Black May - 4
Diu - 3
Myeongnyang - 3
Aegates Islands - 2
Remaining:
Battle of the Aegates Islands – Rome ends 23-year First Punic War, assumes lasting naval dominance
Black May-when the Western Allies got the upper hand against the u-boats for good.
Diu: Portuguese smash the Ottoman/Mamluk/Indian fleet
Marmara (677) - Greek Fire stopped the Arabs outside Constantinople - and the Byzantines would roadblock Islam for another 700 years.
Midway: U.S ambushes Japanese fleet
Myeongnyang - Shattered remnants of Korean fleet holds off and smashes a massively larger Japanese invasion fleet.
Salamis: Greeks turned back Persian fleet
Trafalgar: Brits won against France/Spain in Nap.war
Eliminated:
Sinking of the Lusitania – One sided, but helped doom the Germans in the big picture.
Kamikazi “divine winds” origin – Mongol invasion of Japan fails due to typhoon
H.L. Hunley sinking the Housatonic - The first submarine to sink an enemy vessel.
Baltimore - AKA the attack on Fort McHenry
Flamborough Head – I have not yet begun to fight!
The sinking of the INS Eilat, 1967 - the first battle vessel sunk using ship-to-ship missiles.
Denmark Strait - The Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen of Germany meet the Prince of Wales and the Hood of Britain.
Hampton Roads: USS Monitor vs. CSS Virginia - first ironclad duel
Operation Dynamo – Evacuation of Dunkirk allowed the Allies to live to fight another day
Bismarck Sea: The Cannae of airpower vs naval power
Sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse - The blow from which the British Empire never recovered
Cartagena de Indias – British beaten by Spain in Colombia
New Orleans: Farragut captures biggest Confederate city
Falkland Islands in World War 1 seems pretty decisive.
Lake Erie: Perry defeats British fleet; “We have met the enemy…”
Cape Bon ( 468 ) - Vandals destroy combined Roman fleet, nail in the coffin for the Western Empire.
Noryang – Japanese invasions of Korea repelled
Coral Sea – Introduction of aircraft carriers facing each other
The Battle of the Philippine Sea - aka The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot - The USN destroyed the remnants of the IJN carrier force.
Taranto: ascendancy of the airplane over the “fleet in being” (even more notable considering the small, weak, obsolescent air units involved)
Manila Bay – Led to Dewey being given the unique (at least for USA) honor of Admiral of the Navy
Jutland During WWI- Germany effectively neutralized.
Leyte Gulf: Swan song for Imperial Japan
The Yalu - Japan’s victory was the start of Japanese imperial expansion, and a death blow to the Qing Empire.
Yamen – Mongol-controlled Yuan Dynasty crushed Song Dynasty in China
Glorious First of June: Decisive British win over French
Pearl Harbor - Japan is allowed to run amok and capture large amounts of territory
Quiberon Bay - the cherry on the Year of Victory, it secured control over the Atlantic for Britain and doomed French Canada.
The Masts - Arabs/Islam take to the sea and kick Byzantium butt.
Second Battle of Syracuse/Sicilian Expedition – Athenian expedition cut off/wiped out.
Chesapeake: French defeat British; Cornwallis doomed
Hansan - Brilliant maneuvering leads to key victory in Imjin War.
Sluys - Massive French invasion fleet annihilated, preempting a descent on England.
Lepanto: Ottoman high water (heh) mark
Actium - Octavian defeats Mark Antony; takes Roman Empire.
The Downs - Larger Spanish fleet crushed, rise of Dutch dominance.
The Nile: strategically more important Napoleonic battle than Trafalgar
Tsushima - Japan annihilates the Russian fleet
Gravelins: Spanish Armada turned back by England to meet their famous fate.
Aegospotami - Lysander’s destruction of the Athenian navy finished the Athenian Empire.
Round 19 due by say 2:00 Central Monday. (3 days from now).
I’m taking the heretical approach that Black May was THE most decisive naval battle of WW II, even moreso than Midway. I don’t expect to find much support, but losing almost 20% of your total forces (not committed - that was closer to 40%), and forcing your opponent to recall ALL his forces to port until he could devise tactics/strategy to counter you was even more decisive than the sinking of the Kido Butai.
Diu- 2. The problem with Diu, is that the results of a Portuguese defeat are highly speculative. The Mamluks were not going to make it regardless - Selim the Grim took them out within a few years.
For the Ottomans the Indian Ocean was almost by necessity a quaternary priority. As valuable as the Indian trade was ( and Anatolian copper was in heavy demand in India ), it’s really uncertain just how long they could consistently afford to devote the resources necessary to establish a dominance that excluded the Europeans. Also it appears that Portugal never completely cut the Red Sea trade routes, so the drive to push outwards was even less of an imperative. By contrast the Indian Ocean was of relatively much greater importance to the Portuguese… who of course had fewer resources to spend. So it becomes something of a race between the much wealthier Ottomans with their myriad different ( expensive ) priorities and Portugal, with fewer resources but a much greater focus.
In the long run I’m not sure that I’d bet on the Ottomans in that theatre, even if they had produced a few impressive local victories.
8 left and it’s getting really tough. Aegates Islands and Black May are the last of my B-listers, so they go in. For the last one, Myeongnyang, Midway or Diu?
Myeongnyang was a massive tactical achievement and probably saved the Joseon Kingdom - for what that counts for in the terms of global history.
Midway was a brilliant fluke and a vindication of the USN’s new carrier-task-force doctrine against the IJN’s battleship-centred fleet plans. It likely made no difference to the outcome of the war (the US was going to win, full stop) but arguably had huge consequences for post-war geopolitics (consider if the US had been unable to conduct their island-hopping campaign and had followed the original plan of building up major land forces in the China-Burma-India theatre).
Diu was a victory of technology (carracks vs dhows) at least as striking as the Armada and arguably had the greatest long-term consequences of all - but only arguably, because as Tamerlane points out, it’s by no means certain that the Ottomans would have been willing, or the Mamelukes able, to exploit a victory if they had won one.
I think I’ve got to go for the large-scale (if debatable) consequences here:
So, of the remaining battles, Mamara, Trafalgar, and Salamis have yet to have a vote cast for their removal? Sounds like we’ve got 3 of our Final Four set.
19th Round round. We down to final 5 so will do 1 at a time elimination and 2 votes per person.
Myeongnyang - 9
Aegates Islands - 7
Black May - 7
These 3 are eliminated.
Others got:
Diu - 4
Midway - 3
Remaining:
Diu: Portuguese smash the Ottoman/Mamluk/Indian fleet
Marmara (677) - Greek Fire stopped the Arabs outside Constantinople - and the Byzantines would roadblock Islam for another 700 years.
Midway: U.S ambushes Japanese fleet
Salamis: Greeks turned back Persian fleet
Trafalgar: Brits won against France/Spain in Nap.war
Eliminated:
Sinking of the Lusitania – One sided, but helped doom the Germans in the big picture.
Kamikazi “divine winds” origin – Mongol invasion of Japan fails due to typhoon
H.L. Hunley sinking the Housatonic - The first submarine to sink an enemy vessel.
Baltimore - AKA the attack on Fort McHenry
Flamborough Head – I have not yet begun to fight!
The sinking of the INS Eilat, 1967 - the first battle vessel sunk using ship-to-ship missiles.
Denmark Strait - The Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen of Germany meet the Prince of Wales and the Hood of Britain.
Hampton Roads: USS Monitor vs. CSS Virginia - first ironclad duel
Operation Dynamo – Evacuation of Dunkirk allowed the Allies to live to fight another day
Bismarck Sea: The Cannae of airpower vs naval power
Sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse - The blow from which the British Empire never recovered
Cartagena de Indias – British beaten by Spain in Colombia
New Orleans: Farragut captures biggest Confederate city
Falkland Islands in World War 1 seems pretty decisive.
Lake Erie: Perry defeats British fleet; “We have met the enemy…”
Cape Bon ( 468 ) - Vandals destroy combined Roman fleet, nail in the coffin for the Western Empire.
Noryang – Japanese invasions of Korea repelled
Coral Sea – Introduction of aircraft carriers facing each other
The Battle of the Philippine Sea - aka The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot - The USN destroyed the remnants of the IJN carrier force.
Taranto: ascendancy of the airplane over the “fleet in being” (even more notable considering the small, weak, obsolescent air units involved)
Manila Bay – Led to Dewey being given the unique (at least for USA) honor of Admiral of the Navy
Jutland During WWI- Germany effectively neutralized.
Leyte Gulf: Swan song for Imperial Japan
The Yalu - Japan’s victory was the start of Japanese imperial expansion, and a death blow to the Qing Empire.
Yamen – Mongol-controlled Yuan Dynasty crushed Song Dynasty in China
Glorious First of June: Decisive British win over French
Pearl Harbor - Japan is allowed to run amok and capture large amounts of territory
Quiberon Bay - the cherry on the Year of Victory, it secured control over the Atlantic for Britain and doomed French Canada.
The Masts - Arabs/Islam take to the sea and kick Byzantium butt.
Second Battle of Syracuse/Sicilian Expedition – Athenian expedition cut off/wiped out.
Chesapeake: French defeat British; Cornwallis doomed
Hansan - Brilliant maneuvering leads to key victory in Imjin War.
Sluys - Massive French invasion fleet annihilated, preempting a descent on England.
Lepanto: Ottoman high water (heh) mark
Actium - Octavian defeats Mark Antony; takes Roman Empire.
The Downs - Larger Spanish fleet crushed, rise of Dutch dominance.
The Nile: strategically more important Napoleonic battle than Trafalgar
Tsushima - Japan annihilates the Russian fleet
Gravelins: Spanish Armada turned back by England to meet their famous fate.
Aegospotami - Lysander’s destruction of the Athenian navy finished the Athenian Empire.
Myeongnyang - Shattered remnants of Korean fleet holds off and smashes a massively larger Japanese invasion fleet.
Battle of the Aegates Islands – Rome ends 23-year First Punic War, assumes lasting naval dominance
Black May-when the Western Allies got the upper hand against the u-boats for good.
Round 20 due by say 2:00 Central Friday. (3 days from now).
Well, I poked around my shelves a bit and according to Romilly Jenkins, Marmara ( also known as Syllaeum ) took place after the Arab forces were already in retreat, having given up on taking Constantinople after several consecutive years of failed attempts ( more annual assaults from a staging ground in Cyzicus than a continuous siege ). As Arab forces began to retreat, the Byzantine forces sallied out in pursuit and in two separate engagements on land and sea severely mauled them. The sea engagement was Marmara. Jenkins’ source, the chronicler Theophanes, is available online and confirms this account.
Which means that Marmara was a Carrhae - a tactical whomping, with little long-term strategic import. The survival of Constantinople through Mu’awiya’s assaults was probably of some historical significance, but Marmara was just a capper - a nice cherry on top of an already won battle. It did not occur at a critical juncture in the struggle and indeed had no particular relevance to siege itself. So…
Marmara - 1. Tactically impressive, strategically probably not very important. I’m thinking now it should have gone earlier.
Diu - 1. Highly uncertain strategic significance ( maybe large, maybe not ).