5 Comically Insane War Tactics That Actually Worked
by Christian Markle & Karen Jones
War is terrible for lots of different reasons, one of which being that completely annihilating your enemies can actually be difficult, what with them actively trying to not be killed horrifically. So sometimes battle plans require a little extra creativity. Sort of like …
Sending Dancing Women To Distract Your Enemies
We all know that when it comes to war, being on the low ground is the worst. You can’t always see the whole battlefield, arrows with gravity-assist rain down with extra-deadly force to wipe out your men, and really, it’s just a giant pain in the ass to march uphill, you guys. China’s General Ch’ai Shao experienced this exact locational disadvantage when he was defending the Gansu Province frontier against Tuyuhun invaders during the 7th century. And by that we mean his army was almost obliterated when they found themselves on lower ground.
You see, the Tuyuhan archers had brought more than enough arrows to go around, and they sent wave upon wave of the deadly barbs down towards Ch’ai Shao’s army. The desperate general knew he was getting his ass kicked, but what could he do? He had cavalry, but how could he get them into better positions with endless pointy murder sticks falling from the sky?
As it turns out, women were a very welcome presence in army encampments, helping with the day-to-day chores like cooking, tending to the wounded, and entertaining the soldiers. Among the women in Ch’ai Shao's camp were some who could dance, so he sent them up to the enemies on the hill accompanied by a musician. And apparently they were damn good, or the Tuyuhan just super horny, because it straight-up turned into a Uhura's dance from Star Trek V scenario.
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“Watch very closely my sultry moves and not the blades at your backs.”
Unfortunately for the Tuyuhan, this was war, not 2 for 1 night at the strip club, so while they were busy ogling the dancers, Ch'ai Shao's cavalry flanked them, attacked, and basically wiped everyone out.
It is weird though, isn't it? Nobody found it suspicious that some random musical dance troupe just meandered into camp, while they had the enemy pinned down? Were nomadic dancing women common in 7th century China, wandering the countryside during wartime, so nobody gave it a second thought? Are cautionary tales passed down to today's soldiers, warning them of the dangers of random people popping and locking their way into camp at night?
Attacking A City With Fire Birds
When Harald Sigurdsson ruled Norway during the 11th century, he was known as Harald Hardrada. His sobriquet means “hard ruler,” which he received by being a hard ruler. But he was also a brilliant strategist and soldier and was known for always having something a bit unconventional up his sleeve.
In his youth he fought as a mercenary for the Byzantine Empire, and traveled to Sicily to retake it after it was captured by Saracens. As proof of his guile, there are accounts of him tunneling into a fort but waiting to attack until dinner was being served. And there’s the time he pretended to fall ill and die, then sent an envoy to offer the enemy the boasting rights of being his burial place. They accepted, of course, thinking it would make a nice deterrent for anyone else who might want to besiege them, and having apparently never read anything about the Trojan War ever. Predictably, as a mournful procession of troops blocked open the city gate with the ornate coffin, out popped Harald, both very much alive and the world’s most malevolent Jack-in-the Box, who slaughtered everybody.
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Surprise! It’s murder.
But perhaps his most notorious act was the method he used to take a particularly valuable city. He had no time for a protracted siege, and the city walls were extremely well made and could not be scaled. He did notice, however, that flocks of birds lived in the city but scavenged throughout the countryside for food during the day before returning to their nests. And you'd be surprised how creative the human brain can be when its focus is how best to murder a lot of people at once.
So he set his men to trap as many birds as they could and attach wood chips to their legs. When it was time for the birds to fly home, he set the freaking chips on fire and let them go. The hapless birds flew back to their nests, on fire, setting the city alight as they went. Harald took the city easily following the mayhem, and probably celebrated with song and dance and lots of roast bird kabobs.
Using Actual Bicycles As Wartime Conveyances
Singapore was a British colony from 1824-1942, and has long been considered one of the most valuable ports in Southeast Asia. When the Commonwealth was drawn into World War II, her famous Home Fleet was called home to defend the British Isles, under the assumption that they’d be able to sail quickly enough back to Singapore, if necessary, to defend it at sea. The Commonwealth soldiers who stayed behind were confident in their ability to repel any land forces, believing the Japanese ground troops wouldn’t be up to the task of covering the rough terrain and jungle in large numbers.
It turns out they were very wrong. The Japanese chose bicycles as their method of transport, and invaded by way of Malaya (now part of Malaysia). Entire squads could travel very quickly across a variety of ground, and were able to carry more provisions than soldiers marching on foot. Makeshift bridges that didn’t need to support tanks or even automobiles were easy to construct and the bicycles themselves easily carried across. Japanese soldiers poured into Singapore through Malaya and, to the dismay of the British, they were very good at fighting in the jungle. Even when the bicycle tires wore out from excessive use, the Japanese simply rode them on the rims, and to the British retreating through the city it sounded like tanks rolling up on them.
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“Don’t mind us. Just some tanks on the way. BANG BANG!”
The Battle of Singapore ended when 60,000 British troops surrendered to the Japanese, a defeat which some call one of the worst disasters in British history. We don't know that we’re qualified to verify that, but yes, we're sure that the light that hindsight shines on not foreseeing a bicycle as your undoing is pretty embarrassing, so we get it.
Carrier Pigeons Never Went Out Of Style
Most forms of visual communication are vulnerable to interception, and by World War II technology had progressed enough that not only could radio signals be sent wirelessly, but they, too, could fall into the wrong earholes. To get around this, the Allies had to get creative with their information network, as well as the employees who were working it.
You're familiar with homing pigeons and their ability to unerringly find their way home after being transported away from their coops. You write your message on a tiny slip of paper and throw it in a capsule attached to a bird’s leg and turn that baby loose. They’ve been used to carry messages since ancient times, and as we all know, when a thing works you just keep doing it that way forever and never change it.
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You all better start training your carrier pigeons now, because that's the only way we're replying to emails going forward.
One pigeon project consisted of parachuting the birds into France, carrying instructions to the locals on how to send information benefitting the Allies. And if you're wondering how the hell you get pigeons to go parachuting, the answer is you hire Maidenform, then the premiere manufacturer of women’s undergarments, to switch from making human-sized brassieres and corsets to tiny ‘chutes and vests. This method was less risky for men, but obviously dangerous to the pigeons, as many of them landed unseen by anyone and, sadly, met their deaths, unable to free themselves from their tiny pigeon lingerie.
Another, more humane method was for paratroopers to vest up a pigeon and strap it to their own chest, then jump together in a sort of weird bird-tandem formation. As the British ran out of pigeon corsets they just popped the bird into a sock and cut a hole for its head to poke through, like a blackbird in a pie or something. After a reconnoiter, the necessary intel would be entrusted to the bird, which would then be released to wing its way back home across the Channel.
Perhaps most remarkable is that an estimated 95% of these messages actually made it into the right hands. That's pretty good, considering you're counting on birds to deliver sensitive information in the middle of a friggin’ world war, a plan that is subject to failing for very simply, natural reasons like predatory hawks or common house cats.
Plus, the concept looked hilariously incredible.
Convincing Your Enemies To Fake Being Sick To Avoid The War
One of the most remarkable propagandists of World War II was Denis Sefton Delmer, a journalist born in Berlin to Australian parents, who found his true calling being a pain in Germany’s ass during the second World War. You see, the country earned Delmer's ire when it interned his father as an enemy alien during the Great War when Delmer was just a child. His family was eventually reunited and sent to England as part of a prisoner exchange, but Delmer never forgot the wrong his family was done.
One of his schemes involved meticulously faking radio broadcasts that appeared to be accidental transmissions from German soldiers, in which they discussed easily verifiable facts mixed with a select number of easily believable lies, all in the tone of men disillusioned with their leaders. He also managed to undermine the supply chain by flooding the Reich with counterfeit food and produce stamps that looked better than the real thing, while also producing easily detectable fakes to fool the Germans into believing that the genuine stamps were proof against forgery.
But his masterpiece might have taken inspiration from the pages of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Delmer was responsible for creating several books and pamphlets which looked innocent at first glance, but actually gave detailed instructions on how to get out of war duty by faking an illness (this might sound familiar to fans of Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes). He reasoned that the average soldier, if not particularly motivated by patriotism, would jump at any excuse to avoid being shot at, so to thin their ranks he devised recipes and tricks to make one appear to be ill with assorted maladies. These books were then left lying around and otherwise distributed throughout Germany, where they were well-thumbed, as the roll-call of absentees rising higher with every day would attest.
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“I just … how many sick days do I have left?”
Delmer also didn’t worry about word getting out to the officers about these books, since if the men in sick bay were considered to be malingering, soldiers who were actually sick would also be disbelieved and sent back to fight, further demoralizing the troops. And if they happened to spread their real illnesses around an entire battalion, well, that's just perfect.
