Actually, the fact the USA entered late has to be laid squarely on the shoulders of the British, who suckered us into WWI, which caused a huge backlash.
I think Dug-out Doug’s blunder was one of the worst. Kasserine Pass was bad, yes, but our troops, supplies, everything was so green and untested.
The Mk 14 torp blunder was also bad.
I’m curious how the Brits suckered the US into WWI, as opposed to the Germans trying to start a war between the US and another neutral power (the biggest casus belli for the US entering the war that I am aware of).
Right, the USA simply didnt have enough escorts for the Convoy system, and our ships hadnt yet been organized by speed class, thus even 18kt fast banana boats would have to sail with 8kt coal burning rustbuckets.
It would have been worse.
Per wiki *"In King’s defense, noted naval historian Professor Robert W. Love has stated that
Operation Drumbeat (or Paukenschlag) off the Atlantic Coast in early 1942 succeeded largely because the U.S. Navy was already committed to other tasks: transatlantic escort-of-convoy operations, defending troop transports, and maintaining powerful, forward-deployed Atlantic Fleet striking forces to prevent a breakout of heavy German surface forces. Navy leaders, especially Admiral King, were unwilling to risk troop shipping to provide escorts for coastal merchant shipping. Unscheduled, emergency deployments of Army units also created disruptions to navy plans, as did other occasional unexpected tasks. Contrary to the traditional historiography, neither Admiral King’s unproven yet widely alleged Anglophobia, an equally undocumented navy reluctance to accept British advice, nor a preference for another strategy caused the delay in the inauguration of coastal escort-of-convoy operations. The delay was due to a shortage of escorts, and that resulted from understandably conflicting priorities, a state of affairs that dictated all Allied strategy until 1944.“[39]”*
Not to mention that the Navy was also committed to the war in the Pacific, which no doubt also caused a drain on available shipping for convoy escorts. My understanding is that the ultimate victory in the Atlantic had more to do with actively hunting the German submarines down rather than more effectively being ready to meet their attacks.
Compare to the bombing campaigns over Europe. Providing fighter escorts to the bombers was well and good, but it proved more effective to send out fighter sweeps ahead of the bombers to deny the airspace entirely to the German fighter pilots, and later on to attack the airfields themselves.
I agree. There was an unfortunate military mindset that told the admirals they had to do something. They felt the way to deal with the submarine threat was to go out and hunt down submarines.
But they were looking at the situation the wrong way. Success wasn’t measured by how many submarines were sunk; success was measured by how many merchant ships weren’t sunk. The allies didn’t need to sink submarines - they just had to avoid them. A submarine that never saw a merchant ship was just as ineffective as a submarine that was destroyed.
And the ocean is huge. On that scale, there’s no effective difference between the size of one ship and the size of a convoy. So if you put send a hundred ships across the ocean individually, they were a hundred different targets for the submarines to find. But one convoy with a hundred ships in it meant that the submarines were all looking for just a single target. And as a bonus, you could put all your defenses around that single target.
There were legitimate arguments against convoying. A convoy could only travel as fast as its slowest ship. This meant that many merchant ships were forced to travel at slower speeds than they were capable of, which meant less cargo got delivered. And the convoy system meant that docks would sometimes be sitting empty of ships for days at a time and then be overwhelmed by an entire convoy that might take a week to unload - this also slowed down the rate of delivery. But these delays were minor in comparison to the benefit of not losing ships.
Hi guys, OP here. We’ve trended off battles to grander things, and it’s fine by me. Here’s an obvious trend:
Let me ask you all to vote: I’d like the post the same OP here about Iraq/Afganistan, Vietnam, Korea. Hell the 1812 and revolutionary, but in reality that doesn’t interest me so much, but undoubtedly others.
So: separate threads?
Hell, mods can always vote.
ETA: a big hijack/new thread? When is a huge loss battle a loss because of a “mistake” vs. some people outfought the other?
My list of the worst military mistakes made by the United States:
American Revolution: The New York City campaign in 1776.
War of 1812: Making William Hull a general.
Mexican–American War: The war was started over a lie. But once we started fighting, we won every battle. I can’t think of any significant military mistakes we made.
Civil War: Not advancing after landing troops in the Peninsula Campaign in 1862.
Spanish-American War: Betraying the Filipinos, who had allied with us after we promised them independence.
World War I: Not building up the army before 1917. The war had been going on for three years. We had plenty of warning that we might get involved in it. But the Wilson administration made no effort to build up our military until after we declared war.
Korean War: Chasing the North Koreans to the Yalu.
Vietnam, Iraq 1 and Iraq 2, Afghanistan: The biggest mistakes in these wars were political rather than military.