A military maxim untrue

“No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.” 

No battle plan ever? That takes in a few thousand years of history.

A clan of a couple dozen or so men armed with sharp sticks and rocks of a size to throw with relative ease and weight to cause damage, certainly did not require any kind of detailed plan. Most fights between those groups would have been come about through surprise or ambush, with only two commands likely: CHARGE! or RUN!

More refined, and complicated, battle plans came about with advances in war weapons – stone spear heads replaced sharp sticks, invention of the bow and arrow, metal swords. As weapons improved, so did the number of fighters. Early armies in battle consisted of two masses separated, which hurled spears and arrows at each other, and at a moment judged proper by one or both commanders, charged at top speed, with sword, ax, hammer or stabbing spear encountering similar weapons, shields, or the enemy’s flesh.

Detailed battle plans came into being when a leader divided his soldiers into regiments, battalions and companies. Still masses of men, but with a plan of maneuver, perhaps even of dispersal.

Improve those masses with gunpowder, rifles, cannon, metal cartridges, automatic weapons, tanks, aviation support, and plans become even more detailed, with each part of an army given a specific plan, which must be completed by a specified time.

Anyone who believes the military maxim should consider Hannibal’s plan at Cannae. Henry Morgan’s plan at Cow Pens. The German army’s movement through the Ardennes and behind the armies of France and Britain in 1940. The opening of Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union in 1941. The attack on Pearl Harbor by the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1941. Operation Overlord in June 1944. The attack by the Peoples Liberation Army against United Nations forces in North Korea in late November 1950.

Armies have at times bogged down in initial moves, sometimes saved by action by a group of soldiers at an important place. But it is inaccurate to say, “No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.” The so-called maxim is an excuse by historians trying to devise an explanation why something failed to work.