"Weird Wars: Lost Maps, Lost Plans " Topic

"You've all had that awful sinking feeling. You've prepared your masterful attack with a vast army across the entire front and then some fool goes and misplaces the map: and next thing you know the scrap of paper ends up in the hands of your opposite number, in the enemy high command. There must be a dozen examples of this through history – human incapacity being what it is – but here are four that stand out: if anyone can add please send on in drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com

First, Special Order 191 written about 10 Sept 1862. Robert E. Lee gave this order as he was moving into Union territory, taking the war, for the first time, to Lincoln. The problem was that somehow a copy of the order was misplaced in a confederate camp by General Hill, one of Stonewall Jackson's subordinates. Luckily for the Union it was discovered with three cigars wrapped in it, by Union soldiers, 13 September. McClellan famously said on being handed the paper that if he could not ‘whip Bobby Lee' with the report, he might as well resign. A typical lack of self knowledge on McClellan's part: it would fall to Lincoln to help McClellan ‘go home'.

North Atlantic Naval Map. The secret German map of the north Atlantic, with cipher and signal books was found on the body of a German officer who was washed ashore, after the loss of the Magdeburg in August 1914. The Russians passed the information on to the British (who would later draw inspiration from this episode for operation mincemeat in a later world war). Naval intelligence rapidly put the map and the ciphers to work. The map split the ocean into numbered squares and allowed the Allies to track German naval plans outside the Baltic in the first year of the war…"
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