The biggest FAIL in military history | Historical Legends Part 4

no matter how absurd this story gets just remember it's true but before we get into that story if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious delivered story format then you come to the right channel because that's all we do and we upload three or four times every week so if that's of interest to you please beg the like button to have them give you their secret chocolate chip cookie recipe and then when they finally cave and they do give it to you immediately post it on facebook with the caption here's my chocolate chip cookie recipe also please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads alright let's get into today's [Music] story around the turn of the 20th century russia and japan got into a dispute over who should be in control of korea and china looking to avoid an armed conflict the japanese sent the russians a deal that came with reasonable concessions on both sides but the russians didn't like it they rejected the deal and they countered with a pretty unreasonable deal that came with lots of concessions for japan and not so many for russia and so japan rejected that deal and then promptly launched a devastating surprise attack on the russian navy stationed at fort arthur in china this attack would officially start the one-year-long russo-japanese war the russians knew they would need to send a replacement naval fleet up to fort arthur to reclaim it from the japanese but unfortunately the attack at fort arthur had totally wiped out all of russia's best sailors and all their best ships putting russia at a major disadvantage to start this war and so as russians are wondering what they're going to do next the russian emperor tsar nicholas ii authorizes an unbelievable mission he orders the russian baltic fleet to set sail from their harbor in northern europe and sail 18 000 miles around the world to japan where they will defeat the japanese and then reclaim fort arthur the fact that none of the baltic fleet ships were designed to sail that far of a distance or that there were literally zero refueling points along their massive projected path was considered largely inconsequential and ignored what was also considered inconsequential was how absurdly unqualified the baltic crew was the sailors were mostly illiterate peasants that did not grow up on the coasts and so they showed up for military training with no seafaring skills and then after their military training they still had no seafaring skills because the baltic fleets harbor was frozen solid almost year round but the tsar believed the man he had put in charge of this crew admiral rojas fenske would make up for their deficiencies and this belief was not unwarranted admiral rojaswenski was the best russian officer that had not been killed in that japan surprise attack he had significant combat experience and he had a wickedly bad temper he didn't care who you were if you were doing something he didn't like he was going to beat the crap out of you literally and when he was told he was going to be in charge of this fairly inexperienced crew he was certain his rough style would whip these baltic boys into shape and they would be very successful but when he laid eyes on the baltic fleet he realized this was going to be a little bit more challenging than he realized in addition to being less than satisfied with his fighting crew he was equally dissatisfied with the two senior officers that were assigned to be his direct support and he immediately gave them nicknames and he would only refer to them by their nicknames right to their face the first one was the manure sack and the other was a vast empty space as for the baltic fleet's 45 ships they were terrible because this unit never went out on the ocean because their harbor was always frozen russia didn't waste their good ships on them so all they had were really old obsolete warships and then non-military ships like ferries and yachts they just slapped random guns onto they also had ships that the baltic fleet crew enthusiastically called futuristic which were these ships that came out of russia briefly copying french engineering which involved these crazy top-heavy ships that sat so low in the water that their lowest rung of weapons their cannons that poked out the windows at the bottom of the ship they didn't work because they sat under the water permanently but regardless of their shortfalls the baltic fleet was what rojas fenske had been dealt and so he had to just get them moving if they were going to win the war and so on october 16th 1904 admiral rojas fenske ordered all of his men to take their positions in all of their ships and they set sail and immediately 30 seconds into their trip the lead ship ran aground and another ship lost its anchor even though it should not have been casting its anchor to begin with and so while one ship is trying to re-float and the other is trying to find its anchor in the ocean a third ship comes along and broadsides a fourth ship and it does so much damage to this fourth ship that ship had to go back home but once they overcame these initial obstacles the baltic fleet that now numbered 44 ships made it out of the harbor without any more issues and then set sail for the narrow waters between denmark and sweden as they drew closer manure sack informed rochester that there might be an issue that he had heard rumblings amongst the crew that they believed japanese torpedo boats were stationed off the coast of denmark waiting for them to get there rojas fenske told manuresak that that was impossible the japanese torpedo boats did not have the capabilities to sail 18 000 miles to denmark and even if they did have the ability to do that they could not have gotten there in such a short period of time but manure sack told rojospensky that unfortunately even though logically that makes sense this rumor had spread all across the crew and so rojas fenske began sending out messages to all the other ships telling them there are no japanese torpedo boats waiting for us off the coast of denmark everybody just needs to calm down and these messages did appear to work at first because eventually another rumor began to circulate one that rojas fenske was not really aware of as it was happening and that was that the crew began to believe there was a huge minefield underneath them everywhere they went there was a minefield and everybody got so worked up about it that it made its way back to a lot of the captains actually piloting the different ships and at some point the pilots just began doing these evasive maneuvers and rogers fence he's looking around wondering what they're doing and they began crashing into each other trying to avoid this minefield when rogersfensky finally figured out what was going on he sent out even more messages telling them that there's no minefield under us it's totally safe everybody just needs to calm down and so it took rojas fenske going out on deck and firing shots into the air to finally get people to stop believing they were on top of a minefield but just a couple of hours later after rojaspensky had gone back up to the bridge and was just looking out surveying his fleet as they carried on towards denmark and sweden when all of the sudden towards the very front of his fleet he heard this unbelievable barrage of cannon fire one of his own ships was engaging something out in front of the fleet but rojaspensky was too far away to see what it was and then a message came through from the attacking ship whose name was komchatka and they said they were surrounded on all sides by at least eight japanese torpedo boats and so rojospenski runs out onto the deck looking out towards the horizon expecting to see these eight japanese ships but he doesn't and then all of the sudden the shooting just completely stops and it's silent and then rojas fenske notices on his right side a small little fishing boat is making its way right up alongside his it would turn out kamchatka the attacking ship had confused this little unarmed russian fishing ship with eight japanese torpedo boats and had opened fire but luckily even though they fired hundreds and hundreds of rounds at this little boat none of them hit the boat and so the fishermen were fine and the fishermen had actually been sent to the boat specifically by tsar nicholas ii to tell rojas fenske that he had been promoted and so rojas fenske apologizes to the fishermen for having shot at them hundreds and hundreds of times and they said it was okay and the fishermen carried on after rojas fenske chewed out the crew of the kumchatka the rest of the baltic fleet gathered up and they continued towards the narrow waters between denmark and sweden when they got close a danish resupply ship came out to meet them to give them fuel and food and water and the baltic fleet mistook them for a japanese torpedo boat causing them to ram them repeatedly and then they realized their mistake but at that point they had done severe damage to the resupply ship who had to immediately turn around and go back to shore after that the baltic fleet did manage to get past denmark and sweden and they made it out to the north sea but as soon as they got out there there was trouble one of the captains of the ships that was towards the front of the baltic fleet's formation spotted four japanese torpedo boats coming right at them and so this ship along with six others immediately just began engaging these four ships with everything they had cannons big guns small guns everything it was absolute chaos from the front of this formation and the amount of gunfire that was going off towards the front caused the rest of the ships that were not part of the attack to begin to panic and the other ship captains began ramming into each other to try to get away from this attack and so while that's going on all the crew members on all the ships begin drawing their swords and running around expecting the japanese to board them at any moment and the others that did not draw their swords put on life jackets and laid down on their back on the deck of the ship believing that was procedure for how to survive a sinking ship and so for the next 20 minutes it was just continuous gunfire coming from the front of their formation one of the attacking ships sent a message back to rojas fenske that said they had been hit by a torpedo and they were taking heavy fire and it was just absolute bedlam up there and then all of a sudden it just totally stopped and when the smoke cleared rojas fenske and his ship had been able to maneuver up a little bit closer and they could see what they were shooting at and it would turn out once again it was a case of mistaken identity they were not being attacked by japanese torpedo boats they had spotted four small british fishing boats and in the chaos of the gunfight the baltic fleet had inadvertently begun to fire at each other killing several crew members and badly damaging their ships in the process as for the british fishermen only one of their boats actually sunk despite the fact that the baltic fleet had fired thousands and thousands of rounds at them and they had been stationary the entire time the russian czar immediately apologized to britain but the british media went crazy and the british people called for war believing that this type of attack could not possibly be an accident but russian diplomats leveled with the british and said no this really was an accident and eventually they convinced them avoiding starting yet another war rojas fenske and his baltic fleet were allowed to continue in their journey and after a couple of weeks they were getting close to africa when one of his ships the kamchatka the same ship that believed they were surrounded by eight japanese torpedo boats they got separated from the main fleet and got lost and so rojas fenske and the other officers did what they could to try to locate them but nobody had seen where they went and there wasn't great technology to try to locate them and so unfortunately rojas fenske and the baltic fleet just had to continue on and hope that at some point the lost ship would find them again a few days later the main body arrived in tangier and lo and behold kamchatka showed up and they informed rojaspensky that they had gotten lost and they didn't really have a good answer for that but once they were lost they managed to engage three separate japanese torpedo boats but it would turn out they were not japanese torpedo boats they were in fact a german a swedish and a french fishing boat but none of kumchaka's rounds actually impacted any of the three vessels and so three more wars were averted and so now that rojaswinsky had his lost ship back he gathered up his full baltic fleet and they left tangier but on their way out one of the ships managed to cut the underwater telegraph line to tangier cutting off tangier's communication with europe for the next four days by now the baltic fleet was very low on coal but they had a planned rendezvous with a german resupply ship off the coast of west africa when they got there the crew decided they didn't want to do another resupply later on and so let's just take double coal this time and so they hauled all this extra coal onto their ships despite not having a place for it and so naturally they began throwing it in the halls and in their bedrooms and basically anywhere there was space and what that did is it led to a fine layer of coal dust all over everything in the ship and that combined with the intense humidity off the coast of africa led to this black coal gunk getting trapped inside of all of the sailors lungs which began killing several of them a couple weeks later as they rounded the southern tip of africa it finally rained on them washing away a lot of that cold dust on their ships which was a big relief but the rain turned into a pretty bad storm and so rojas fenske decided he just wanted all of his ships to call in and say they were okay and so one by one each of the ships were told to message him saying the words we are okay and so one by one each of the ships did this until it got to kamchatka's turn and they accidentally sent the message do you see japanese torpedo boats and of course this message spread like wildfire across the entire crew which led to mass hysteria and rose jaspenski's trying to send out messages to say no there's no japanese torpedo boats but it's too late the other captains are panicking and they're ramming into each other and firing blindly into the wind from that point forward every night rose jaspenski would go up onto the bow of his ship and he would scream obscenities at kamchatka when the baltic fleet finally made it to madagascar the morale amongst the crew was very low and so when they docked in madagascar the crew decided it would be a good idea to boost their morale by buying some pets to bring back on board the ship with them and the pets they decided to bring back were crocodiles and poisonous snakes when their handlers smuggled them back on board their ship they immediately escaped down into the bowels of the ship when they went looking for them they couldn't find them because the ships were in such bad shape there were all sorts of cracks and holes all over the interior for these animals to escape to and so the men just had to accept there were very dangerous predators just living on their ship with them and so most men were unable to sleep at night in fear of being attacked by these animals which led a number of them to go for real insane and so the pet's idea didn't really boost morale amongst the baltic fleet and so one of the officers decided he would take another crack at boosting spirits and so he went to a vendor in madagascar and he purchased 2 000 of their finest cigarettes to bring back on board so he brings them back on board he hands them all out and everyone's so thankful but it turns out those cigarettes were laced with enormous amounts of opium which led to hundreds of the crew members becoming hopelessly addicted to opium also in madagascar these sailors picked up dozens of diseases that began wiping them out in droves during one funeral for a crew member the kamchatka asked if they could fire a salute with blank rounds they were given permission but they accidentally fired live rounds into the ship right next to them when rogesvensky and the rest of the baltic fleet finally left madagascar their only refrigerator on board one of their ships broke which spoiled all of their meat tons and tons of meat and so they began throwing it overboard which attracted hundreds and hundreds of sharks which circled their ships for the rest of their journey rojas fenske desperately wanted to find a way to somehow train the remainder of the baltic fleet how to be somewhat militarily competent and so he decided he would make them all do target practice because that had been a big issue on this trip so far and so we had one ship attach a long line that was connected to a target in the water and that ship would pull the target along and the other ships would take shots at the target and so all of the ships on road jaspensky's call began firing at this target and after thousands and thousands of rounds they didn't hit the target once however they managed to continuously shoot the ship that was pulling the target for road jaspenski this was the final straw he felt like he could do absolutely nothing to make the baltic fleet an actual military force and so he sent a message back to the czar and said you got to replace me i need to resign and somebody else needs to come in and take over and the tsar said no this is your fleet and so begrudgingly rojas fenske continued on leading the baltic fleet until they finally after seven total months on the sea were within striking distance of their target in japan the night before as they prepared for their attack they went into stealth mode where all the ships killed all of their lights they're totally dark with the exception of their hospital ship that kept their lights on this was considered a rule of war at the time which both sides abided by and so while the baltic fleet was sitting out in the waters outside of japan a small fishing boat began coming towards them now the fishing boat could only see the lit up hospital ship they could not see the 43 other darkened ships and so a crew member on board this hospital ship came up to the railing and he recognized the fishing boat was actually a russian fishing boat and so he waved them down and when the russian fishermen came outside the crew member told him you got to stop because there's 43 ships behind me that have their lights off do not go this way go around and so the russian fishermen thanked him and turned around and went on his merry way except that wasn't a russian fisherman it was a japanese sailor on board a japanese torpedo boat and now they knew exactly where the baltic fleet was and so that night the japanese navy completely surrounded the baltic fleet and then the next day at daybreak they launched their attack it was called the battle of tsushima and it was obscenely lopsided the japanese navy completely wiped out the baltic fleet killing 4 000 of their crew members and capturing 7 300 others which included rojaspensky who had been badly wounded in the battle but he would survive in contrast the japanese only had 100 casualties this victory for japan really marked the end of the war for russia and shortly after the battle of tsushima the russians agreed to surrender so that's gonna do it guys if you found the secret in today's episode let us know in the comments what it is and where you found it so give us the time stamp and if you're the first to do that we will pin you at the top of the comment section if you enjoyed today's video and you haven't done this already please beg the like button to let you have 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Channel: MrBallen

Views: 1,804,699

Rating: 4.9549704 out of 5

Keywords: strange, dark, mysterious, true, story, scary, scary story, horror story, disturbing, narration, narrator, storyteller, storytime, storytelling, unsolved mystery, solved mystery, true crime, oof, nope, alligator, shark, snake, africa, madagascar, navy, Russian navy, fail, fail army, Russian sailor, baltic fleet, 1900s, military, military fail, fails, story time, true story, ridiculous, absurd, biggest fail, sinking ship, sword, Japanese torpedo boat, torpedo, Japanese, Japan, war, combat, british, fishing boat

Id: 5jDbJbCuKl4

Length: 19min 56sec (1196 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 18 2021