Reassignment Backfire: Difference between revisions
→Real Life
m (clean up) |
|||
Line 178:
* Napoleon's entire republican career was this; Italy was a sideshow just to keep the southern border vaguely covered, but it ended up winning the war while the rest of Europe went "huh?". Egypt was a sideshow and an attempt to get rid of him; he came back at the perfect time and position to hasten the fall of the Directoire and take over.
* The 332nd Fighter Group from World War II, better known as the Tuskegee Airmen, were trained by racist instructors who washed trainees out for the very smallest of mistakes, in an attempt to prove that African-Americans were unsuitable to be fighter pilots. It backfired spectacularly, and the result was a hand-picked elite that wiped the floor with everything it met, and never lost a bomber to enemy action from the formations it was assigned to defend.
* General Norman Schwarzkopf (of Operation Desert Storm fame) actually invoked this one on himself when he was a brigadier general. When he was a 1-star staff officer in the Pentagon he was very dissatisfied with his assignment (deputy assistant chairwarmer for personnel) and, consequently, not impressing anyone in it. His solution? To volunteer to become assistant brigade commander for a new winter-warfare unit forming up in Alaska, an assignment absolutely ''no one'' else wanted. Where, since he actually ''liked'' field command, he was far more motivated to perform well... which led directly to his highly impressing his commanding officer there, which led directly to his promotion to 2-star and his first division command, which set him on a path that ended up with him being one of the most highly regarded 4-star generals of the past 50 years.
{{reflist}}
| |||