Across centuries of warfare specific deception plans have long been used which depended upon observable physical indicators that an attack was coming in one direction while the real effort was to be made elsewhere when the enemy had misplaced his reserves. The standard German staff question was “Wo ist der Schwerpunkt?” (“Where is the main effort?”). Despite this cautious question, the all-time-classical case of deception was Operation Fortitude which in1944 led the Germans to believe the main Allied Cross-Channel attack would come in the Pas de Calais after a feint in Normandy.
There are also cases in which one commander laid a psychological, as distinct from a tactical, trap for his opponent, reading his mind, and then watched the enemy fall into it. My wife reminds me that perhaps the first case – possibly apocryphal – was the “Trojan Horse”!
Three famous psychological examples are:-
- 1711. Marlborough’s piercing of Villars’ “Ne Plus Ultra” lines in Northern France;
- 1916. Falkenhayn’s trap for Joffre at Verdun;
- 1944. Toyoda’s deception of Halsey North of the Philippines.
Marlborough v. Villars
At the opening of the 1711 campaign of the War of the Spanish Succession the Allied British and Dutch armies, with their German mercenary contingent, under command of the Duke of Marlborough, had assembled near Arras in Northern France. They had reached this position after nine previous successful campaigns and hoped to penetrate finally into a region of France with few modern fortresses to resist them. However, they were opposed by a French army under Marshal Villars. He had organised in the previous 12 months a long series of very strong field fortifications running West to East between the armies from the coast to the Ardennes (which were impassable in an organised way to an 18th Century army). In the region most likely to be attacked, because of the Allied supply routes via the Flanders rivers, for 30 miles East of the French fortress of Arras, the earthworks were behind the marshy valleys of the Rivers Scarpe and Sensèe.These “lines”, which Villars boasted were “Ne Plus Ultra” (“no more beyond”), were not manned throughout their length. The French army camped opposite wherever the Allied army camped, ready to move forward into the lines if Marlborough should advance to a frontal attack, while watching with cavalry patrols in case he should make a flank march so that they could move parallel to him by specially-improved lateral roads behind the protection of the lines so as to occupy any other stretch which he should threaten. Because various French Marshals (including Villars) had been already well-beaten in open-field battles: by Marlborough and Prince Eugène of Savoy (with the addition of Austrian troops) at Blenheim in Germany in 1704; at Ramillies in 1706 by Marlborough in sole command; at Oudenarde in 1708 with Eugène co-commanding and at least driven from a very strong position at Malplaquet in 1709, Villars had orders from King Louis XIV only to fight with the advantage of entrenchments. Louis was also awaiting favourable political developments in England towards peace because of a Government change in late 1710.
Marlborough in 1711 was not prepared to sacrifice men in a battle giving such advantage to his enemy (in the last battle at Malplaquet he had given the enemy rather too much such advantage). Therefore, he set up a psychological trap for Villars which he hoped would give him a way through the lines. There was a causeway with bridges over the water-logged valley of the Sensèe at Arleux, a village about 20 miles East of Arras, which had an advanced fortlet guarding it on the North side, the lines themselves being South of the river. Marlborough detached a force to seize this earthwork and then to reinforce its defences as though to prevent any French excursion onto the North bank.
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As Marlborough anticipated, Villars seems to have reasoned that, if the Allies really wanted this fort, he should recapture it and demolish it – and he proceeded to do just that! The force he sent for this operation then retired back to the South bank and moved further East. Marlborough had not posted many troops in the place, which made it easy to capture, and a body of troops under General Hompesch posted some miles North, ostensibly as a cover, and a reinforcement sent from the main army did not take vigorous action to frustrate the French action – but afterwards Hompesch did not leave the district but remained a few miles away. French spies in the Allied camp reported that Marlborough appeared very upset by the destruction of the Arleux fort, which must have convinced Villars that he had done the right thing. He did not realise that he had opened the way across the Sensèe and he ignored the proximity of significant Allied troops while both main armies were by then several miles West of Arras, Marlborough having moved there and Villars having shadowed him. The deception plan then included two detailed personal reconnaissances of the lines at the new location and putting a large force of pioneers to work to improve the approach roads.
As night fell on 4th August 1711 all on both sides of the lines except a very few in Marlborough’s secret expected that the next day would see a brutal and bloody frontal assault on the entrenched French. Villars awaited the outcome with confidence. But Marlborough’s trusted deputy, Cadogan, set off in the evening to take command of the troops posted near Arleux under Hompesch, plus contingents which moved in from nearby Allied-held fortresses (which had been unobtrusively increased just before) and to lead them to the unguarded causeway and another nearby which Villars, concentrating on Marlborough’s threatening movements West of Arras, had also left defenceless.
After numerous light cavalry had been seen by the French to move Westwards in the evening of the 4th – another feint – the main body of the Allies began to march East during the night. Their Captain General, in the lead with a large number of cavalry squadrons, at daybreak received a messenger sent back by Cadogan to report that he had penetrated the lines at Arleux at 3am. Villars finally detected the movement of the main army some hours after they started and put his men in motion the same way – but it was too late! The Cadogan advance guard was reinforced by the leading Allied cavalry by 11am, while the infantry came up at a heroic pace, marching 36 miles in 16 hours. By 4pm the trap had been well-and-truly sprung, with much of Marlborough’s army formed up South of the “impassable” lines while the French were just beginning to reach in numbers a position in front of them.
Marlborough’s reading of Villars’ mind had worked – but not perfectly. He had hoped that the French Marshal would be so stung by the failure of his defences that he would attack on the 6th of August. This did not happen. The ground between the two armies, which of course Marlborough had not been able to reconnoitre, was unfavourable by reason of marshes and a ravine to an advance by either side. However, the ability to manoeuvre further into France had been gained and so was used by moving further East to lay siege to and capture the fortress of Bouchain.
When this had been accomplished and when the way to Paris was no longer obstructed by the French fortress system (excepting only Cambrai), British politics intervened -by treachery, it must be said – to prevent attaining the objective to which all ten campaigns in the Low Countries and France had aimed.
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Falkenhayn v. Joffre
The German offensives in Belgium and France beginning in August 1914 failed, firstly to envelop and destroy the French army and secondly to drive through to the Channel coast. The subsequent entrenchment of the armies left the Germans in possession of most of the former country and Northern France. The chief of the German Great General Staff, Moltke, had been replaced during September by von Falkenhayn. For 1915 that general prescribed mostly a defensive on the Western front while continuing on the Eastern front the severe beating of the Russians which had begun at Tannenberg in 1914. In 1916 Falkenhayn decided that the time had come to attack the French again but this time with a psychological twist and trap. The French retreats of 1914 had left them with a large salient centred on the ring of forts around Verdun. Actually, these forts had been de-militarised because of the rapid collapse of the Belgium fortresses of Liège and Namur under the fire of the Krupp 42cm (16.5 inch) mortars. Thinking that French permanent fortifications would suffer the same fate, Joffre, the commander of the French field armies, persuaded the government to abolish the formal independence of their fortresses so that he could empty them of their guns and garrisons. It turned out later that this was an unwise decision because the French forts were stronger than the Belgian and were capable of withstanding the super-heavy shells. However, by Joffre’s action the Verdun defences then relied only on ordinary entrenchments of a rather weak kind.
Falkenhayn judged that an attack on Verdun would be resisted to the last man by the French for purely sentimental reasons as being the main Eastern bastion of the nation. Just as the British and French had clung on to a salient around Ypres purely because it was the last unoccupied Belgian town of any size and, as a consequence, suffered a steady loss of men through the ability of German guns to fire into the defences from three sides, Falkenhayn proposed to carry out the same process at Verdun.
To ensure high French losses an enormous mass of German artillery was assembled around the Northern protrusion of the Verdun front; 2,000 guns (including the 42cm mortars) extra to the existing artillery of the Army Group of the German Crown Prince which was to make the attack. Although there would be an infantry attack after the initial very-fierce bombardment, Falkenhayn’s objective was not to take the whole salient but to let the French reinforce into the “mincing machine” of his guns.
The sluggish approach of Joffre to operations (which those who admired him called “imperturbability”) might easily have frustrated Falkenhayn’s psychological trap. Despite warnings about the weakness of the Verdun defences for some time before the attack he made little effort to strengthen them. After the bombardment and assault began on 21st February 1916 he sent few reinforcements. The attack progressed better than the Germans had expected. When they had penetrated well into the salient by 24th February and the local French commanders proposed to evacuate the ground East of the River Meuse running through Verdun, Joffre still showed little concern. He retired at 10pm for his usual “not-to-be-disturbed” sleep in his quarters at Chantilly. However, his 2nd-in-command, General de Castelnau, having shortly before that time obtained Joffre’s permission to send Pètain’s 2nd Army from reserve to Verdun and alarmed by further dismal reports from that place, insisted on waking his chief and demanding power to go himself to the threatened front and reinvigorate the defence. By Joffre’s assent to these two demands and the subsequent personal efforts of de Castelnau at the salient, Falkenhayn’s trap was sprung. The baleful effect was then emphasised by an order from Joffre that any commander retreating from the Northern sector would be court-martialed.
Thus began a battle of attrition lasting 130 days centred at first on the East bank and later the West bank of the Meuse also into which in rotation half of the French army was sent. The battle became a trial of wills on both sides because the Crown Prince was as afraid to lose face by halting the attack as the French were to lose Verdun. The physical advantage to the Germans of the salient and their tremendous – but gradually worn-out – artillery meant that, by the time both sides were exhausted at the end of June, the French losses exceeded the German by 30%. To that extent Falkenhayn’s trap had succeeded.
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The French were perceived by the outside world to be the victors because Verdun did not fall –and counter-attacks later in 1916 recovered the “trophies” of Forts Douamont and Vaux on the high ground East of the town. Losses were concealed although they had done tremendous damage to the army and it needed only one more incompetent offensive under General Nivelle, who succeeded Joffre in December 1916 when his lack of ability finally led to his dismissal, to provoke serious mutinies in May 1917.
The effect of Verdun on Pètain’s mind undoubtedly reinforced his natural pessimism and left mental scars which played a role 24 years later when, at the age of 84, he surrendered all France to a new German invasion.
Toyoda v. Halsey
By late 1944 two separate attacks by the USA across the Pacific against Japanese-held territory, in the South by General MacArthur’s all-service forces via New Guinea and in the centre by the Naval and Marine forces of Admiral Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief Pacific, were ready to combine for the liberation of the Philippines. This operation would also separate Japan from the oil of Borneo. After discovering by preliminary carrier-plane attacks that the small fairly-central island of Leyte was weakly defended, the American plan was accelerated by 2 months to recapture it as a close-in air base and supply centre from which to launch the major amphibious attack on Luzon in the North where the capital of the Philippines, Manila, was situated.
The C-in-C of the Japanese Combined Fleet, Admiral Toyoda, had formed his own plan of naval defence of the archipelago. His forces were already heavily written-down in naval air striking power of carriers, planes and skilled pilots by earlier battles so that his strength lay mainly in battleships (including the gigantic Yamato and Musashi of 64,000 tons with 9 x 46cm (18.1 inch) guns each, the largest ever mounted at sea on a modern warship). These ships were based at Singapore. He conceived the idea of luring the enormous power of the US 3rd Fleet, commanded by Admiral Halsey, with its fast carriers and modern battleships, away from its protective duty of the MacArthur amphibious fleet directly escorted by the 7th Fleet of old battleships and small escort carriers commanded by Admiral Kinkaid, by having the few remaining Japanese carriers sortie from Japan and “trail their coats” to the North of the Philippines. When this had been achieved, two battleship and heavy cruiser forces, coming up from Singapore via Brunei would penetrate straits on either side of Leyte (San Bernardino to the North and Surigao to the South) and make a pincer attack on the transports.
The troopships began to put their men ashore in Leyte Gulf on 20th October 1944. The Japanese ships had sailed on the 17th and by late on the 23rd were approaching the archipelago from 3 directions. The Northern “bait” force of one fleet carrier and three light carriers (plus 2 battleships with flight decks added aft) had only about 100 planes aboard with pilots too untrained to make deck landings – if they survived their attacks they were to fly on and land on Luzon.
The Japanese Centre Force, commanded by Admiral Kurita, with the super-battleship pair and 3 other battleships totalling between them 18 x 18.1”, 8 x 16” and 16 x 14” guns, having already on the 23rd October lost 2 heavy cruisers (and a 3rd damaged and retired) to 2 US submarines deployed to the West of the islands –one sunk cruiser being Kurita’s flagship, from which he had to swim for his life before being picked up and transferred to the Yamato – was attacked on the 24th by 3rd Fleet planes before reaching the San Bernardino Strait. These attacks were launched from the fast carriers in position to the East of the strait. The Musashi was sunk by numerous bomb and torpedo hits and another heavy cruiser was damaged and retired. Kurita ordered his remaining ships to turn back.
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Shortly after Kurita’s retirement Halsey’s Fleet detected the Japanese carriers, commanded by Admiral Ozawa, – later than the enemy had planned but they still had the effect on Halsey which Toyoda had intended. Assuming that these carriers were fully effective and assuming that Kurita’s force was beaten and aching to use in particular the 54 16” guns of his 6 modern fast battleships, Halsey collected all the ships with him (one strong fleet carrier group had been detached already to refuel and resupply at the lagoon of Ulithi, 1000 miles East of Leyte) and set off North at speed at Midnight on the 24th October. He did not leave a single ship to guard the San Bernardino Strait! Although a night reconnaissance flight over that area then reported that Kurita had once more reversed course and was coming East again – with his surviving battleships and six 8”-gunned heavy cruisers, Halsey made no change to his orders. His staff and his overall carrier task force commander, Admiral Mitscher, knew of the report. The former were either too much in awe of their somewhat-irascible chief to tell him or did so and it had no effect. The latter, displeased by Halsey not consulting him previously in carrier dispositions and being told that the fleet commander had the report, decided if Halsey wanted his advice he would ask for it and made no attempt to offer it.
So, the trap was sprung! Toyoda had understood Halsey’s mind – he was not nick-named “Bull” Halsey by the press for nothing! He charged towards the “red flag” of the Japanese carriers. It should be noted that this was the first opportunity that he had as a fleet commander at sea to get to direct grips with the enemy – he had not been present at the battles of Coral Sea, Midway or Philippines Sea and had been based ashore when commanding the forces which operated around Guadalcanal.
To add to the opportunity therefore offered to Kurita to pass the unguarded strait during the night of 24/25 October and attack Southwards towards Leyte Gulf, Halsey had sent a signal during the day to his subordinate commanders and Nimitz (based ashore at Pearl Harbor) which contemplated forming a Task Force 34 with his battleships separately from his fleet carriers and this signal had also been read by Kinkaid, although not addressed to him. Both Nimitz and Kinkaid assumed that this force was left to guard the Northern flank of the amphibious transport fleet when Halsey in a later signal reported that he was steaming North “with 3 groups”, because that was the number of the carrier sub-Task Forces in the 3rd fleet at that moment. In fact, TF34 had not been formed and detached and the battleships were going North as well.
Kinkaid, unworried about the S. Bernardino Strait, concentrated his forces on the night of 24/25 October to ambush the smaller force of Japanese ships coming through the Surigao Strait. They sank both of the attacking battleships*. But, just after 7am on the 25th, his Northernmost escort carrier group found itself under the gunfire of Kurita’s ships. These small, slow, unarmoured carriers were equipped and trained for anti-submarine defence and land-attack, not for anti-ship operations. Nevertheless, while retreating as fast as they could, sacrificial attacks by their aircrews and by their escorting destroyers, together with poor control of his ships by Kurita, prevented a disaster which would have been the prelude to a massacre of the troopships further South. Amazingly, the Americans even sank 3 of Kurita’s heavy cruisers. Kinkaid signalled several times to Halsey asking for help, even in plain English, but the 3rd Fleet continued North. Eventually, after receiving a badly-decoded signal from Nimitz, who had been following these signals, and after recovering his temper from the misunderstanding of an apparent reproach which it generated, Halsey finally ordered half of his ships, including the battleships finally organised as Task Force 34, to reverse course, leaving the rest to annihilate the Japanese carriers. The belated rescue effort could not have reached Leyte Gulf in time to save the worst possible outcome**. Nor could the ordered return from Ulithi of the detached carrier group.
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What did save the situation was that Kurita, confused by the desperate resistance of the 7th Fleet escort carriers and destroyers and not being sure whether he had the 3rd Fleet to deal with, called off his attack and turned back to re-pass the S. Bernardino Strait. He escaped there without further loss.
This was not the first time that, contradictory to their race’s tendency to suicidal attacks – which at that very moment was being exploited in an organised way for the first time by “Kamikaze” aircraft attacks from Luzon – Japanese admirals had failed to press home an advantage (see the Appendix). The American pincer movement across and around the Pacific had led at the Philippines to a near-fatal lack of coordination at Leyte between MacArthur’s and Nimitz’s forces. Each of the 3rd and 7th Fleet commanders had fallen into the trap always present, quite apart from enemy action – the trap of
“ASS / U / ME”
which is what “assume” makes of those who do not check the facts before taking crucial decisions.
*This was the last battleship-to-battleship action in history.
**Admiral Lee, commanding Halsey’s 6 magnificent 16”-gunned battleships, wrote in his after-action report:-
“No battle damage was incurred nor inflicted on the enemy by vessels while operating as Task Force 34”,
which says it all!
CONCLUSIONS
In each of the 3 examples of psychological traps described, while the targeted commander fell into the trap laid by his opponent, the trapper did not gain the full advantage of his cunning plan.
Marlborough, unable to reconnoitre the ground beyond the “Ne Plus Ultra” lines, found that he still could not engage Villars in an open-ground battle after penetrating them without loss.
Falkenhayn’s nominal but exalted subordinate, the Crown Prince of Germany, spoiled his “mincing machine” plan at Verdun by trying to take that place when it was not necessary to do so in order to accomplish the attrition of Joffre’s troops with minimal German casualties.
Kurita simply threw away the advantage which Toyoda had given him over Halsey in order to save ships which in any case would be useless for the defence of Japan once oil fuel supply kept them pinned down South of the recaptured Philippines.
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APPENDIX
Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) retreats from success
(See “The Pacific War” by J. Costello, 1984 Ed., page refs. given below.)
Kurita’s withdrawal from the approaches to Leyte Gulf and the American transports, when his heavily-armed-and-armoured battleships and heavy cruisers were opposed only by escort carriers and destroyers, none experienced or even armed for surface conflict, was the last of five occasions when IJN commanders retreated when complete success was in their grasp. The previous four are described below.
1. Nagumo near Pearl Harbor on 7th December 1941 (p.153)
Nagumo’s 6 fleet carriers carried out 2 strikes against the USN and USAAF at Pearl Harbor. The 1st wave of planes on returning to the carriers had been rearmed ready for a 3rd strike by the time that the 2nd wave landed. The overall air commander. Fuchida, who had attacked with the first wave and had then orbited the target to observe the results of the 2nd attack, landed last. He then urged that a 3rd strike should be made to destroy in particular the so-far-untouched oil fuel tanks. Had this been done it would have weakened a US response for many months. Admiral Nagumo refused to order this further attack and withdrew the fleet.
2. Inouye after the Battle of the Coral Sea (p.261)
The Japanese launched a complex operation in early May 1942, to occupy Port Moresby in Papua and also several places in the Solomon and other islands further East, in order to provide bases from which they could interrupt the supply route to Australia from the USA. The overall Japanese commander was Admiral Inouye, land-based at Truk about 900 miles North of New Guinea. Penetration of their radio codes enabled Nimitz, C-in-C Pacific at Pearl Harbor. to concentrate a 2-carrier force to oppose the enemy thrusts and the first carrier-to-carrier action in history then took place in the Coral Sea to the South-East of Papua. By the middle of 8th May the carrier score ran:-
| Japanese | US | |
| 1 light carrier sunk | 1 large fleet carrier fatally damaged | |
| (which had to be sunk later by the US) | ||
| 1 fleet carrier damaged | 1 fleet carrier slightly damaged | |
| Leaving: | 1 undamaged fleet carrier but with few planes | No carriers undamaged |
| The US force than sailed South out of the action |
The Japanese pilots reported that they had sunk both US carriers and were believed. Nevertheless, Inouye ordered his ships to retreat, including the troopships intended for the Port Moresby landing.
Attempts to capture that place thereafter were made overland through the jungle-covered mountains from the North, but were unsuccessful.
3. Mikawa’s withdrawal after the Battle of Savo Island (p.312)
Just before the Battle of the Coral Sea, on 3rd May 1942, a small Japanese force had seized an Australian seaplane base at Tulagi on one of the Solomon Islands. They then started to build an airbase on the island directly South, Guadalcanal. After winning the Battle of Midway in June the USN decided to capture this base, which would otherwise also threaten US-Australian communications. Marines landed there and at Tulagi on 7th August 1942.
The Japanese counter-attacked immediately from their base at Rabaul, North-West of New Guinea, with a cruiser force commanded by Admiral Mikawa. Reconnaissance failures and slow breaking of a new Japanese radio code resulted in a joint US-Australian cruiser force, which was covering the approach to the landing beaches, being taken by surprise in the dark early morning of the 9th near Savo Island, about 30 miles North-West of the US transports still unloading supplies. Four Allied heavy cruisers were sunk in very quick time, leaving only one damaged and one undamaged heavy cruiser between Mikawa’s 5 heavy and 2 light cruisers and the transports. Instead of pressing on to annihilate these ships, Mikawa withdrew.
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4. Abe’s withdrawal after the 1st Battle of Guadalcanal (p.342)
Guadalcanal became the scene of vicious land, air and sea fighting for months after the US landing on 7th August 1942 and early in November decoded signals warned of a massive new effort by the Japanese to retake it. Their transports, escorted by destroyers, were preceded by 2 battleships plus destroyers commanded by Admiral Abe. Opposing them near Savo Island were only 2 heavy and 3 light cruisers. Early in the morning of 12th November, again in the dark, Abe’s ships sank 1 light cruiser, damaged the rest and killed two American admirals. Abe’s mission had been to go on to bombard the US air base on Guadalcanal so as to prevent the planes there attacking the troop transports and after the battle the way was open to do that. Instead, with some damage to his own ships, he withdrew. Failure to put the American planes out of action then cost him his flagship, which was fatally damaged by them later in the day.
Conclusions on these failures to capitalise on advantages
With 5 examples of withdrawals by different IJN commanders when much greater advantages were in their grasp suggests some common factors in their decisions, which were so contrary to the Japanese code of “Victory or Death”.
Perhaps it was the material factor – their major assets, if lost, could not be replaced in less than 3 years.
Perhaps it was a psychological factor – a ship necessarily becomes the home of its crew and not therefore something regarded as expendable.
After a battle which drained some or all of the initial resolution from the commander, a mixture of the above factors may have been at work – plus the inevitable feeling any successful gambler has, to get up from the table with his winnings intact.
Illustrations
Marlborough v. Villars
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Falkenhayn v. Joffre
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Toyoda v. Halsey
