Most Notorious Military Blunders

**Fisherking** · 09-14-2012, 21:09

This one is not a battlefield story but a military blunder none the less.

IIRC it was June 7th , 1912. A demonstration was put on at Collage Park, MD using a Write Type B airplane and the newly invented Lewis Gun. The machinegun was mounted on the aircraft and for the first time in history targets were attacked from the air.

The brass attending the demonstration not only disliked the idea of aircraft carrying weapons. They said that planes were only good for spotting and scouting and would never be a gunnery platform, but they also disliked the Lewis Gun. They tested it but neither passed it or failed it. They just refused to adopt it.

Col. Lewis resigned his commission and moved to Europe and had little trouble selling his guns to the British and Belgium and in the meantime also selling it to the US Navy & Marine Corps.

Now the US Army lacked machineguns of any description. The gatling gun had been retired. A large number of officers wanted to know what was wrong with the gun and why they couldn’t have it and with a war going on in Europe, which it looked like could also bring in the US they naturally wanted something.

In typical top brass fashion in Dec. 1916 the Secretary of War forbid US Army Offices to speak of the Lewis Gun.

It was never officially adopted by the Army, even though it was used on all the combat aircraft flown by the Americans in Europe (remember the airplane would never be a gunnery platform). The Army even went as far as to confiscate the Marines brought with them, and replace them with French Machineguns of dubious reliability.

If that doesn’t sound like a Notorious Military Blunder then you need to instruct me with a good example.