The Monumental C**k Up Thread.

[Conrad_K]

Of course, deciding to bomb Pearl Harbour was, in hindsight, an almighty c_ckup...

General Billy Mitchell got sent to Japan after WWI. He was welcomed to the Imperial army and navy colleges, who apparently had no reluctance to show him their plans for the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere and their plans to attack the United States.

He submitted a report on his findings when he got back to DC. He kept pressing for action, or at least acknowledgement someone had read it. Instead, he got court-martialed for continuing to talk about it after being instructed to stop discussing the subject.

Much of that was due to the US Navy, who held a bitter grudge against Mitchell. The Navy maintained that its larger ships were invulnerable to aerial attack; no airplane could lift a bomb big enough to sink one. Mitchell demonstrated otherwise, to the Navy's great embarrassment, and they never forgot. And then in 1941 the Japanese demonstrated their bombs could sink US Navy ships just like Mitchell's did.

 

[gbb]

Most UK Public Infrastructure projects seem to go over budget and run late. Does nobody in charge learn from the previous mistakes?

Its like a malaise(or naivety) that seems to pervade through the public sector and one that the construction sector are too happy to exploit.
In reality, I'd guess there are clauses for extenuating circumstances to protect the supplier, fair enough to a degree but when you look at budget over runs in general, it seems it's become an open chequebook for the supplier

 

[Conrad_K]

The SA-80 assault rifle.

Enfield never quite recovered after Churchill yanked the rug out from under them with the EM-2 rifle in 1951. It was more than a generation later when they started working on the SA-80, but by then they had lost all the "institutional knowledge" of gun-making as their workforce moved on or retired.

The engineers who designed the SA-80 did a good job, but that's only part of a new gun platform. Guns aren't complicated, but most new designs require a lot of fiddling to make them run right. The US M-1 Garand took more than a decade of twiddling, first to make it work, then to make it reliable enough to use. And then it took another decade to graft a box magazine onto it to make the M-14. So Enfield's guys were hardly slackers.

The original American Armalite M-16 rifles had problems; Armalite's engineers were good, but not good enough to solve the operation and manufacturing problems quickly enough to get a government contract, so Colt wound up doing the tedious work of ironing out all the problems and the actual manufacturing.

Enfield was in Armalite's situation, but the British small arms industry was basically dead by the 1970s; H&K became Enfield's Colt, ironing out the bugs. It wasn't a matter of competence; Enfield's guys could have gotten everything tweaked eventually. But the government wanted its rifles *now*, even with the problems. Enfield wound up shutting down in the backlash, and HM Government had to pay almost full price *again* for some foreigners to deal with the problem. Which was, in the end, all of its own making, all the way back to 1951.

Still, it's a right-hand-only firearm, and therefore basically just an awkward club to some of us left-handers. Which was peculiar, since Britain has one of the highest percentages of left-handed people.

 

[Reynard]

The DeLorean was basically a Lotus with a steel skin. And way cheaper than a real Lotus. But while the little Renault V6 was a reasonably competent engine and got decent fuel economy, it was only rated at 130hp. That would have been acceptable for a family sedan, but buyers willing to fork over $25K for an exotic with a stainless steel body and gullwing doors wanted horsepower to match, not hamsters.

In the American market, 130hp was laughable. The rear engine layout didn't help it either. While Porsche fans might smirk, "rear engine" in America meant bottom-end econo-cars like the VW Beetle, Chevy Corvair, Renault Daphine, or Fiat 850. Potential buyers in Britain and Europe might not have had the same prejudice, but they didn't rush forward waving money for a DeLorean either.

I understand why DeLorean chose the Renault engine. There weren't a lot of small-ish engines with US EPA emissions certification then, and DMC had to choose what was available and in sufficient quantity, what they could afford, and what they could sell in the most markets. But the decision to use the PRV V6 is what killed the whole company.

Of course, "hindsight is 20-20", "Monday Morning Quarterback", etc.

The Lotus F1 team was negotiating to run the Renault engine at the time (they didn't get the engine till '83), and Peter Warr, who managed the team after Colin Chapman's death was also involved with DeLorean.

Some of the money that should have gone to the F1 team ended up being diverted into the project (and, if some of the stuff I've heard from a few sources is true, into Warr's pockets), and the fall-out was one of the factors in the eventual running down and demise of the team.

 

[Sterlo]

How about a new one from today, does this count?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c75zwyeq3v9o

 

[PeteXXX]

Not so much a monumental c*ck-up but more of a minor inconvenience..

My ice-cream was too cold to insert a Flake so the lass had to upend it into a tub and put the Flake there!!

 

[rogerzilla]

My SO's former neighbours had a cat in their second floor flat, a very run-of-the-mill black-and-white moggy.

One day the cat escaped through an open window (there are shed roofs to land on, well within a cat's jumping abilities).

Later that day they are told the cat has been found dead on the road. It has literally been run over (sorry) so is not in a good cosmetic state. They bury it in the piece of grass behind the flats.

The next day their cat turns up as if nothing has happened.

This leaves one of two possibilities:

1. The flats are built on an old Indian burial ground

2. They buried someone else's cat

 

[Drago]

My SO's former neighbours had a cat in their second floor flat, a very run-of-the-mill black-and-white moggy.

One day the cat escaped through an open window (there are shed roofs to land on, well within a cat's jumping abilities).

Later that day they are told the cat has been found dead on the road. It has literally been run over (sorry) so is not in a good cosmetic state. They bury it in the piece of grass behind the flats.

The next day their cat turns up as if nothing has happened.

This leaves one of two possibilities:

1. The flats are built on an old Indian burial ground

2. They buried someone else's cat

This happened to me, although our actual cat turned up before id had the funeral for the deceased moggie.

 

[HLaB]

As redently discussed elsewhere, the Calmac ferries, late, over budget and of questionable fitness for purpose.

The new SNCF trains...that were to wide to fit into the stations.

The Mars Climate orbiter that went AWOL because engineers on the project were working with different units.

These are all pleasing, amusing and tragic examples of monumental cock ups. What other such examples do you know of?

Hyundai Semi Conductors, Dunfermline is the biggest cock ups I know of. https://www.google.com/search?q=Hyu...TC_en-GBGB1051GB1052&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 The council spent a lot of money to attract Hyundai Semi Conductors, and helped them build a £2.4bn factory etc. They never came. A year or two later the bottom fell out of the UK semiconductor market and whilst they sold it a few times the building subsequent buyers never came either, and it laid vacant for 15 or so years before getting knocked down. Lol, it did reserve land for Schools.

 

[slowmotion]

Edinburgh Tram project.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Tram_Inquiry

 

[slowmotion]

You need look no further than the projects of one Donald Trump.

https://time.com/4343030/donald-trump-failures/

 

[Seevio]

You need look no further than the projects of one Donald Trump.

https://time.com/4343030/donald-trump-failures/

These are just common or garden failures. A proper cock up needs a much higher degree of foreseeable mistake. i.e. What were they thinking...

 

[slowmotion]

These are just common or garden failures. A proper cock up needs a much higher degree of foreseeable mistake. i.e. What were they thinking...

I take your point. How about effectively ignoring the existence of COVID when it first appeared in the US?

 

[Seevio]

I take your point. How about effectively ignoring the existence of COVID when it first appeared in the US?

I'm not overly aware of the USA specifics but every country did this. Even now with hindsight it's not clear what the best course of action should have been.

 

[raleighnut]

I take your point. How about effectively ignoring the existence of COVID when it first appeared in the US?

Injecting bleach to kill it