Comment by arjie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by arjie | Hacker News Reader

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One thing I thought when I read this is that if you only train for the competent adversary you may be unprepared for the one who is different. Could you lose if your theory of mind was wrong? But when I made a rudimentary search for this (Google is so hard to phrase, but I also used LLMs) it seems that in practice every victory is through the commander's skill in navigating their constraints. Surely, some commander out there did a stupid thing and attacked when the rational thing would have been to retreat and it worked, or surely someone didn't keep reserves just out of sheer incompetence and it paid off. But I can't find an example.

Either battles are uniquely unforgiving for bad strategy (entirely possible, they are usually long, which has a law of large numbers effect to it) or military historians back-form rationalizations for the victors or some other third thing I can't think of right away.

I was hoping there'd be some crystal clear example of the equivalent of not folding on an off-suit 2/7 and having it play off. But I found none. Interesting.

Battle of Samar is the first one that comes to mind. Japanese fleet successfully sent a decoy carrier fleet to draw the American carriers northward, away from the transports at Leyte Gulf, while main battleship fleet went in to mop up. But they ran into 3 escort carrier groups. Americans managed to put up so much resistance, with lone destroyers steaming headlong into a group of 4 battleships and 6 heavy cruisers and planes making dry runs with no bullets or bombs, that they convinced the Japanese fleet that the American carrier groups had not left after all, even after the decoy carriers had been destroyed.

Midway also could be an example. Instead of a coordinated attack, the dive bombers got lost and couldn't find the Japanese carriers. This led to the torpedo bombers getting slaughtered by Japanese fighters. However, in the process of getting slaughtered, they brought the fighters down to low altitude - which meant the dive bombers could attack unmolested when they finally showed up late. Three carriers went up in flames within minutes.

Oh the Midway example is good. I like that one since it's hard to claim that was orchestrated. No one would juice their torpedo bombers for their dive bombers. It's just situational error that worked out. Thank you!

The Miracle of the House of Brandenburg is the closest example I can think of

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