4. The Baltic Fleet
The Baltic fleet at the time of the Russian-Japanese war really was a disaster in and of itself. After their little mistake in the North Sea, the British found out that their fishermen had been attacked and got pretty riled up. They sent their entire navy after the Baltic fleet, caught up with them and forced them to stop in Spain. They were then forced to apologize like little children and bribe Britain not to kill them all.
After sailing on to Madagascar, they were ordered to stay there until Russia could send them reinforcements that the fleet commander had already told them he didn’t need. After 2 months, most of the fleet had Malaria, and four ships had broken down due to sitting in port for so long. There were also three mutinies by the crewmen that were squashed.
In an effort to restore morale, the fleet commander decided to hold gunnery practice. This proved to be a bad idea. First of all, no one manages to hit anything, except for an innocent tugboat. After the practice is stopped, one of the ships starts sinking randomly. Because of all the Malaria, they decide to have a funeral at sea. But instead of using blanks, the guns accidently use live ammo, and this time they actually hit something- one of their own ships (again). They then went on to lose the most important battle of the Russian-Japanese war.
Discussion about this post