Dingducky, you're probably thinking about the line "I could teach monkeys to fly better than that" from Battle of Britain.
Rolfe2, your story reminds me of an experiment by the Soviets to train dogs to blow up enemy tanks. They trained the dogs to pick up mines with their mouths, then run under a tank, drop the mine and run back out. It wasn't until they turned them lose on the battlefield that they realized the should've trained the dogs using
German tanks as targets
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Per dementia ad astra