Part of the allure of war is that it can make heroes out of people who otherwise would have nothing useful to offer society. This should take nothing away from the truly heroic and courageous -- we're just saying that the battlefield also offers work to, say, the guy who really likes to set things on fire.
Likewise, warfare creates many openings for bullshit artists. Time and time again, small, ridiculously outnumbered forces have gleefully bluffed their way to victory in situations that should have left them as stains on the battlefield -- then tipped their hat to the bewildered enemy as they realized how badly they'd been played. Read these stories and tell us there shouldn't be a specific medal for doing this kind of thing:
#5. A Nonexistent Pilot Shoots Down Two German Fighter Planes
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Malta, 1942. The German Luftwaffe* was pounding the island, because it was World War II and that was the sort of thing that was happening. The British and Canadian defenders there were badly understaffed, lacking in supplies, and generally incapable of maintaining a strong defense. German bombing raids had reached a frequency of three per day, and the only thing the British defenders had was a small fleet of Spitfire fighters. A ragtag group of pilots had managed to keep the fight on by sending up a couple of planes at a time to try to scare away the enemy, a stratagem that had worked surprisingly well, because Spitfires were badass and feared by the Luftwaffe.
Still, the Brits were eventually ground down to a handful of planes that could barely dust a goddamn crop, let alone armed-to-the-teeth opponents. And one day, they were all down for maintenance right when a particularly dangerous German fleet turned up.
*English translation: "Air Waffles"
PaulMichaelHughes/iStock/Getty Images, RAF
Captain A.B. Woodhall watched the dots on the radar in growing desperation, knowing full well that he and his friends would soon be scattered in pieces around several large craters. But then he had an idea. It was a stupid one -- little more than a prank. But it was all they had, and it just ... might ... work.
Woodhall knew the Germans were listening in on their radio, so he grabbed a nearby Canadian pilot whose voice he was sure they'd recognize, threw a microphone in his hand, and started issuing orders as if the pilot was flying his plane. Apparently the Canadian Air Force spend a considerable amount of time in improv training, because the pilot rolled with it and the two struck up a two-way exchange of orders and execution, going through their lines in a wacky bit called "Fully functional Spitfire about to roast some German bomber ass."
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The secret is really selling the "Pew! Pew!"s.
This impromptu action kicked in motion a Rube Goldberg sequence that presumably bought Woodhall a fair few beers at the mess hall later. The German pilots, who were indeed listening in, promptly shat bricks and started yelling Spitfire alarms to each other. This in turn caused two of the German planes to panic so hard that they immediately shot each other down. The remaining Germans were suddenly faced with a nightmare situation: An unseen enemy in a clearly superior plane was stalking them, and two of their friends had already fallen.
Hulton Archive/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
"Did that radio say 'Superman incoming'? Retreat!"
So they backed the hell off. Woodhall and the pilot had deflected their attack and downed two enemy planes with nothing but a few words in the radio.
Although clearly one of the cleverest spur-of-the-moment strategies in the battle for Malta, everyone involved felt that the events were far too silly to actually report as they were. As such, both kills were unceremoniously awarded to one Pilot Officer Humgufery, who did not exist.
#4. Richard Meinertzhagen Weaves A Giant Web Of Bullshit To Distract The Enemy
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A human being can be easy to fool if you know how. When we receive information we really want to hear, all it takes is a little distraction to convince us not to look too hard and see through the deception.
Major (or Colonel, depending on what source you believe) Richard Meinertzhagen knew how to play other people like violins, and he put that skill to good use in World War I. In fact, he took it entirely upon himself and his mad lying skills to ensure a successful attack on the Turkish defenses at Beersheba. Meinertzhagen started by riding out completely alone, intentionally getting "surprised" and shot at by an enemy outpost. Pretending to be wounded, he made his escape, leaving behind a pre-bloodied bag for the enemy troops to find.
Via Wikipedia
To get an idea of the man we're dealing with, notice he was shot and still had to pretend to be wounded.
The bag, of course, was the point.
So let's recap: An officer drafted a plan that required going up against the enemy alone, purposely prompting them to start shooting at him, and making an in-no-way-guaranteed escape like it ain't no thing. Then he went out and pulled it off all by himself.
Via Wikimedia
That bird underestimated him too.
The bag he had "accidentally" dropped contained a carefully constructed disinformation bomb, made all the more believable by the plethora of convincing but fabricated personal and professional papers, notes, letters of correspondence, and even money (which was real). There were intricate, heartfelt (and 100-percent bullshit) writings about Meinertzhagen's new baby son. There were convincing but fake military code breakers. And in the middle of it all, the jackpot: A seemingly innocuous draft that heavily implied that the British were planning an attack ... only, Meinertzhagen's papers had the location marked at Gaza.
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"These effects must be real. No one would willingly let poetry this bad fall into enemy hands."
Just as Meinertzhagen had planned, the intricate mass of distraction he had planted in the bag led to the enemy taking it all at face value. They diverted their attention towards Gaza, which would soon make them feel pretty foolish, once the British force attacked Beersheba largely unopposed.
Sadly, history books don't say whether the captured enemy soldiers congratulated Meinertzhagen on his fictional son.
#3. The British Trick A Powerful German Ship Into Sinking Itself
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The aftermath of World War I left Germans unable to build actual battleships, due to the terms of the Versailles Treaty (which, as we all know, did a bang-up job in preventing them from further warfare). They learned to cheat this by taking their heavy cruiser ships very seriously, and soon the vessels they were producing were far superior to any cruiser produced by other world powers. When the second Big One rolled around, the Admiral Graf Spee was one of the best German heavy cruisers. In 1939, it was authorized to attack allied shipping, which it did very well. Graf Spee singlehandedly sunk nine allied ships before fate came knocking on December 13th.
While on its way home with engine problems, Graf Spee found itself up against no fewer than three British cruisers.
Via Desertwar.net
Which weren't exactly swan boats themselves.
After crippling the strongest of the three and seriously ruining the quality of the day for the other two, the Admiral Graf Spee turned to flee -- not because it was losing, but because it was getting kind of worried about its engines. The two British light cruisers chose to pursue -- a ballsy move, as both were by that point keenly aware that the German vessel could sink the shit out of them relatively easily. This didn't stop them from trapping Graf Spee while it made repairs in the mouth of the River Plate. Realizing that they had the timespan of exactly one cruiser repair job to live, the crews of the British cruisers had to think fast. This is what they came up with:
"Why don't we tell them we have a ton of help coming? Maybe they will run away instead of killing us all."
"Sure, whatever. Let's roll."
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Much better than the previous plan of "Get blown to pieces by a floating pile of cannons."
So the British sent a completely fake, deliberately poorly-coded message talking about the huge armada that totally was on its way to destroy the Admiral Graf Spee.
The captain of the German cruiser swallowed the bait hook, line, and sinker. Knowing Germany couldn't afford to let the Brits get their hands on their sweet heavy cruiser tech, he evacuated and scuttled the entire vessel, only to (presumably) have his solemn captainin' moment interrupted by the sounds of high fives and relieved laughter from the British ships.
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