Things like the trojan horse (which is likely just a myth) where soldiers were hidden in a horse, and when it was brought into the walled city and the soldiers inside unlocked the city gate to allow other invading soldiers in.
Another example would be Israel supplying Hezbollah with pagers and walkie talkies that had explosives in them. This was pretty brilliant, and it targeted thousands of Hezbollah militants. Also it allowed Israel to spy on the militants before exploding the devices.
Ukraine’s recent tactic of smuggling drones into Russia on semi trucks, then parking them within a few miles of airfields, and using them to destroy a lot of Russian bombers.
When the Allies tricked the Nazis into thinking an attack was immanent in northern France near Calais while D-Day was happening in Normandy, hundreds of miles south. While the French coastline was heavily guarded, the overwhelming number of Allied troops crushed German defenses and that ultimately led to the destruction of Nazi Germany.
When I saw the title, I immediately thought of the pager attack on Hezbollah.
dolphinboy IIRC That was Operation Mincemeat. A corpse was dressed in the correct uniform and had coded information in the pockets. The corpse was dumped at sea where the Nazis would find it and assume it was a member of the crew of a submarine that they had destroyed.
Re The Trojan Horse
Before anybody asks why the Trojans believed it was just a gift, a priest named Laocoön (Lay ahk oh wahn) protested very loudly that it was some kind of trick and that they should not take ii inside the gates. He and his two sons were then killed by giant sea serpents who came out of nowhere. That kind of thing can be very convincing.
I’m partial to those “oh - we didn’t expect them to be there” moments
Wolfe’s army appearing on the Plains of Abraham; the Ottomans dragging their galleys overland to reach the Golden Horn; and Fort Ticonderoga “where a goat can go, a man can go, and where a man can go, he can drag a gun”
-Pearl Harbor attack by Japan, but it backfired in the long run
-German blitz to capture France and Low Countries
-The Battle of Thermopylae (480 BCE). Spartans lost to Persia but put up good fight. Popularized by the film “300”.
-Napolean was 70-11 in his battles so had many great victories.
I was just listening to The Rest Is History Podcast…Hannibal’s victory at Battle of Cannae might qualify.
It is regarded as one of the greatest tactical feats in military history and one of the worst defeats in Roman history, and it cemented Hannibal’s reputation as one of antiquity’s greatest tacticians.
(One of those examples of “won the battle, lost the war” though)
Stuxnet also deserves mention. A program designed to damage Iranian centrifuges, send false into to the control computers, then delete itself after the mission was accomplished.
Tactically it was pretty sharp (except for Nagumo’s refusal to do a third strike on the docks and oil tanks), but strategically it was yes a massive blunder.
Midway 6 months later definitely fits the OP’s requirements: the Americans played the Japanese like a fiddle, while the Japanese simply never considered that the US would do anything other than what their (J.) script demanded they would do. Several wargames revealed just how vulnerable Nagumo’s fleet was if the Americans showed up earlier than planned, but Yamamoto’s hand-picked referees simply overruled said results and neither Yamamoto or Nagumo revised their plans as a consequence.
CEOworld has a good list. I guess CEO’s like to use military strategy against competitors.
Here is one we didn’t mentinon yet: Ambush at Teutoburg Forest
In 9-11 A.D., a Roman-educated German named Arminius orchestrated a devastating ambush in the Teutoburg Forest, annihilating a Roman force. This defeat created a lasting cultural and linguistic divide between Germanic and Latin civilizations, influencing events that led to both world wars.
Maybe it’s too painful or hard for Americans to say, but the 9/11 attacks on USA were creative, effective and devastating in some ways. They took control of 4 airplanes with just box cutters. 3 of the planes hit their target. It changed the airline industry, did much psychological damage to the USA, led to creation of Homeland Securty dept, and started the the very long and expensive war on terrorism. Seems like that war is still going.
Does a terrorist act count as a military operation? I would say in cases like 9/11 it does.
Mincemeat was the operation aimed at convincing Hitler that the Allies intended to attack Greece and Sardinia instead of invading Sicily, using as you said a decoy corpse carrying papers reinforcing the deception.
The campaign to lure the Germans into thinking the Allies were massing troops to invade France at Calais was Operation Fortitude.
I disagree. The Americans won through coincidence of attacking just as the IJN carriers were at their most vunerable due to Nagumo’s indecision on attacking Midway itself or the US Fleet.
Instead I would substitute the Battle of Agincourt.
That’s pretty valid. I think Al Qaeda spent about $400,000 on that attack, but the US has spent endless trillions in the war on terror since then.
Its my understanding that that was part of Al Qaeda’s strategy, to basically force the US to spend so much money on the war on terror that our power and economy suffered and we had to pull back from foreign interventions. Its a valid strategy, the national debt was 6 trillion in 2001 and 36 trillion in 2025. The debt went from about 55% of GDP to over 120% of GDP during this period.
There were other factors like Covid, the tax cuts and the 2008 recession, but the war on terror has cost somewhere from 6-10 trillion.
D-Day. Largest amphibious landing in history. Not aimed at a harbour, which misled Hitler and the German high command to think it was a feint. Meticulous logistics and planning.
How about Montrose’s “year of miracles,” the six battles that James Graham 5th Earl (and later 1st Marquis) of Montrose won in Scotland in 1644-45 ?
From what I’ve read (and to be honest I can’t judge how sensationalized the accounts may have been) his forces went into the Battle of Tippermuir so poorly armed that some of his troops were told simply, “look for rocks to throw.”
Five more battles ensued, with Montrose’s force showing up in places his foes didn’t think he could reach, and winning against all odds.
It’s difficult not to consider “Case Yellow” the German invasion of France in 1940 as a prime example of the OP. Yeah it’s been hyped since it’s inception, everyone involved in planning and carrying it out was an utter scumbag. It would, obviously, have been been better for everyone involved (the German people included) if it had been less creative and brilliant, and failed completely. But it does tick all the boxes of the OP.
Not that it makes the Nazis perfect efficient military supermen who could do no wrong. But Case Yellow and the armored invasion through the Ardennes, avoiding the Maginot line, was a brilliant maneuver. And it’s impossible to overstate how consequential it was.
On the other side, military defence, there’s the Lines of Torres Vedras in Portugal, built to defend Lisbon in the Peninsular War, and protect the British Army from the possibility of having to order complete evacuation of Portugal, if the French advanced.
Wellesley and the Portuguese built them in near-complete secrecy. The British Ambassador to Portugal and even the government in London didn’t know about them.
Nor, more importantly, did Marshall Masséna, who was leading a powerful French Army to capture Lisbon.
The Lines stopped the French. Arriving with 62,000 soldiers in October 1810, Masséna spent six months fighting attrition warfare against the Anglo-Portuguese army manning the Lines. He was forced to retreat in April 1811, having lost 20,000 men.
Costing £200,000, the Lines are considered one of the cheapest but most effective defensive measures in European warfare. They ensured that the British would maintain their position in Portugal and eventually Spain, contributing to the success of what has been called Napoleon’s bleeding ulcer, the Peninsular War.