One tactic the Ukrainians use that is pretty intelligent is that they will send out decoy drones that are designed to be detected, so that the Russians direct their defenses against those drones. While they’re distracted with those drones, the actual drones that are designed to be stealthy are being sent silently.
But again, the truly effective tactics tend to be classified so there is information asymmetry and so the other side can’t change their tactics.
In the spirit of the OP, going back in ancient history, it’s hard to beat the Battle of Cannae. For this one, Hannibal didn’t have any luxury of special weapons like elephants or any favorable terrain. The Romans heavily outnumbered his army. But Hannibal pulled off the envelopment-bait-surround trap to perfection and used the Romans’ strength - their massed numbers against them. He packed in the Romans so tightly that nearly all the Romans could not even raise their arms to wield a weapon, and only the ones on the very outside of the circle could do any fighting. Some Romans may even have been compressed to death, kind of like how crowd crushes (Hillsborough disaster, Seoul crowd crush, etc.) are fatal. And this was done in an era with no radio communication or much effective way to control anything once the mayhem was underway.
And in modern-commando raids, Eben Emael, done by the German glider assault, was one of the best WWII-era commando raids.
I read that some Roman soldiers buried their heads in the dirt and basically suffocated themselves to death rather than face being cut down.
As Livy described, “So many thousands of Romans were dying… Some, whom their wounds, pinched by the morning cold, had roused, as they were rising up, covered with blood, from the midst of the heaps of slain, were overpowered by the enemy. Some were found with their heads plunged into the earth, which they had excavated; having thus, as it appeared, made pits for themselves, and having suffocated themselves.”[76] Victor Davis Hanson claims that nearly six hundred legionaries were slaughtered each minute until darkness brought an end to the bloodletting.[77] - SOURCE
But for William it was one tactic to win the battle after failing the first time. The thread is not when did a general do something that won. It’s about brilliant, creative and effective operations. That’s why I discount Midway. I don’t consider that many pilots getting slaughtered to be particularly effective and IMO it was a lot of luck on the American side. On the other hand, the codebreaking was brilliant, creative and effective, especially telling Midway over the hard line to radio in the open that they were having trouble with their fresh water to confirm the Japanese target.
Regarding Operation Mincemeat, it was also dramatized in the book and movie with the title The Man Who Never Was. It starred Clifton Webb.
Lee and Jackson’s flank attack to win the Battle of Chancellorsville is worth mentioning. One thing about brilliant victories like Chancellorsville (or Agincourt, Cannae, Austerlitz, etc.) is that it is often difficult to determine whether it is due to the brilliance of the victorious general, or the ineptitude of the one who was defeated.
It’s almost always both.
Especially considering that Inchon was quite suboptimal as a landing zone.
Too bad that in the process the commander apparently expended his reserves of brilliance and of self-awaress.
So I’d argue the examples in the OP are intelligence successes rather than military ones. On that front the latter example given (operation Spider Web, Ukraine’s drone attack in Russia’s heavy bomber fleet) really takes some beating. Absolutely genius brilliant intelligence coup (every aspect of it is genius, from hiring regular Russian trucking companies to deliver the drones to the target, to piggybacking on Russia’s own secure comms). And also incredibly effective, wiping out a significant portion of Russia’s long range bomber fleet.
So given that the only competitor that comes to mind is the Double Cross system of fake and compromised German agents in Britain during WW2:
I disagree. They had other choices - they could have run away, or they could have stood their ground and died. 99 out of 100 commanders would have done one of those two things. Leaving defensive positions, abandoning the high ground, and charging a larger enemy force with no ammunition was in violation of all military doctrine of the time. Fortunately for him, Chamberlain had no military training, and just did what made sense to him. He saw that the enemy was approaching its breaking point, and realized that the psychological impact of a surprise charge had a good chance of routing them. He took a chance on an original tactic, and it worked.
Genius and desperation are not mutually exclusive.
300 USN vs 3000 IJN? I’d have to say, that of course casualties are always a tragedy, but that was pretty decisive.
Now here is a weird one- In the Great War, British Intelligence released fake intel to make the Germans think an Invasion was on its way, mentioning troopships. One of said troops ships was the RMS Mauretania the sister ship to the Lusitania, which was preparing to sail from New York . When the Uboat sank the Lusitania the British intelligence was jubilant, thinking that it was bring America into the war. And it was a factor.
So, was this brilliants or diabolical?
Note that the RN had plenty of escorts available for the Lusitania, and they knew there was a U-boat, but didnt give any explicit warning. Also both ships were listed in Janes as Auxiliary cruisers- but no guns had been fitted yet to the Lusitania- which was carrying illegal war material contraband.
Lusitania was indeed officially listed as an auxiliary war ship, though contrary to Germany’s claims she was not armed,[84] and her cargo had included an estimated 4,200,000 rounds of rifle cartridges, 1,250 empty shell cases, and 18 cases of non-explosive fuzes, which was openly listed as such in her cargo manifest.[85][86] The day after the sinking, The New York Times published full details of the ship’s military cargo.[87] Assistant Manager of the Cunard Line, Herman Winter, denied the charge that she carried munitions, but admitted that she was carrying small-arms ammunition, and that she had been carrying such ammunition for years.[85] The fact that Lusitania had been carrying shells and cartridges could not be openly discussed in the British press at the time.[88] In the 27-page additional manifest, delivered to U.S. customs 4–5 days after Lusitania sailed from New York, and in the Bethlehem Steels papers, it is stated that the “empty shells” were in fact 1,248 boxes of filled (with metal shrapnel) 3" shell, 4 shells to the box, totalling 103,000 pounds or 50 tonnes.[72]
So if a Surface raider had boarded the Lusitania, they would have had justification to sink her- after making sure passengers had a change to get into lifeboats, of course.
Some think the Brits planned the sinking in order to get America in- now, I dont think they went that far, but they did make it easy for the U-Boat.
But was it brilliant, creative and effective?
I concur. And doing it with a wheel maneuver through wilderness no less.
I think you are correct. It was an incredibly successful operation and cost just a few thousand dollars and 19 casualties on their side. From that one attack, America engaged in a series of strategic missteps that we are still making, ultimately hastening the end of the American empire. I think this is the thread winner.
I’ll cite the Fetterman Massacre, if only for brilliant application of ironic outcomes through cunning planning.
First, it is important to know that William Fetterman was an officer in the Indian Wars who boasted “Give me 80 men and I can ride through the whole Sioux nation.”
In 1866, dispatched to relieve a wagon train sent out to get wood, he led 81 soldiers and scouts into an ambush laid by Red Cloud and Crazy Horse. 10 Indians (including Crazy Horse himself) lured Fetterman and his men off the westward path to the wagon train, instead drawing them north into 1,000 Indian warriors, who killed all 81 in the party (with minimal casualties themselves).
Operation Mincemeat was actually for the Invasion of Sicily, to fool the Germans into thinking that the Allies would be invading Greece.
For D-Day, they basically spun up an entire fake field army, put George Patton in charge of it, and carefully rigged all the signal intelligence, fake units, real units, inflatable fake vehicles, and even people on leave in London to make it look like the Allies were going to invade at Calais. This made a lot of sense- Calais was the closest point across the Channel, and nobody would believe they’d put Patton anywhere but where the fighting would be heaviest.
It worked beautifully as well; the Germans kept their reserves out of position, and then the follow-up deceptions at Calais kept them out of position until the Allies had a beachhead.
As far as effectiveness goes… as a Texan, I have to say that Houston’s attack at the Battle of San Jacinto was extraordinarily effective. 900 Texans vs. 1300 Mexicans, 11 Texans killed and 30 wounded, to 650 Mexicans killed, 208 wounded, and 300 captured, among them General (and dictator) Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.
As the inscription on the monument says…
Measured by its results, San Jacinto was one of the decisive battles of the world. The freedom of Texas from Mexico won here led to annexation and to the Mexican–American War, resulting in the acquisition by the United States of the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, Utah and parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas and Oklahoma. Almost one-third of the present area of the American Nation, nearly a million square miles of territory, changed sovereignty.
Stuxnet was amazing. Somehow the Israelis targeted a very specific and obscure industrial microcontroller with a piece of software that commanded some extremely high-value equipment to damage itself in a non-obvious way while falsely reporting an all-ok signal. I’d give anything to know how they pulled it off.
Well, 1000 vs 80 is pretty good odds, so that part was not brilliant or creative, but the trick was.
It was my understanding that the US and Israel wrote stuxnet, I have no idea if other western nations that wanted to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons were involved too. But not only that, it had multiple zero day exploits, so it was exploiting bugs in the system that even the manufacturer didn’t know were there. What I wonder is how they bridged the air gap. I’m guessing the found a technician and found an incentive to get them to use a corrupted USB.
Thats the thing, I’m sure there are endless brilliant tactical maneuvers that we never hear about because the nations doing them don’t want their enemies to be able to develop counter-strategies.
That’s why Custer’s Last Stand isn’t on the list.
And if Fetterman had never made his boast, and not gotten the exact number of men he mentioned, and had just stumbled on a mass of Indians (like Custer), it wouldn’t even have been memorable.
I believe it was on a USB stick but they didn’t find someone. They just let Stuxnet out into the wild and, since it was harmless to everything except those centrifuges, it went unnoticed. Eventually it found its way onto someone’s USB stick who worked there and they walked it into the facility never knowing what they carried.