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The Pentagon’s Plan to Fight Zombies and Other Unusual Military Schemes

Khalid Elhassan August 7, 2021 36 min

The US military has a plan to deal with zombies. AMC Studios

The Abraham Crijnssen, which survived the fall of the Dutch East Indies thanks to a creative camouflage plan. Royal Australian Navy

17. If You Can Neither Fight Nor Flee, You Had Best Hide

The Abraham Crijnssen was a Royal Netherlands Navy minesweeper that was built in 1936. She ended up stationed in the Dutch East Indies, today’s Indonesia, which is where WWII in the Pacific found her when Japan commenced hostilities in 1941. By warship standards, the Crijnssen was a minnow. She was 184 feet long, 25 feet wide, had a draft of 7 feet, and displaced a mere 525 tons. She was crewed by only 45 men and was armed with a single 76mm gun plus a pair of 20mm cannons.

The Crijnssen was wholly outmatched by the powerful Imperial Japanese Navy ships that descended upon the Dutch East Indies. Her weak punch was complemented by low speed: her engines could propel her at a maximum speed of 15 knots. In short, she could neither fight nor flee if the Japanese caught sight of her. When you can neither fight nor flee, your best bet is to hide. So the Crifnssen put all her eggs in the basket of a plan to camouflage herself and avoid detection at all costs.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.