Brassey’s Book of Military Blunders

Geoffrey Regan surveys fascinating and disastrous decisions in naval and military warfare history. This book is the first in a series of titles that included Air Force Blunders and More Military Blunders published fall 2000. Both entertaining and informative, here is a look at a history that has been marked as much by incompetence as by gallantry and glory.

From ancient times to the Bay of Pigs and the Falklands War, military history has been marked as much by misjudgments and incompetence as by gallantry and glory. Such blunders have sometimes ended in tragedy. Sometimes they turned into farce. Sometimes they have ended in triumph, despite all odds.

In his collections, Geoffrey Regan not only recounts the staggering stories but also examines the kinds of problems that can lead to disaster—from the Prussian general who believed he was pregnant with an elephant to the British cruiser HMS Trinidad that torpedoed itself in the Arctic in 1942.