A senior military or naval commander does not indeed cannot act in lonely isolation but is fettered by the organization to which he belongs. He is like a computer or telephone exchange whose modus operandi is based on rules which may have little relevance to the tasks it is called upon to perform. In these chapters, that follow we shall be examining some well-known cases of military incompetence to discover if possible the precise reasons for and the common denominators of these events. For the moment, however, let us consider one brief and less well-known incident which illustrates how the smooth flow of information through the brains of senior commanders may be so distorted that their decisions prove catastrophic. The culprits in this