When you think of a military war, you probably picture soldiers fighting other soldiers. You think of tanks and trenches and serious geopolitical conflicts. But in the year 1932, the government of Australia officially declared war on a completely different kind of enemy. They sent fully armed troops into the dusty outback to fight a massive flock of flightless birds.
It sounds like a bad comedy movie. But the Great Emu War was a very real military operation. And the most embarrassing part of the whole historical event is that the heavily armed humans actually lost the fight.
The Massive Feathered Invasion
After the first World War, many Australian veterans started new lives as wheat farmers in the western part of the country. They worked hard to grow crops in the dry dirt. But they quickly ran into a massive problem. Around twenty thousand giant emus migrated right into their farming territory.
These birds are huge and incredibly hungry. They stand up to six feet tall and can run incredibly fast. They smashed right through the wooden fences and started eating all the valuable wheat. The farmers were desperate and begged the government for help.
So the Minister of Defence decided to solve the bird problem with absolute brutal force. He sent a military commander named Major Meredith along with soldiers and fully automatic Lewis machine guns.
Bullets Versus Feathers
The soldiers drove their trucks out into the fields expecting an easy victory. They spotted a massive group of the giant birds and opened fire. But they immediately realized they had made a terrible mistake. The emus did not just stand there and take the hit.
The birds instantly scattered in every single direction. They ran at nearly thirty miles per hour and dodged the heavy gunfire with crazy zigzag movements. The soldiers simply could not aim fast enough to hit the panicked animals.
The military even tried mounting a machine gun onto the back of a moving truck to chase them down. But the dusty ground was so bumpy that the shooter could not fire a single accurate shot. To make things worse, the guns kept jamming at the worst possible moments.
The Ultimate Military Humiliation
After several days of completely useless fighting, the military realized they were wasting thousands of expensive bullets. They had barely managed to stop a few dozen birds out of a flock of twenty thousand. The local newspapers started making fun of the army. They pointed out that the emus had brilliant military tactics and easily outsmarted the human soldiers.
The government was totally humiliated and officially ordered the troops to pull out of the area. Major Meredith later admitted that the birds were basically invincible to their weapons.
The farmers eventually had to rely on building better fences instead of calling in the infantry. It remains one of the funniest and most bizarre military defeats in recorded human history.
References: National Museum of Australia, Scientific American, Atlas Obscura