Battles Lost by a Single Bad Decision

"On Kiska in August 1943 an Allied force of roughly thirty-five thousand men stormed a fortified island the Japanese garrison had quietly evacuated two weeks earlier, and still took casualties from mines and from each other. Every defeat that follows was arranged by the side that lost it, through a misread map, an unopened crate, or an officer who was simply certain. In this episode: Agincourt in 1415, where armoured French knights advanced uphill through churned, sucking mud Singapore in 1942, with Percival's heavy guns trained out to sea while the Japanese came overland Tanga in 1914, where General Aitken waved off the warning about beehives and lost the field partly to them Spion Kop in 1900, where the British held the summit until the fog lifted and showed them the wrong hill The Crater at Petersburg in 1864, after Burnside sent his men down into the pit his own mine had made Terrain, ammunition crates and a commander's certainty decided more of these fields than any weapon did. Isandlwana and Kiska were both lost well before a shot was aimed at anything that mattered."