Commanders who rolled a '1'?

[Last Hussar]

Who in history rolled a '1', giving modern readers a 'How did they lose that?' I don't mean the bad decisions - eg Burnside, I mean 'How the hell?'

[sunjester]

Who in history rolled a '1', giving modern readers a 'How did they lose that?' I don't mean the bad decisions - eg Burnside, I mean 'How the hell?'

All of yours!!

[Last Hussar]

Well yes, but I was thinking famous people...

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Hans Wilhelm Langsdorff

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Also von Scheer and Hipper. 31 05 1916.

[Ithoriel]

Pompey the Great

On 9 August 48 BCE the Senatorial forces under Pompey faced the forces of Julius Caesar at Pharsalus.

Pompey had somewhere between 50% and 100% more legionaries and around seven times as many cavalry compared to Caesar.

To be fair, Caesar's legions were more experienced but even so .....

Pompey's losses are estimated at between 6,000 and 15,000 killed, with a further 24,000 captured.

Caesar's losses in terms of men killed are put at between 200 and 1,200.

Pompey fled to Egypt where the Pharaoh's men killed him and cut his head off to curry favour with Caesar, who was not amused by this and sided with the Pharaoh's sister, Cleopatra.

Eventually the Pharaoh was killed in battle against Caesar. Perhaps Pompey wasn't the only one in this affair to "roll a 1!"

[sunjester]

Hans Wilhelm Langsdorff

Or was it that HMS Exeter's gunners rolled a "6"?

[Raider4]

Naval ones come to mind most easily.

Vice-Admiral Lancelot Holland (HMS Hood) certainly failed his armour save.

Captain Guy D'Oyly-Hughes (HMS Glorious) and Admiral Sir Tom Phillips (Force Z) seem to have rolled badly on the encounter table.

Looking further back I don't think that Charles d'Albret, Constable of France and commander of the French forces at Agincourt would have expected to be so comprehensively thrashed by an English army considerably smaller than his own.

[pierre the shy]

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto must have rolled a "1" in April 1943 when the G4M Betty bomber he was travelling in was shot down by US fighters while flying from Rabaul to the airfield at Balalae Island. Yamamoto was on an inspection tour of the Solomon Islands that still remained in Japanese hands after the loss of Guadalcanal.

The Americans knew of his movements due to their breaking the IJN's JN-25 naval code with "Magic".   

[Ithoriel]

Or possibly Yamamoto's escorting fighters rolled a bunch of 1's.

You had ONE job .....

[pierre the shy]

yes the escort must have been rolling on a d1 that day.....both Lanphier and Barber, the two P-38 pilots involved in the actual interception survived and returned to base.

[Ithoriel]

To be fair the Lockheed P-38 Lightning was one of the top fighters of the war and the Mitsubishi G4M "Betty" was known as "The Cigar" by the Japanese and "The Flying Lighter" by the Americans due to it's tendency to catch fire when hit.