How to Lose a War at Sea: Foolish Plans and Great Naval Blunders – 33 True Military Disasters from Insufficient Planning and Espionage

by Bill Fawcett

An engrossing compendium of high-seas military disasters

From the days of the Spanish Armada to the modern age of aircraft carriers, battles have been bungled just as badly on water as they have been on land. Some blunders were the result of insufficient planning, overinflated egos, espionage, or miscalculations; others were caused by ideas that didn't hold water in the first place. In glorious detail, here are thirty-three of history's worst maritime mishaps,

The British Royal Navy's misguided attempts to play it safe during the American Revolution The short life and death of the Imperial Japanese Navy The scuttling of the Graf Spee by a far inferior force The sinking of the Nazi megaship Bismarck "Remember the Maine!"—the lies that started the Spanish-American War Admiral Nelson losing track of Napoleon but redeeming himself at the Nile The ANZAC disaster at Gallipoli Germany's failed WWII campaign in the North Atlantic Kennedy's quarantine of CubaChock-full of amazing facts and hilarious trivia, How to Lose a War at Sea is the most complete volume of nautical failures ever assembled.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Military Fiction

370 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 9, 2013

About the author

Bill Fawcett has been a professor, teacher, corporate executive, and college dean. His entire life has been spent in the creative fields and managing other creative individuals. He is one of the founders of Mayfair Games, a board and role-play gaming company. As an author, Fawcett has written or coauthored over a dozen books and dozens of articles and short stories. As a book packager, a person who prepares series of books from concept to production for major publishers, his company, Bill Fawcett & Associates, has packaged more than 250 titles for virtually every major publisher. He founded, and later sold, what is now the largest hobby shop in Northern Illinois.

Fawcett’s first commercial writing appeared as articles in the Dragon magazine and include some of the earliest appearances of classes and monster types for Dungeons & Dragons. With Mayfair Games he created, wrote, and edited many of the Role Aides role-playing game modules and supplements released in the 1970s and 1980s. During this period, he also designed almost a dozen board games, including several Charles Roberts Award (gaming's Emmy) winners, such as Empire Builder and Sanctuary.

Reviews

[John (JP) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Do not buy this book. It is one you should borrow from your local library. The book covers 33 naval engagements from the end of the American Revolution to the Iran Iraq war of the 1980's. There is major coverage given to the American war in the Pacific , and glaringly no attention given to the naval battles of the American Civil War. For the most part the book is a recitation of the facts of each battle with very little insight given to various commanders involved.
I think it is at its best describing the naval engagements prior to the World War II Pacific battles. Once the author starts tackling those he gets lost in the details of the land battles. Scant attention is paid to the Korean War,none is given to the Peublo incident,or Vietnam naval engagements. The book is decent quick cliff note sort of book for naval buffs, but serious readers of naval history will be disappointed.

[Dergrossest · Rating 3 out of 5]

I only bought this book about history’s great naval war blunders because the back cover listed one of the chapter titles as “The Short Life of the Japanese Imperial Navy,” which I thought was hilarious. Unfortunately, the hilarity ended there. The book instead turned out to be a very breezy review of some famous pre-WWII naval battles and a few recent encounters, all of which book-ended a seemingly endless series of short stories regarding the Pacific Theatre of WWII. There is nothing wrong with reading about the Japanese Imperial Navy getting annihilated in WWII, but after Midway the writing is on the wall and the losses are due less to “blunders” and more to the United States’ overwhelming economic and manufacturing might, none of which is particularly titillating. Time might have been better spent on some of the more interesting and lessor known battles like Salamis where the mighty Persian invasion fleet somehow managed to lose to a much smaller Greek force, or a deeper dive into the Laurel & Hardy-like implosion of the Imperial Russian Navy at Tsushima, both of which were so central to how the world looks today. Anyway, it is still a good book for the complete novice, but Grognards would be better served by books like “At War At Sea” for a general review of modern naval battles or “Sea of Thunder” for a more thorough review of the U.S. Navy’s defeat of the Japanese Imperial Navy in WWII.

Meanwhile, as Admiral David Farragut and singer-songwriter Tom Petty famously said, “Damn the torpedoes!”

[Christian Jenkins · Rating 2 out of 5]

I abandoned this book after page 200 as I couldn’t drag myself to read the final 100 pages.
Whilst the premise of the book is good, it tries to cram too much and too little into each short chapter.

Rather than having maps or simple illustrations, pages are taken up describing the movements of the ships which just end up confusing.

Some were good, and I did enjoy parts of it, but each battle (chapter) is around 10 pages, and there’s just not really enough time to truly appreciate the scale of the loss.

I personally think it would have been better if they tried to write it in a more narrative style (which they do in some places) to make them more of a story, rather than just facts which have been pushed into book form.

I would recommend reading the wikipedia article for each of these battles than reading this book.

[Peter Busch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book Category: But How?
Peter Busch, Period 1
Title: How to Lose a War at Sea
Author: Bill Fawcett
Pages: 349
Genre: History
Summary: This is not a book as much as a collection of writing pieces. The topic is war, and specifically significant naval defeats throughout history. A wide variety of battles are covered, ranging from the American Revolution to the Iran-Iraq War.
Rating: 4
I gave this book a 4 because I think that it is good, but not phenomenal. It provides a sufficient explanation of each battle, combined with historical context and just why what happened was so important. For fans of history and warfare, this book is recommended.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a book about war at sea, there are an overly large number of chapters about land battles. Most involve amphibious invasions but the naval part is just a few words where the majority of the chapter talks about the land battle. The book is also very World War II centered with very little else covered. It would have been nice to see more age of sail or, even better, some ancient age sea battles talked about. They don't even cover the Spanish Armada. Could have dropped some of the WW2 island chapters, not every one needed to be covered, and given more time to other time periods. Otherwise was an okay read.

[Solitudes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yet another book by Bill Fawcett, written in the same style of easy history and discussing numerous cases when someone shouldn't fuck up but did everything he could to fuck up. From America's navy put at respect by some barbarians, to Russian losing their fleet in 1905 to see in return the Japanese fleet destroyed by the Americans in WW2, I enjoyed reading about bad strategies, stupid behaviors or plain good ol's stupidity ruining battles and wars. So if you want to enjoy several hours in the company of an interesting book about this, go ahead, it's truly worth it!

[Jbussen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Title should be "How to lose a war at sea in WWII: Through bad luck or the fog of war".
Hardly any foolish plans, and I scoff at the "great" naval blunders. This is just a short synopsis of 90% WWII Naval (or sometime tangentially related) battles. Definitely not as good as his other land based book on the same topic.

[David Henkhaus · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was serviceable.

As a survey of notable naval actions in (relatively) recent history, it provides a nice introduction. Beyond that, it doesn't probe the depths of what caused the blunders.

[Jack Parrino MD · Rating 3 out of 5]

Easy read but focusing too much on WWII

Too much on WWII naval battles not enough involving prior wars though admittedly there is more material on recent conflicts

[TJ O'Grady · Rating 4 out of 5]

Less a "how to lose" book, and more of a collection of essays on various naval battles, mostly WWII. But, good writing, and a good survey of these various battles.

[ManOfLaBook.com · Rating 4 out of 5]

How to Lose a War at Sea: Fool­ish Plans and Great Naval Blun­ders edited by Bill Faw­cett is a col­lec­tion of non-fiction essays. Mr. Faw­cett wrote and edited many books includ­ing sev­eral of this genre.

This book is a fas­ci­nat­ing col­lec­tion of more than 30 short essays about naval war­fare and oceanic dis­as­ters. The book spans decades, there are essays rang­ing from the days of the Span­ish armada to naval blun­ders from the 1960s.

The essays, some­times sad, some­times funny but often ironic detail some of the worst gaffes, mis­takes and errors to hap­pen to the navies. These sto­ries tell of ego­ma­ni­acs whose egos didn’t match real­ity, mis­cal­cu­la­tions, the effects of espi­onage and the impor­tance of plan­ning. I espe­cially liked the essays about the out­landish plans which one could imme­di­ately tell they wouldn’t work, yet they some­how got a stamp of approval.

I found this book to be enter­tain­ing; I’m always amazed by bad mil­i­tary ideas (or ones which are just plain stu­pid) and how they changed his­tory. The book is not, and is not meant to be, an encom­pass­ing his­tory of these events (for those pick up a book like The Hunt for Hitler's War­ship by Patrick Bishop) but it does give one a glimpse into inter­est­ing actswhich, if you choose, you can learn more about.

The book is an excel­lent choice for those inter­ested in his­tory, naval his­tory or even if you are sim­ply read­ing books in the off chance that Alex Tre­bek might call you out of the blue to be on Jeopardy.

For more reviews and bookish posts please visit: http://www.ManOfLaBook.com

[Mick Gillies · Rating 5 out of 5]

Its quite amazing how the right decision at the right time can decide whether a battle is won or lost and the same for the wrong decision at the wrong time. I never appreciated just how many naval battles hung on such fine threads. I found all of the 30 essays interesting and extremely informative. This book covers a very diverse time frame spanning the Spanish Armada up to and including the 1960's cold war. Many an emotion was tweaked from moments of mirth to extreme sadness at the pointless loss of life due to rediculous decisions. I found the events of the Japanese defeat quite engrossing and never truly understood how the rapid collapse of Japanese power occured-until now. I must admit I have had many a great debate with others and using this book as a point of reference gained the upper hand often. For anyone who has an interest in the military I would sincerely recommend this book as a must read

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fawcett starts the story with the American Revolution. I would have liked to have read more about naval actions going back to ancient times.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent. I await Fawcett's next book with bated breath.