Top 10 Military Operations That Went Bad

Mexican Border War
Modern-day Americans sometimes forget that, before America entered WWI, it was already fighting in Mexico. After Mexican folk-hero and revolutionary general Pancho Villa attacked U.S. mining executives in 1913, President Wilson ordered a ‘Punitive Expedition.” General John J. Pershing took 10,000 soldiers into Mexico. While Pershing achieved some victories against Villa's forces, they were unwelcome by Mexico and never captured the general himself. Pershing claimed to have been “outwitted and out-bluffed at every turn.” Ultimately, the U.S. military tried to spin the expedition as a learning experience for the inexperienced U.S. forces. Pershing disagreed. He described their return to America as “sneaking home under cover, like a whipped cur with its tail between its legs.”

World War II
In 1942, The Allied forces, led by American troops, successfully launched Operation Torch, an invasion of North Africa. French and British troops provided support. Unfortunately for the Allies they quickly learned why Hitler trusted the region to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox. The Americans were led by a relatively green commander, General Lloyd Fredendall. Fredendall positioned himself well behind the front, making timely communication with his more seasoned allies difficult. This left the Americans exposed to attack, and Rommel pressed his advantage. Allied forces took 10,000 casualties and lost hundreds of tanks and other vehicles in the Tunisian mountain pass. Rommel lost less than a thousand men. Suffice it to say, Fredendall immediately lost his job and was subsequently replaced by George Patton.

American Revolutionary War
Americans sometimes look at the Revolutionary War through rose-colored glasses. In truth, it was a war filled with military setbacks and defeat. After Washington was trounced at the Battle of Brandywine, he desperately tried to protect Philadelphia from the British. He sent “Mad” Anthony Wayne to go after British supply lines. Wayne set up camp for his 1500 men at Paoli, a mile away from a camp of 2000 Maryland militia troops. Thanks to superior spies, the Brits knew exactly where Wayne was ensconced. They launched a surprise bayonet attack on his camp, massacring the Americans while they slept. They routed both camps with a smaller force, losing only four men. The attack demoralized American troops and led to their withdrawal from Philadelphia.

Northwest Indian War
Various Indigenous nations took different sides in wars against European colonizers. Some fought with the French, some fought with the British and Americans, some fought them all. In 1791, the Western Confederacy of native peoples achieved the greatest victory in Native history against the United States. The Shawnee, Miami, Huron, and Delaware nations occupied what was then the Northwest Territories. American forces out of modern-day Cincinnati marched to what is now Fort Wayne, Indiana. The force suffered from disease, and desertions, all the while native forces bled them dry. Little Turtle of the Miami people drew General St. Clair’s forces into a guerilla forest fight. By the end of the fight, St. Claire suffered a 97% casualty rate - a worse defeat than Little Bighorn.

War of 1812
Territorial expansion and anger towards British naval blockades lay at the heart of the calamitous War of 1812. James Madison, spurred on by Congressional war hawks, declared war on the British in June. By October, the Americans realized they’d bitten off more than they could chew with their Canadian invasion. America only had a meager 12,000-man-strong army at the break out of the war. State militias refused to participate. As a result, American forces were woefully unprepared. By August, lead commander general Hull surrendered Fort Detroit. General Henry Dearborn tried to launch another northern invasion, but his forces refused to go beyond America’s borders. In the following year, the British had set Washington D.C. ablaze.

World War II
The Imperial Japanese military didn’t waste time after they attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7th. By Christmas, tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers had landed on Luzon, the main island of the Philippines. General MacArthur stood his ground, with a small force of American soldiers bolstered by almost 100,000 Filipino reserves. The brutal offensive of the Japanese forced MacArthur to withdraw over half his forces from Manila to the Bataan peninsula. Between the soldiers and thousands of refugees, the allies struggled with hunger, malaria, exhaustion, and dysentery. On January 9th, the Japanese attacked Bataan. The Allied soldiers were overwhelmed in weeks, and by May they surrendered, resulting in the horrific Bataan Death March.

Iraq War
Due largely to claims of WMDs, the U.S. convinced their coalition allies to invade Iraq in March of 2003. Baghdad fell within 3 weeks. Unfortunately, the coalition was woefully unprepared for the significant question: What next? Iraq is a large country filled with disparate and conflicting religious and ethnic groups. Saddam Hussein kept order through savage brutality and a large military. That military, though, was disbanded by coalition forces. Many experts think that the army could have been an asset for preventing insurgencies and maintaining peace. Instead, many former military commanders formed the backbone of ISIS a decade later.

The Korean War
Sometimes great failures are born from miscalculation in the wake of a great victory. The U.S. began its intervention in Korea with the landing at Inchon, one of the greatest successes in modern military history. But an overconfident U.S. subsequently invaded the north, hoping to take out Pyongyang quickly, dismissing multiple warnings from Beijing. This choice proved to be an utter disaster, as the Chinese counterattacked in November of 1950. It was a horrific war, with massive casualties for all involved. The U.S. Army and Marines were thrown back, and for a brief moment it looked like the Chinese would purge all other forces from Korea. While that didn’t happen, America’s hopes for a speedy end turned into a two-year stalemate.

U.S. Civil War
Abraham Lincoln called Antietam a victory, a dubious claim at best. Robert E. Lee beat back Union General McClellan’s attack while waiting for reinforcements. McClellan was stunned by the human cost: there were over 22,000 casualties and deaths at Antietam. He had the chance to potentially end the war then and there, but the human toll was too much for him to bear. He allowed Lee to retreat so that he could set up mass burials and field hospitals. Instead of ending at Antietam, the war raged on for years with even more blood and death to follow. One of McClellan’s own colonels described Antietam by writing, “More errors were committed by the Union commander than in any other battle of the war.”

World War II
Over a century after Napoleon’s disastrous invasion of Russia, Adolf Hitler committed the same classic blunder of opening an Eastern front. Operation Barbarossa was the Nazis’ six-month campaign to conquer the Soviet Union. More than ten million soldiers fought in Barbarossa, making it the largest land invasion in human history. The Nazis’ brutal quest for oil, slave labor, and resources started out well for the Germans, as Hitler’s soldiers pushed deep into the Soviet Union. But the harsh winter eventually ground the operation to a halt, just as it had for Napoleon. By the time the Wehrmacht lost the Battle of Moscow, the invasion cost Germany more than 830,000 men. Losing in the East contributed massively to the outcome of World War II.

What military operation do you think should be on this list? Let us know in the comments.