In Ken Burns’ nine-part World War 2 documentary, the aptly named fifth episode, “FUBAR,” describes the powerlessness of Allied soldiers fighting Germany and Japan. “On both sides of the world,” the narrator says, “a generation of young men will learn a lesson as old as war itself — that generals make plans, plans go wrong and soldiers die.”

In World War 1, the Brits coined a more colorful phrase to describe the lethal mix of brave soldiers and poor generalship: “Lions led by donkeys.” Luckily, the vast majority of military leaders in those crucial conflicts were far more capable than the following ten examples.

10 Oddities That Interrupted Military Battles

10 Battle of Fredericksburg (American Civil War)

Spoiler alert: This list’s #2 is so ranked because it was preceded by the Battle of Fredericksburg. Why? Because Fredericksburg’s victors saw the deadly result of a large force charging an extended distance at an entrenched position… yet still attempted it just seven months later.

Before they found Ulysses Grant, the Union Army was badly outgeneraled in the Civil War. One also-ran was Ambrose Burnside – he of the bushy-eared hairstyle now known as sideburns. The Battle of Fredericksburg (Virginia) commenced December 11, with two days of the Union Army gaining a foothold on the same side of the Rappahannock River as Confederate generals Robert E. Lee, Stonewell Jackson and James Longstreet.

The action’s epicenter was Marye’s Heights, a hilly slope rising 50 feet above the plain. At the peak, rebels dug in behind a stone wall. Even now, surveying the ground leaves visitors wondering what the hell Burnside was thinking when he sent wave after fruitless, bloody wave up the slope. By mid-afternoon subordinates, including the audacious “Fighting Joe” Hooker, pleaded with Burnside to relent.

Instead, Burnside doubled down. The result was a turkey shoot: Confederate artillery had the landscape completely covered by artillery. No one got closer than 40 yards from the wall. Nearly 1,300 dead and 10,000 wounded later, Union casualties doubled their counterparts. Despite claims he was poorly served by his generals, Burnside was in charge and the buck – and the suicidal charges – stops with him.

9 Battle of Agincourt (Hundred Years War)

For a commanding officer, few mistakes are less forgivable than letting an easy, even bloodless victory slip away – in this case, literally.

In late October 1415, after failed negotiations ended a lull in the protracted Hundred Years War, an English army under King Henry V was marching across northern France. Things weren’t going well, with supplies running short and an atypically high number of deaths due to disease. Leaders decided to retreat to English-held Calais on France’s west coast; unfortunately, they soon encountered an army of 15,000 Frenchmen – roughly double the English total – blocking their escape.

French commander Constable Charles d’Albret had a layup: all he had to do was stop, camp and either siege the English into surrender or force them to charge a line double their strength. But when the English began aggressively advancing with flags flying and soldiers taunting, d’Albret decided this perceived disrespect could not go unpunished.

So he sent thousands of men across a narrow field of sticky clay mud, turned to a mucky quagmire by heavy rain. The soldiers slipped, slid, got up, fell again. English archers had a field day; the French were softened up for wholesale hand-to-hand slaughter. Around 6,000 Frenchmen, including d’Albret, were killed, with about 2,000 more taken prisoner. The English lost approximately 400 men for a casualty ratio of an astounding 20 to 1.

8 Battle of Tora Bora (NATO-Afghan War)

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the US and its NATO allies invaded Afghanistan with two goals. The first, routing the ruling Taliban regime, was quickly accomplished via overwhelming force. The second, capturing or killing al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden, would require more stealth. With sympathizers dotting the desolate landscape, catching bin Laden by surprise would be no small feat.

On December 3, 2001, a group of 20 U.S. CIA National Clandestine Service forces landed in the mountainous Tora Bora region. Afghan’s US-friendly Northern Alliance had alerted NATO of an al-Qaeda base there – and of bin Laden’s rumored presence. Together with another 70 US special forces and backed by airstrikes, they made steady advancements, clearing caves and capturing enemies as they went.

Then they inexplicably negotiated a truce. Officially, al-Qaeda fighters were organizing their surrender; unofficially, bin Laden was escaping. A key factor was that the US, having failed to swiftly deploy more troops, had delegated the task of guarding escape routes to untrained, disincentivized allies with inferior equipment – akin to a narcoleptic security guard protecting a vault.

Several days passed, the fighting resumed and the battle was eventually won – but the one-man prize had fled to Pakistan, and would elude justice for another decade. The failure to fully commit more troops sooner – and the farcical, time-buying truce – turned a quick victory into what became the longest war in American history.

7 Battle of Lake Trasimene (Second Punic War)

Hey Romans: Scout much? Assessing the strength of one’s enemy has been Military 101 for millennia. Without reconnaissance, an army is groping blindly.

At the outset of the Second Punic War, in 217 BC the Carthaginian commander Hannibal led an army of 50,000 through northern Italy. For a time, he eluded the pursuit of Roman commander Gaius Flaminius Nepos. But on June 24, an advanced band of Roman troops caught up with Hannibal’s rear guard near Lake Trasimene.

It was a trap. The Carthaginians were waiting to ambush the Romans, who they knew had far fewer soldiers. But instead of dispatching a few mounted men to survey the landscape and the enemy’s strength, Flaminius ordered his entire army to race blindly into battle.

Forgoing recon was inexcusable. Flaminius knew where the enemy was, so pausing to understand their configuration ran no risk or them escaping his reach. And even if they were somewhat scattered – for example, in a convoy formation – did Flaminius really think Hannibal had traversed all this way only to divide his large army on foreign soil? He had to know he’d be dealing with the full Carthaginian army, likely far more than the 30,000 men Rome had on the scene.

The result was a massacre. Flaminius was killed and, of his 30,000 men, half were either killed in battle or drowned attempting to swim to safety. Another 10,000 were captured. Carthage lost only 2,500 men.

6 Battle of Brooklyn (American Revolution)

Before the Battle of Brooklyn witnessed one of warfare’s most fortuitous coincidences, it became the stupidest decision George Washington ever made.

Let’s start with the ending: In August 1776, with his back to New York’s East River and his 9,000-strong Army facing certain ruin, Washington ordered his men “to impress every kind of watercraft… and have them all in the east harbor of the city by dark.”

The British, thinking they had ample time for what likely would have been the war’s decisive battle, delayed attack to wait out an unseasonable fog. That night, Washington’s troops silently floated to the safety of Manhattan. The British awoke to capture an army that had vanished into thick air.

All weather-related miracles aside, the obvious question: “Why did Washington need a miracle to avoid complete disaster?” Simply put, he got caught completely by surprise, which isn’t good when you’re fighting a) against a superior force and b) surrounded by water.

With Boston’s Bunker Hill as precedent, Washington expected an assault from sea; instead, British forces discretely came ashore miles away and marched overnight to reach the Continental Army’s rear. It took 400 brave Marylanders slowing the enemy with suicidal charges for the bulk of Washington’s men to escape immediate capture. Even so, they were hemmed in against a deep, wide river. Without the fog that followed, there’d be no Founding Father.

5 Battle of Hattin (Crusades)

Dignity and warfare often don’t mix. Just ask King Guy of Jerusalem.

In 1187, Muslim leader Saladin was looking for a decisive blow to settle the Ayyubid-Crusader War. Assembling the largest army he’d ever commanded, some 40,000 men, he laid siege to the Crusader fortress of Tiberias in modern-day Israel.

Meanwhile, King Guy of Jerusalem – after reconciling with a rival from Tripoli, Raymond III, who the Muslims believed could be installed as a proxy ruler – mustered a force of nearly 20,000. Given the side’s inferior numbers, many of Guy’s subordinates recommended hitting the invaders where it hurt: their supply lines. In particular, it was early July and water was precious in the arid region.

Choosing chivalry over common sense, Guy scorned the advice as cowardly and beneath his royal dignity. Instead, he marched his men across the desert directly toward Tiberias. Saladin, apparently unimpressed with Guy’s dignity, responded by using his superior numbers to block access to fresh water. He then set fire to the dry flora, adding insult to parched injury with acrid smoke.

Men need water more than dignity – especially in a desert. Guy was forced to change course, heading toward the refreshing springs at Hattin. They never made it. Raymond broke through and escaped, and others deserted. The Muslim army slaughtered most of the Crusaders on the field and captured a shard of the True Cross, reputedly wood from the cross on which Christ was crucified.

4 Battle of Monte Cassino (World War 2)

How do you win a battle yet still end up on this list? By blowing up a 1,400-year-old abbey for no reason, then suffering nearly triple the casualties as your opponent.

In early 1944 the Allies were learning the hard way that what Prime Minister Winston Churchill had called the “soft underbelly of the Axis” – Italy – was anything but tender; in fact, US General Mark Clark would soon call it “one tough gut.” Still, Brits and Americans slowly gained ground as they plodded toward Rome. They approached Monte Cassino, at the western end of the Axis’ Winter Line, defended by the Nazi’s 10th Army.

There, progress stalled in a valley below a 6th Century hilltop abbey. Repeated artillery attacks on Allied troops caused leaders to conclude the Germans had occupied the hallowed ancient complex.

They were almost certainly wrong.

On February 15, Allied bombers dropped 1,400 tons of bombs of the abbey… after which German paratroopers promptly occupied the rubble – for real this time – and established even stronger defensive positions. Shooting downward from a ready-made fort on exposed raiders, 140,000 German soldiers stood firm against twice as many men. It took four horrifically bloody assaults over the next three months for the ruins to be taken by a Polish corps operating under British command. The Allies suffered over 55,000 casualties, the Axis approximately 20,000.

3 Battle of Karánsebes (Austro-Turkish War)

The only reason this entry is a stretch is because, one would think, a battle should involve both sides of a war.

In September 1788, the 100,000-strong Austrian army was making camp near Karánsebes in modern-day Romania. Some cavalrymen crossed the Timis River at night to scout for the opposing Ottoman forces. Instead of hostile Turks, they found locals peddling booze. Infantrymen crossed to partake, but the inebriated horsemen refused. A fight followed – and then a shot.

Other infantrymen showed up, shouting “Turks!” In the confusion, BOTH sides fled believing the Ottomans had ambushed them. Making matters worse, German-speaking officers, attempting to restore order, shouted, “Halt! Halt!” which many non-German-speaking soldiers (including Italians and Croats) misheard as “Allah! Allah!”

Then bad leadership drastically escalated matters. As the cavalrymen fled back to camp, a General named Colloredo thought that, for some reason, a small band of Ottoman cavalry were charging a gigantic enemy encampment in the middle of the night. Regardless how extremely unlikely (and suicidally stupid) that prospect was, he ordered artillery to fire, waking the entire camp… which promptly scattered and fled in fear, shooting at shadows of supposed Turks as they ran. Incredibly, the entire army retreated from the imaginary enemy.

The nonsensical event was as lethal as it was dumb: TEN THOUSAND soldiers were killed or wounded. Two days later, the Ottoman army – the real one – arrived, stepped over dead and wounded Austrian soldiers and easily took Karánsebes. What’s German for “morons?”

2 Pickett’s Charge (Battle of Gettysburg – American Civil War)

Ironically, among the poorest-planned and most costly battles in American history was devised by arguably the most brilliant military genius the country has ever produced: Robert E. Lee.

1863’s Battle of Gettysburg was a multi-day conflict in which the Confederacy had, for the second time, invaded the north. By July 3, Gettyburg’s third day, ample blood had been shed without much ground gained. Both sides were dug in along a series of ridges and hilltops, with Union troops largely playing defense – an especially advantageous position given the era’s weapons and tactics.

According to historian Shelby Foote, Lee “had has blood up.” He’d tried the right and left flanks; now he commanded an all-out assault on the center, which involved hurling thousands of men across an open field against an entrenched line nearly a mile away. Several subordinates begged him to reconsider, deeming it suicidal. Eager for glory, Major General George Pickett wasn’t among them.

Led by Pickett and other generals, nearly a dozen brigades comprising 12,500 troops began marching toward the distant Union lines, fortified with cannon behind a stone wall. Only a handful made it over the wall – an indented parcel now called the Bloody Angle – and were quickly cut down or captured. Over 1,100 rebels died, over 4,000 were captured and only a quarter returned unwounded.

“Gettysburg was the price the South paid for having Robert E. Lee as commander,” said Foote, alluding to the bravado that made Lee’s legend.

1 Little Bighorn (US-Indian Wars)

Custer’s Last Stand – or, rather, the recklessness that necessitated such a futile finale – earns its namesake first place on this list of battlefield buffoonery.

Notably, 13 years earlier Custer was at Gettysburg where, a month after becoming the Union Army’s youngest general, he helped turn back Confederate cavalry in an engagement overshadowed by Pickett’s Charge. Still, evidenced by his graduating dead last in his West Point class, Custer was more bravado than brains. And on June 25, 1876, his brainless bravery would get him and his entourage – 267 other US soldiers – senselessly killed.

So complete was the disaster that details of the battle are unverifiable, because no soldier survived to report on it. What is known is that, after dividing his initial force of 600 into several groups, Custer mounted a full-scale frontal attack on more than 2,000 battle-ready Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne warriors.

Custer charged the center of an enemy at least EIGHT TIMES his strength with no escape route. Like a guppy swimming into a shark’s mouth, the Indian flanks collapsed around Custer, and the US soldiers were simply swallowed and slaughtered.

Worse, Custer did this even after noticing what he admitted was a surprisingly large Indian encampment nearby. In fact, this hastened his attack, under the ludicrous logic that, despite being severely outmanned, he had to strike before the town disbanded and escaped in smaller groups. It was the height of military hubris and a disgraceful dereliction of duty.

10 Forgotten Battles That Changed World History

Throughout history, societies have found many different ways to execute criminals, including beheading, hanging, a firing squad, an electric chair, a gas chamber, and lethal injection. Unfortunately, for all forms of executions, there will be some cases that don’t result in a timely death—some executions might not work at all, or some might take multiple tries or a long time to work.

Here we reveal ten executions that didn’t go according to plan.

Related: Top 10 Dark Facts About The Death Penalty [DISTURBING]

10 Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury

Margaret Pole, the Countess of Salisbury, came from a royal lineage and was related to several kings. Unfortunately, she got caught up in the conflicts surrounding King Henry VIII’s break from the Roman Catholic Church and his attempts to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn.

Pole’s son, Reginald, was made a cardinal in 1536 and started speaking out very vocally against Henry VIII. Shortly after, he fled to Rome and out of Henry’s reach. Unable to pursue Reginald Pole, Henry had Margaret Pole arrested in 1539 instead. She was imprisoned in the Tower of London, and her execution by beheading was scheduled for 1541 when she was 67 years old.

The executioner wasn’t very experienced, and the first blow of the ax missed her neck. Subsequent blows also did not land cleanly and instead hacked away at her neck, head, and back. It reportedly took 11 blows before Pole was finally beheaded, a rather gruesome way to go. In 1886, Pole was beatified by Pope Leo XIII and became Blessed Margaret Pole under the Roman Catholic Church.^[1]

9 Joseph Samuel

In 1801, Joseph Samuel was transported from England to the Australian penal colony for theft. Two years later, Samuel and a gang of thieves decided to rob a house. During the course of their robbery, a constable showed up and was killed. Samuel and several others in the gang were eventually caught. Samuel confessed to the robbery but not the killing. However, he was still sentenced to death by hanging.

On the date of his execution, Samuel continued to claim his innocence. Samuel was transported to Parramatta with another man, both scheduled to be hung. With a noose around his neck, the cart was moved from beneath the gallows. However, the noose around Samuel’s neck broke, and he fell to the ground. A second noose was brought, but this one unraveled. A third noose was used, but this one broke as well. The ropes were inspected, and no signs of tampering were found. The governor decided to release Samuel after this, citing divine intervention.

Samuel still didn’t learn his lesson. He was caught again a few years later, committing another crime, and sentenced to jail. Shortly afterward, he and eight other inmates escaped and stole a boat. They were never seen again and presumed to have drowned.^[2]

8 John “Babbacombe” Lee

John Lee was another “man they could not hang.” In 1884, Lee was convicted of murdering Emma Anne Whitehead Keyse, a resident of the small village of Babbacombe in England. Although the evidence against Lee was weak and circumstantial, he was sentenced to die by hanging at Exeter Prison in 1885.

Prior to his execution, the executioner at Exeter Prison tested the trap door underneath the gallows several times to make sure that it worked. Yet when they went to execute Lee, the trap door that Lee was supposed to drop through got stuck and would not open. They tried a second time and a third time but bit with the same result. The trap door just would not open. Lee’s execution was postponed and eventually commuted to a life sentence in prison. After serving 22 years of his life sentence, he was released from prison.^[3]

7 Ginggaew Lorsoungnern

In 1978, Ginggaew Lorsoungnern worked as a domestic helper for a family in Bangkok, Thailand. She kidnapped their 6-year-old son and gave him to a criminal gang, who held him for ransom. The ransom payment didn’t go as planned, and the gang ended up killing the boy. He was wounded with a knife and buried alive.

Lorsoungnern and the gang were caught and sentenced to die by firing squad. On the execution day, Lorsoungnern was tied to a cross, and the executioner shot ten bullets into her body. When the medical examiner couldn’t find a sign of life, she was taken to the morgue, where she started making sounds and tried to sit up. She was rolled over to help her bleed out faster while a second accomplice was brought for his execution. When the execution team discovered later that she was still alive, they tied her up again and shot her with 15 more bullets, which finally killed her.

A similar issue occurred with the third person to be executed in the plot. The first 13 bullets didn’t kill him, so they had to shoot him 10 more times.^[4]

6 Jimmy Lee Gray

In 1976, while he was on parole for killing his girlfriend, Jimmy Lee Gray kidnapped, raped, and murdered a three-year-old girl. He was sentenced to die in the gas chamber in Mississippi in 1983.

On his execution day, Lee was strapped to the chair in the gas chamber. Cyanide pellets were released and dropped into the sulfuric acid solution underneath the chair, which released the poisonous gas. Gray was said to have taken a deep breath, then started gagging and banging his head against the steel pole behind his chair. Although the doctors on hand have stated that his heart stopped beating after two minutes, witnesses say he was moaning and banging his head for the whole eight minutes that they were allowed to watch. They were quickly escorted out of the viewing area after eight minutes.

Shortly after Lee’s execution, Mississippi installed a headrest on the execution chair. A few months later, they switched to lethal injection for executions.^[5]

5 Frank Joseph Coppola

In 1978, Frank Joseph Coppola, a former policeman, was convicted of beating a woman to death while robbing her home in Newport News. He was sentenced to death in Virginia. Although maintaining his innocence, Coppola requested his execution by the electric chair during the summer of 1982. At that time, he dropped all further appeals to further spare his family more grief
.
In theory, during execution by electric chair, two jolts of electricity are sent through the condemned prisoner’s body—the first is supposed to cause unconsciousness and the second to cause death. In Coppola’s case, the first jolt did not make him unconscious; witnesses could see and hear him writhing in pain. During the second jolt, which lasted nearly a minute, witnesses could hear the sound of and smell flesh sizzling. Both Coppola’s head and leg caught on fire. There was so much smoke in the chamber that the witnesses say they could barely see Coppola at all.^[61]

4 Jesse Tafero

Jesse Tafero was convicted of fatally shooting two police officers during a routine traffic stop in Florida in 1976. He was sentenced to die in 1990 by electric chair even though he claimed he was innocent.

Before Tafero’s execution, the sponge used in the electric chair’s headpiece had to be replaced. Instead of replacing it with another natural sponge, which could handle the electric current without starting a fire, officials used a synthetic sponge. When the first jolt of electricity was delivered, the headpiece caught on fire. Witnesses said they saw flames nearly a foot high shooting up from Tafero’s head. It would take seven minutes and two more jolts before Tafero was declared dead. Inmates at the prison claimed to have smelled his burning flesh for days after the execution.

The saddest part of the Tafero story occurred after his death—it turns out he was innocent as he had maintained all along. An accomplice in the car with Tafero eventually confessed to the shooting.^[7]

3 Brian Steckel

In 1994, Brian Steckel talked his way into Sandra Lee Long’s apartment. He then raped and strangled her and set her bedroom on fire, killing her. Steckel was convicted and sentenced to death by lethal injection in 1997. While in prison, Steckel sent taunting letters to Long’s mother. The execution was carried out in 2005 in Delaware.

During his execution, officials noticed the anesthetic that Steckel had been injected with started leaking into the tissue surrounding the needle in his arm, but they didn’t fix the problem. He was then injected with a paralytic drug and a very painful heart-stopping drug. There was also a blockage in the line, which was eventually cleared, though again with no anesthesia. The process took so long that Steckel wondered out loud why it was taking such a long time. Prison officials have denied that there was any problem with the execution and claimed that they had simply wanted to give Steckel more time to say his goodbyes.^[8]

2 Joseph Wood

In 1989, Joseph Wood shot and killed his ex-girlfriend and her father. He was sentenced to die by lethal injection in Arizona in 2014.

Wood was strapped to a gurney, and the execution began normally. Officials didn’t have any problems inserting the needle or with the injection itself. However, due to issues with obtaining certain drugs for use in executions, Arizona was using an experimental two-drug combination that it had never used before. The same drug combination had been used in a recent Ohio execution, where the condemned took nearly 30 minutes to die. Nonetheless, Arizona officials expected the execution to take mere minutes. Instead, it ended up taking much longer.

Witnesses to the execution say they started seeing Woods gasping for air and making noises a few minutes into the execution. It would eventually take nearly two hours, 15 injections, and several hundred gasps before Woods finally died, making it one of the longest executions in U.S. history.^[9]

1 Romell Broom

Romell Broom was convicted of abducting, raping, and killing a 14-year-old girl in 1984 and sentenced to die.

In September 2009, Broom was supposed to be executed via lethal injection. The execution team tried 18 times to insert the needles necessary to inject the lethal combination of drugs but failed. They tried to find useable veins in both Broom’s arms and legs and, at one point, struck his bone instead. Broom even tried to assist the team several times by turning over onto his side and moving his arms up and down while flexing his fingers. Finally, they were able to insert the needle, but his vein collapsed as soon as they tried to inject saline. After two hours, the state finally halted the execution attempt.

The governor issued a one-week reprieve, and Broom’s attorneys appealed. Broom appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court on the grounds that a second execution would put him in double jeopardy and constitute a cruel and unusual punishment. His appeal was denied by both the Ohio Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court. His execution was rescheduled for 2017 but delayed again until 2022. However, Broom died in prison in December 2020 before a second execution could take place.^[10]