They worked better when they had ammunition.
One of my Political Science professors had a thing about this “Dogger Bank Incident” of 1904, in which the Russian Navy, sailing off to go to war with Japan on the other side of the world, mistook the British North Sea fishing fleet for the Japanese Navy in disguise and shot it up.
(https://leeduigon.com/2014/04/26/a-lesson-in-folly/)
The men responsible for this insane decision, Prof. Mansbach pointed out, were experts and professionals–not escaped mental patients. The lesson: Be afraid, be very afraid, when the experts insist they know what they’re doing.