I'm suffering from a surfeit of battles. October has a scad of them, but I've also written up most of the ones I am interested in; Hastings, Lepanto, Saratoga, and the destruction of the Summer Palace.
Any suggestions from the readership of a "Decisive Battle" for October?
21 comments:
Battle of Orleans?
How about Agincourt? Although the benefit to the English was modest and fleeting, it decisively proved the advantage of bows over cavalry and started getting Europe out of the habit of thinking that a guy in armor who spends his days practicing swordplay is automatically the best leader for the country.
I'd suggest Gaugamela (the battle that finished off the Persian Empire), Philippi (finished off the Roman Republic and ushered in the Empire).
Yorktown
or
Patay (the reverse Agincourt)
or
do a change of pace if Naval combat interests you, then the battle of the Coral Sea - heralded as an American defeat. It actually forced the Japanese to leave those waters and go at Australia by trekking over the Owen-Stanley mountains in New Guinea where they died like flies from Digger resistance, disease and bombing
or
how about aerial combat in the same theater on 22 September 42 when "Bentnose" Whitehead, Advanced Ops CG of 5th AF sent out (and accompanied) a massive Alpha strike that destroyed Japanese air power in New Guinea and cleared the way the eventual march to the Phillipines. He used cumshawed (stolen) B-25s, major aircraft modifications by Pappy Gunn (a retired Navy enlisted pilot who had been pressed into service as an Army Air Corps Engineering Officer at Port Moresby), and newly developed low-level bombing and strafing tactics.
or
The battle of Arausio - today is the anniversary - possibly not considered decisive, but it certainly made the Romans do a major clean sweep and reorganization of their leadership, strategy, and recruitment.
Anon: Orleans as in the Siege of Orleans, 1429, or the Battles of Orelans in 1870?
Pluto: As you point out, Agincourt has always struck me as one of those "indecisive" decisive battles, similar to Pavia. The French got handed their ass, but as mike pointed out, a couple of years later they were back doing the same thing and it worked, at Patay. Plus Keegan pretty much "did" Agincourt in "Day of Battle". I've got nothing to add to his work...
Leon: Both good ideas...
mike: Patay is good, and a nice reminder that tactics are a mutable thing - today's "decisive" tactic gets reversed tomorrow - we still have this image of the French as armored rockheads charging into the arrow cloud
Coral Sea; would be interesting to try and make a case for it opposed to Midway.
Anyway, all good suggestions. Thanks - I'll cull these over and pick one for next week.
FYI, according to "Shattered Sword," Coral Sea was part of the Midway operation that started early because the local commander had been hoarding planes and supplies. He was in SOO much trouble when he got back home...
Not arguing or anything but Coral Sea was in May, not October.
Took a brief stroll through Wikipedia and found the following battles that might be of interest:
Saratoga (I think you already did that one)
Teutoburg Forest (Ditto)
Sekigahara (decided who got to rule Japan)
Leyte Gulf (a series of alternating one-sided battles that completely destroyed the Japanese Navy, they fought on for 10 more months anyway)
Pluto: Interesting! I may have to do Coral Sea just because there seems to be so much backstory to it...
I've always looked at Leyte as the end of the beginning that started at Midway.
The IJN had started the war as a carrier force with a battleship base, a sort of mirror image of the USN's battlewagon fixation. Pearl Harbor did us the pervers favor of forcing us to rely on carriers and carrier admirals, so by 1942 we were relying on the Nimitzes, Halseys, Kings and Spruances instead of the battleship Old Guard. We killed their carriers at Midway and their carrier genius Yamamoto in the Solomons...so by 1944 the positions were reversed; our fleet carriers ruled the Pacific, and the IJN was sortieing empty flattops and relying on the old battleships to try and win the day. Our BBs were equal to theirs, our tactics (and radar) were better, and ADM Kurita had some sort of immense brain fart...
Y'know, there's something to be said for doing the "Battle off Samar" as the decisive battle for October. Decisive in that it was really Japan's last throw; if Kurita had kept on going and savaged the invasion beaches he might have saved Japan for another month or so...not really "decisive" in the larger sense.
I thought about Sekigahara, too, because I enjoy writing and reading about the period. And it was decisive for Japanese history. Not sure of the wider impact or whether it would have mattered if Tokugawa or Toyotomi became shogun, in the long run
I guess I did not know the rules as I did not check that any of my suggestions except Arausia were actually fought in October.
Regarding Patay, the Brits had their longbowmen there also. But they did not have time to dig in to protect against cavalry. Maybe you could do that next June.
Please don't do Midway. Hollywood has overdone it and we can probably catch it tonight or tomorrow on Turner classics.
The Leyte landings were in October, but that was just another leapfrog. The decisive blow to Japanese forces in the Phillipines came with the landings in Lingayen Gulf in January 45. As for the Battle off Samar, that was just one of three major Naval actions at Leyte on the same day. The Battle of Surigao Strait and the Battle off Cape Engano were arguably just as decisive and part of the whole.
Samuel Morrison, naval historian, claims that the greatest carrier battle of the war was the Battle of the Phillipine Sea in June 44, four months before Leyte. Morrison is quoted as saying "Forces engaged were three to four times those in Midway, and victory was so complete that Japanese naval air could never again engage on any other terms than suicidal". The American submariners and aviators called it the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot".
mike: Actually, I've already "done" Midway in June of last year here: http://dlgellar.blogspot.com/2008/06/decisive-battles-midway-1942.html
When you really think of it, the REAL decisive battles of the Pacific War were fought in the air over Japan and under the sea around it. The combination of submarine blockade and aerial firebombing probably would have brought Imperial Japan to sue for peace some time in 1946. But then the problem would have been the Soviets running wild in the East...
The Pacific War, as important as it was to the Japanese and the Allies who fought there really wasn't that critical a theatre. Once Germany, the only real industrial power of the Axis, was defeated the other two were, and would have been, pretty easy meat.
Anon: You're right about the Philippine Sea; the whole reason that the Japanese sortied empty carrier decks towards Leyte Gulf is that the aviators had died over the Marianas. Their aviation higher emphasized keeping combat pilots in the fleet, rather than as the USN and USAAF did, pulling experienced guys back to train the young padawans. The Americans ate their seed corn in the Turkey Shoot and the IJN never recovered...
For November you could do the battle for Guadalcanal, a combined air/land/sea struggle over a couple of days (Nov 13-14, as I recall).
Very interesting, with both sides making huge mistakes and having troubles capitalizing on the other guy's mistakes. Both sides were at the absolute end of their logistical tether and controlled the local air/sea for about 12 hours a day.
The result was a fairly decisive US win but it didn't have to go that way.
How about the Battle of Río Salado?
I second AEL's suggestion of Rio Salado for October.
But in the future, I hope you will consider Wellington in the peninsular Campaign. Or even his earlier battles in India. Anything but Waterloo.
FDChief,
I'll go with Yorktown. Not only was it decisive but it also will point out that our victory was on French wings.
jim
The battles against the Moors would be interesting although I'm not sure whether the sources would be good enough, they sure didn't believe in fact-checking in those days.
I also second the idea of covering Wellesley's earlier battles. What little I know suggests that they were frequently more interesting than his last and most remembered fight.
How about something from the Yom Kippur war? The Battle of the Chinese Farm ranks as one of the bigger tank engagements and a key part of the Israeli counterattack. On the flip side the opening assault by the Egyptians was also a masterpiece and provided Sadat with enough political capital to actually start peace talks. The initial defense of the Golan also had some epic tank battles, although the Sinai campaigns had a much greater geopolitical effect.
After the fall of Saipan, Tojo's cabinet was forced to resign. This makes it a candidate for one of the most decisive battles of the Pacific in WW2.
After the war, the Marquis Koichi Kido, Lord keeper of the Privy Seal of the Imperial Japanese Government was asked by interrogators at what point they had started to consider that the war was being lost. His answer: "It was early - after the fall of Saipan. It was my opinion at the time that it was advisable to give consideration to discontinuing the war." He had two major reasons.
#1 It meant the home islands would be under intensified air attacks.
#2 It showed the ineffectiveness and abject failure and of the IJN upon which the government and people had relied upon.
It did not happen in October so I am not nominating it now. But consider it for the future. And if you do, then please note not only the main battle itself, but also the efforts of seabees and AAF engineers to build airstrips on the island while the shooting was still going on.
All: Rio Salado looks pretty critical to European history, plus it's not well known and, as such, seems worthy of discussion. I think it may have to wait until NEXT October, because of the research I'll have to do.
Wellington fought several fairly critical battles, both in India and in the Peninsula. My critera for "decisiveness" has been pretty tough, though. Most of his battles in India were just part of the British colonial takeover there and were "decisive" in the way a boulder falling on your head is decisive. If Wellington hadn't won at Assaye he'd have won somewhere else in the same way. There was no real chance that Sind was going to keep the British out. A lot of the colonial battles are like that: Omdurman, for example, was decisive in defeating the Mahdi, but the real defeat was trying to fight bolt-action rifles and machineguns with swords and spears. I want to do the Siege of Technoctitlan just to talk about that, and because I've always felt that Cortez in 1520 and Clive in 1757 were two of the few real chances the Europeans had to get run out of their conquests.
The one Peninsular battle that I think could bear discussion is Vittoria; it really did slam the door to Spain. But it's hard to see how it ends any other way, what with Jourdan and Joseph on the other side..!
Several of the Arab-Israeli War engagements are worth looking at, but, again, given the state of Arab-Israeli relations, it would be hard to consider any one in particular "decisive".
So - I think the winner here is...
Yorktown. It's seldom discussed as a battle (most Americans seem to think that everyone just stood around and Cornwallis just gave up) and it points out some interesting issues of Great Power politics and coalition warfare.
So look here next week for a discussion of "The World Turn'd Upside Down"...
Oooo-rahh! Excellent choice.
And please not to forget the work of the Admiral deGrasse and the French Navy. Hornblower and Nelson be damned.
FDChief,
This months Military History mag has a analysis of Yorktown.
Thought you'd like to look at it before you start wrting on this battle.
jim
FDChief,
I checked the Mil Hist mag and the art. is about Germans fighting Germans at Yorktown.
jim
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