Obviously, there have been hundreds of battles fought.
What I want to know is: What battle (American fought or not) was the most surprising? Or, which one had the most unexpected reversal or underdog win?
Gotta be Midway. Would have been a crushing Japanese win if not for sheer luck.
The Battle of Agincourt (1415) had the English win against the French in spite of overwhelming numbers – about 6,000 English against 36,000 French.
Let us be fair, now; there was a lot more to the battle than luck. The Americans had negated much of the Japanese advantage by breaking their codes, and had a significant stretegic advantage in being better able to conceal the location of their carrier force. Also, you can’t sink an island.
Certainly the battle could have gone either way but it surely was not a huge shock the Americans won, was it? They had roughly equal force in aerial power.
I think Agincourt is a much better choice - the English were vastly inferior in terms of available force and won wholly due to tactics. Gaugamela is similar in that a smaller force defeated a nominally superior one.
Since General Questions is for questions which can be factually answered, let’s park this one in Great Debates.
samclem
In terms of shear numbers, the Battle of Rorke’s Drift, where about 140 British held off over 4000 Zulus, deserves mention. Of course, the British had other advantages…they had the chance to fortify before the battle, the Zulu had no artillery, and British had rifles while the Zulu only had muskets. Still, it was quite a victory for the British in the Zulu War.
The American carriers had some element of surprise but on the whole the Americans got pretty lucky. The first several attacks against the Japanese carriers did no damage whatsoever and the majority of American planes were shot down. Once the American carriers were (belatedly) spotted by the Japanese Admiral Nagumo had ordered his planes re-armed for a strike against the American carriers. The Japanese were literally moments away from launching that strike when, by almost sheer luck, three squadrons of American dive bombers chanced upon the Japanese carriers. I say “chanced” because up till then the dive bombers were not finding the Japanese carriers and were very close to having to return to base due to fuel limitations.
After a day of attacks that saw no damage versus the Japanese this one attack pretty much did them in. With their decks loaded with fully fuelled and armed planes (not to mention fuel lines and ammo for rearming all piled on the deck) a handful of bombs (only one bomb struck Akagi and that was enough…I forget how many bombs hit the other carriers).
The Japanese offensive in the Pacific was pretty much over in the space of about 5 minutes (a fourth Japanese carrier was sunk later). All-in-all I’d say the Americans got very lucky.
I’ll nominate the subsequently named Battle of Watling Street, wherein a Roman legion assisted by fragments of another and surviving auxiliaries went up against an estimated quarter million (?) rebels led by Boudica.
I’m going on memory here, but the details put the Romans at the end of at least several days worth of forced march retreat, cut off from the rest of the Empire, and probably convinced they were all going to die. Three out of four Roman towns in the province were in ashes and there was no prospect of reinforcement or surrender. They had time to choose good ground but not much else.
The battle turned quickly and may have lasted about an hour or so, with estimated Briton casualties somewhere around 80,000. The Romans lost an estimated 400.
Victory, 200 to 1 ratio, close combat, in open field.
That’s good for the resume. :eek:
Whackamole said it about Midway. It isn’t a stretch to think the war in the Pacific was decided there. There’s a legend that, in all the times the US Naval War College has gamed the battle, they’ve never once recreated a US victory.
Another candidate might be Salamis - the Persians had completely overrun the main part of Greece, and driven the Athenians out of Athens to a small island off the coast. Themistocles convinced the refugees to man their remaining boats and attack the Persian fleet against 2:1 numbers. They won, re-landed on the mainland, and drove the Persian army all the way out of Greece.
Here’s one which might not surprise modern military thinkers but was a huge cultural shock at the time it took place:
Sailboat
There is the Battle of New Orleans. British troops outnumbered American troops by more than 2:1 (give or take…about 12,000 British versus 5,000 Americans).
The Americans suffered 71 casualties while the British casualties numbered over 2,000. Only a 28:1 ratio so not as good as the 200:1 ratio mentioned by Grossbottom but still pretty darn amazing.
Sad thing is this battle was not necessary. The Treaty of Ghent had been signed a few weeks earlier ending the War of 1812 but word had not reached these troops.
Super Bowl III. Sure, the line (Colts -18) was a little overblown, but it shocked the country and changed the course of American history.
I’d say for sheer mis-match in terms of technological supremacy the few defeats inflicted on the Europeans during the colonisation of Africa stand out:
Isandlwana
The several defeats inflicted on the French by Samori Ture (although he wisely avoided pitched battles), such as Dabadugu.
But crucially, the Japanese fighters couldn’t get back to sufficient altitude to defend against the wave that did the damage.
I would agree that Midway was arguably the most significantly decisive battle in military history, and it’s one of my favourite battles, but the OP asked for history’s greatest underdog win; like it or not, the forces at Midway were essentially even. This isn’t about importance, it’s about underdog upsets.
Yorktown, Enterprise and Hornet had 223 warplanes between them, plus the force on Midway Island of some 60 planes, including the Catalina flying boats with more range, and therefore vastly more reconnaissance value, than anything available to Nagumo. Nagumo’s task force had 261 warplanes - the sides were dead even, really, with the Americans having a few more planes but I’ll grant the B-17s were of little use. Japan had more surface fighting power but that was of no consequence in a carrier battle. Japan had no strategic surprise advantage - the Americans knew they were coming and what their intentions were. Why was this such an amazing upset?
Whack-A-Mole does a nice job recoutning how the battle went, but that’s Feynman’s old joke about how “isn’t it amazing I saw the license plate GGE 317 today!” One side or the other was going to win, and it was going to be a lucky break either way because the odds were so even.
And frankly, it wasn’t all luck. The fact that Dive 8 found the Japanese task force when it did was not merely random chance; they had been alerted to the general area of the Japanese force before the Japanese had been alerted to theirs, because of superior reconnaissance and Nagumo’s regrettable decision to attack Midway, which gave away the direction of his fleet. Fletcher then acted aggressively while Nagumo was indecisive at the wrong time. The “failed” torpedo bomb attack was not a total failure, but was in fact instrumental in the success of the dive attack because it exhausted the fuel and ammo of the Japanese fighter cover (and the dive attack happened at 10 AM, 3 hours after the torpedo attack, not “after a day of attacks.”)
The destruction of Kaga, Sorya and Akagi was a direct result of American aggressiveness and committal of almost its entire force at the moment of decision, which is pretty much how most battles are won, and they very smartly continued the attack the following day (bagging Soryu and sinking the cruiser Mikuma as well) when they could have very reasonably let what was left of the Japanese escape.
I find it impossible to believe you could not recreate an American victory; the Japanese did not enjoy any insurmountable, or even significant, advantage of any sort. I bet many recreations would result in a Japanese victory, because take away any of those mistakes and it’s a new ballgame, but it was a very even matchup.
Granted the two forces were out there and something was going to happen. In a carrier battle of that era one could say it all turns on a lucky shot by a bomber or torpedo plane to get one in. That said the Americans were still very lucky to get the convergence of events they did that turned the battle.
- You had Nagumo’s indecisiveness at a critical juncture (only obvious in hindsight).
- You had the Japanese fighter cover off chasing the earlier torpedo planes rather than returning to their cover of the carriers.
- You had Dive 8 almost miss the Japanese carriers altogether despite knowing their general location.
- Dive 8 could have turned around and gone back to base (fuel issues) rather than hunt a bit more and no one would have thought them wrong for it.
- Dive 8 comes upon the Japanese carriers precisely when they are at their most vulnerable. Pure luck there.
- Give Nagumo 5 more minutes and much of that strike force would have been launched and off the decks which may have been enough to save some or all of their carriers even if they were hit by bombs (admittedly an open question…ordinance would still have been above decks and Japanese damage control was nowhere near as good as American damage control). If that strike had been launched the fate of the American carriers would have been in serious doubt.
- The dive bombers could have missed. Granted always a possibility but up till then no attack succeeded in laying any damage on the Japanese carriers. Why the others failed where these guys succeeded I do not know but clearly some well placed bombs were all the difference.
It is this improbable convergence which makes the Americans lucky.
Yes, those are good examples of pure luck for the Japanese. Given that the US had broken the Japanese code and knew the approximate area of the fleet, it was terribly lucky for the Japanese that it took so long for the US scouts to find them. Think of the confusion for the Japanese if their ships had been attacked 20 minutes earlier as all the planes with no fuel or ammunition were trying to land! They wouldn’t have even been able to use their anti-aircraft guns for fear of hitting their own planes.
Luck is a point of view.
An entire Roman army annihilated at the peak of the empire’s power, 3 legions wiped out completely and the northern border of the empire set for centuries.
One amazing feat was the battle that finally ousted the Germans from Italy.
On February 8, 1945, men from the 10th Mountain Division climbed up a 2,000 foot cliff to Riva Ridge. The Germans had been up there for years. From this perch they had control of the Po Valley and Mount Belvedere on the other side of it.
The cliff was so gnarly that the Germany’s elite mountain forces, the Gebirgstruppe, never even defended it. Then one morning, a handful of men from the 10th appeared out of the dawn fog and took the ridge. Not only did the men climb it, they climbed it at night, having spent the day sleeping in the snow at the base so movement wouldn’t give them away.
With the ridge in American hands, the allied troops easily took Mount Belvedere (where Bob Dole was injured) and gained control of the Apenines and the Po Valley. The Germans surrendered soon after. There only condition: to surrender to the commander of the 10th, General Hays.
It was the end of Germans in Italy.
I’m surprised that no one’s mentioned Marathon or Cannae.