Air Force Base in 1971.^[32] The footage showed three UFOs. One UFO landed and three aliens emerged.^[33]

1 Dobbins Air Force Base

‘Georgia’s Aerial Phenomenon 1947-1987,’ written by Roswell, Georgia, police officer Michael Hitt, presents 234 UFO sightings in the state. Many reports come from civilian and military pilots like the airmen from Dobbins Air Force Base who told their story in 1952. They saw an object streak overhead before it disappeared. This same object was seen on radar scopes as it traveled at 1,200 miles an hour, twice the speed of an airplane.^[34] Control tower operator Bruce Beach relates that there were so many UFO sightings at Dobbins Air Force Base in the 1950s that the tower had a 3D camera, which was unusual at that time.^[35] Sightings continued throughout the years. Recently, a square, black UFO the size of a Boeing 727 was spotted near the base and reported to MUFON in January, 2019.^[36]

The spaceship-shaped McDonald’s in Roswell, New Mexico, reminds residents and tourists that we may not be alone in the universe. Right now, the majority of the evidence comes in the form of stories told by military men, pilots, law enforcement officers, and others. The government has finally admitted that UFOs are a real phenomenon. Who knows what secrets may be revealed in the future.

10 Times We Thought We Had Found Proof Of Aliens

Most people can name some basic military maneuvers. There’s the ambush, the charge, deception, artillery or aerial bombardment, just to name a few. But some battles have been won with much weirder tactics. The following examples are some of the most bizarre, yet brilliant tactics ever successfully deployed on the battlefield. 

10. Operation Mincemeat

It’s 1943, and the Allies were cooking up an elaborate scheme to mislead the Axis powers, especially Nazi Germany, about their military intentions. The key ingredient? A corpse and a whole lot of imagination.

Operation Mincemeat involved taking a corpse, dressing it up like a drowned military officer, and equipping it with a briefcase full of fake documents hinting at an impending attack on Southern Europe. Then, they released this “corpse of deception” off the coast of Spain, a region known for its pro-German sympathies. Lo and behold, the ruse worked like a charm. The Germans took the bait, shifted their troops, and, unbeknownst to them, danced to the Allies’ tune.

It’s the kind of audacious plan that makes you appreciate the lengths people will go to in the name of strategy and a good plot twist. The corpse might not have known what was going on, but it played its part in a game that ultimately helped tip the scales of a world at war. Operation Mincemeat, where fact meets fiction in the grand theater of war.

9. The Ghost Army

No, it’s not an army of badass phantoms and wraiths like in Lord of the Rings. But the real Ghost Army is just as cool.  It was an Allied ploy during World War II that used inflatable tanks, sound effects, and other deceptive techniques to create a mirage of a much larger and powerful force. Imagine a canvas city, complete with faux radio transmissions, designed to divert the enemy’s attention. They were master illusionists, utilizing tricks of sight and sound to make the Axis second-guess and make costly missteps. They also deployed the “army” in areas that, when photographed by German reconnaissance aircraft and delivered to Nazi high command, made it seem like the Allies were planning to attack far away from their actual target. 

Their performances were both gutsy and pivotal, contributing significantly to the Allied success. A reminder that in the theater of war, sometimes the most potent weapon isn’t a gun or a bomb, but an artful and convincing illusion. 

8. The Double Siege of Alesia

The year is 52 BCE, and Alesia, a hilltop fortress in present-day France, is the focal point. 

Vercingetorix had gathered a coalition of rebellious Gauls inside the fortress, presenting a challenge to Julius Caesar’s legions. To break this deadlock, Caesar devised an audacious plan. He encircled Alesia with a massive fortification: two concentric rings of defenses. One faced outward to repel attacks from Gallic reinforcements, while the other faced inward to contain those within Alesia.

This was a dual siege—a testament to Roman engineering expertise and logistical finesse. The Gauls inside the walls resisted fiercely, while their brethren outside tried to break through. The Romans were severely outnumbered, and being attacked from all sides. Vercingetorix did everything right and… still lost. It was Caesar’s magnum opus, and the reason why he’s one of history’s greatest generals. 

7. Hammering periscopes

U-boats, the deadly submarines of the German navy during the World Wars, were the terror of the Atlantic. Like most submarines, their crews used periscopes to scout and target enemy ships. 

During World War II, the Allies developed brand new techniques for dealing with U-boat wolfpacks, in order to protect precious shipping lanes. One such innovation was hammering periscopes. You read that right, and no, it’s not a euphemism. This intriguing tactic, employed by the Royal Navy, literally involved patrols of sailors sneaking up on exposed periscopes and smashing them with hammers. In other cases, they’d simply shove canvas sacks over them and tie them tight. 

Once blinded, the submarines would be forced to surface, making them easy targets for Allied naval and air units. It wasn’t the most sophisticated strategy, but if it works, it works. 

6. The Night Witches

The Night Witches were a remarkable group of female aviators in the Soviet Air Forces during World War II. Officially known as the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, they earned their more ominous nickname from the Germans due to their stealthy night raids and the distinctive sound their planes made, which their victims on the ground compared to a witch’s broomstick.

Composed entirely of women, the Night Witches flew outdated Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes, which were slow and made of wood and canvas, but highly maneuverable. They conducted their daring bombing missions under the cover of darkness, wreaking havoc on German positions with precision and speed, all while remaining virtually invisible in the dark. The pilots often flew multiple sorties in a single night. 

5. Flaming camels

Timur, also known as Tamerlane, was a Turco-Mongol conqueror and military genius of the 14th century. One of his notable tactics, involving flaming camels, was employed during the Battle of Ankara in 1402 against the forces of the Ottoman Empire. Yes, you read that right. Yes, it means exactly what it sounds like. 

During the battle, Timur’s army faced a formidable opponent in the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I. Timur loaded camels with straw and hay, setting them ablaze before releasing them into the enemy ranks. The sight of these flaming camels charging towards the Ottoman forces panicked their war elephants and horses, causing disorder and chaos among their ranks.

The confusion created by the flaming camels threw the Ottoman formations into panic, allowing Timur’s forces to capitalize on the disarray and gain the upper hand. Timur won the battle, capturing Bayezid and dealing a significant blow to the Ottoman Empire.

4. Bring your pets to war day 

Yes, cat paintings. See, the Ancient Egyptians revered cats and believed they possessed protective qualities. 

At the Battle of Pelusium in 525 BC, the Persian Empire, led by Cambyses II, fought against the Egyptian Dynasty under Pharaoh Psamtik III. It unfolded near Pelusium, a pivotal location on Egypt’s eastern border, acting as a gateway to the Nile Delta. The Egyptians had extensive fortifications. But the Persians had cats. Yes, cats. 

What set the Persians apart was their innovative battle strategy, revealing a keen grasp of Egyptian culture. Understanding the Egyptians’ veneration of animals like cats tied to their religious beliefs, Cambyses II directed his troops to drive these sacred animals ahead of them, and some accounts suggest they even depicted cat images and other sacred animals on their shields. This psychological tactic struck deep into the hearts of the Egyptian soldiers, instilling fear of harming these revered animals and invoking divine retribution. This hesitation proved advantageous for the Persians, enabling them to breach the Egyptian defenses and claim a major victory.

3. Self mutilation

Zopyrus was a Persian general who played a significant role during the siege of Babylon in 482 BC. He decided on a daring and brutal plan to weaken Babylon’s defenses: he deliberately mutilated himself. Zopyrus believed that this act would enable him to gain the trust of the Babylonians and infiltrate their city from within.

And it worked. He executed this plan by cutting off his own ears and nose, making it appear as though he had suffered severe punishment from King Darius. Presenting himself to the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar as a defector, claiming mistreatment by the Persians, he gained the trust of the Babylonians. Over time, he was given a position of authority within the city.

Exploiting this newfound position, Zopyrus orchestrated the sabotage of Babylon’s defenses, ultimately leading to its capture by the Persian forces. Losing the war seems like a better fate, but hey – at least it worked?

2. Releasing one prisoner

World War I was defined by stalemate, where neither side could gain an upper hand. But it wasn’t for lack of men to hurl into the teeth of enemy machine guns. Both sides improved too. Poison gas, tanks, and airplanes all made their debut here. But the most decisive tactic employed by anyone in the entire war was arguably when the Germans released a single prisoner back to Russia. 

His name was Vladimir Lenin, and he did exactly what the Germans intended: sparked the Bolshevik Revolution which began the Russian Civil War, destroyed the Czarist empire and knocked Russia out of the World War One. Just like that, the entire eastern front was brought to a close, and Germany was able to focus fully on the western front against Britain and France. With all their troops freed up, the Germans moved over to the offense in the west and advanced in the 1918 Spring Offensive, which nearly brought the Allies to their knees. Unfortunately for them, they ran out of steam just as the Americans arrived, and it all fell apart. But still, by simply releasing Lenin, the Kaiser’s army very nearly defeated all her mighty enemies single handedly. 

1. Hannibal beats an enemy fleet with snakes

In one intriguing episode of Hannibal Barca’s military campaigns during the Second Punic War, he demonstrated his flair for unconventional tactics. During a naval skirmish against King Eumenes II of Pergamon, Hannibal took an audacious approach to unsettle his opponents.

Rather than relying solely on traditional naval strategies, Hannibal directed his troops to collect venomous snakes from the local terrain. He then ordered his men to hurl these venomous creatures onto the enemy ships. The effect was immediate and chaotic. The Pergamene sailors, freaked, abandoned their posts in a hurry, leaping into the sea to escape the animals. The result? The ships were deserted and Hannibal was left in command of the area. It wasn’t his most famous victory – Cannae or Lake Trasimene likely has that honor – but it was one of his most innovative. And it’s proof that he wasn’t just good at his job. He was one of the most innovative commanders in history.