Greatest improbably military victories?

F

Fievel121

2,500+ Posts
Trying the get a list of most imporbable battlefield victories in history,

1) San Jacinto
2) Whichever battle 300 was based off of nevermind, I forgot they lost....
3) RAF in the Battle over Britian
4) The one for Henry the Fifth?


Surely I'm missing alot of good ones.
 
The Battle off Samar - Taffy 3 vs the Northern Attack Force. Hard to think of anything that can beat that since the "300" battle wasn't a victory, but a Pyrrhic defeat.

It would be about equivalent to the guys at the Alamo marching out of the fort and causing the Mexican army in the field to retreat in disarray.
 
The 300 battle was called the battle of Thermopylae. The Greeks lost the battle, but caused heavy casualties and allowed the time for the rest of their army to from and eventually win the war. When the Alamo occurred it was closely compared to Thermopylae for all of those reasons.
 
2006 Rose Bowl
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The LinkJust because it's fun to read about it, again and again.
 
The biggest military upset in Texas was not at San Jacinto; it was the Civil War Battle of Sabine Pass. There, 46 men with six cannons at Fort Griffin turned back a Union invasion force of four gunboats and eighteen troop transports carrying 5,000 Union soldiers. The Union withdrew, never to threaten Texas again, after losing two gunboats and having 200 soldiers captured by the Texans, who did not suffer a single casualty.
 
Thermopylae had almost no effect on the course of the second Persian invasion of Greece. In fact, Sparta as a whole didn't do a lot in either Persian invasion. Meanwhile, the Athenians won two victories which ended two huge invasions.

At Marathon in 480, 10,000 Athenians facing more than twice their numbers used a feigned withdrawal to lure the Persians into the archetypal double envelopment.

Thermopylae was the land skirmish that accompanied the naval battle at Artemisium, which was fought by Athens and was indecisive. A month later, the Athenians led a fleet against the Persian fleet, and stomped their asses despite being outnumbered 3-4 to 1. Salamis may have been the single most important battle of all time, but Thermopylae had no effect apart from being a neat story.
 
The greatest victory was a recovery after a terrible defeat.

The successful evacuation of 330,000 Allied soldiers from Dunkirk on the "Dunkirk Little Ships" was an incredible victory for the Allies.

In reply to:
Click to expand...
 
IMO, Midway has to rank high on the scale. It was a war changing victory against heavy odds. The Japanese Pacific expansion was stopped permanently and much of it's veteran naval aviation was lost. They were still formidable but they never recovered.
 
I was going to say Luke Skywalker v. the Death Star, but then again, he used to bullseye womp rats in his T-16 back home and they're not much bigger than two meters.
 
Washparkhorn, I can't agree with you about the Dunkirk evacuation for two reasons. First, Hitler let the Allied troops go as a peace overture to Britain and to preserve this thinly spread troops to complete the conquest of France and the rest of Europe. Second, Allied troops at Dunkirk actually outnumbered their German pursuers.
 
Henry V's English army defeated the French at Agincourt. The English had around five thousand archers and one thousand dismounted knights and men-at-arms. The French between 25,000 and 30,000 total including 1,200 mounted knights.

Casualties were 112 English killed and an unknown number wounded and 7,000 to 10,000 French killed and wounded (mostly killed). About 1,500 nobel French prisoners were taken.

KIA included Antoine of Burgandy, Duke of Brabant; Philip of Burgandy, Count of Nevers; Charles I d'Albret, Count of Dreux and the Constable of France; George Edward Stewart III, LOrd of Shetland; Edward of Norwich, 2nd Duke of York and Michael de la Pole, 3rd Earl of Suffolk.

Add to the llist:
The US at the Battle of New Orleans
 
71 - Thanks I couldn't remember Agincourt.

Have to veto Battle of N.O's since the war was actually over when they fought it....
 
The Battle of San Jacinto still astounds me. 1,360 Mexican soldiers vs. 910 Texan soldiers--every Mexican soldier was killed or captured, while there were only 8 Texans killed and 23 wounded--and it was all over in 18 minutes.
 
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French and Indian War
Battle of Ticonderoga 1758

3,600 French troops fought off an invasion of 15,000 combined British and American troops, causing them to retreat with heavy casualties. The victory bought the French another year before they finally lost the war and their reign over Canada.











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I don't remember all the details of San Jacinto, but didn't the Texans surprise the Mexican army during siesta, filling them with lead while visions of cerveza were dancing in their head? A well planned and executed victory, but not really improbable.
 
Alesia in 52BC.
60,000 Romans lead by Julius Caesar defending 2 front lines against 330,000 Gauls.

Romans 12,800 killed or wounded
Gauls 250,000 killed or wounded, 40,000 captured.
 
A lot of these have a smaller superior force defeating a larger ragtag army or a small force in a nearly impregnable position.

At Bannockburn the Scottish routed the English who had both a much larger and superior army. They had been fighting quite consistently with the English winning nearly every time.
 
In no way was Taffy 3 adequate to hold off the force it managed to divert in the battle of Samar. If the Japanese hadn't been spooked and inexplicably withdrawn, there would have been horrific carnage. Halsey was chasing an impotent force with overwhelming force. Taffy 3 took on the heart of the Japanese Navy with destroyers, destroyer escorts and escort carriers. Through amazing courage, fight and effort the ragtag fleet made such a scrap that the Japanese commander mistook destroyers for cruisers. It was an improbable victory wrought from amazing courage and personal sacrifice.
As far as othe improbable victories, the Japanese taking Singapore from the British was pretty amazing.
 
Those were of a small scale compared to my entry: a large, well-trained army, strategically deployed and organized, defeated by a single enemy combatant-yes, I'm talking about Listeater!
 
Halsey also didn't know the enemy force was impotent. He knew that there were 4 Japanese carriers nearby and went after the CVs instead of BBs. He also didn't know that he was leaving the transports with almost no escort. Both Halsey and Kinkaid, thanks to several very weird communication miscues, thought that the other guy was guarding the landings and acted logically according to that belief. The funny thing is that if Halsey had done what most people think he should have, he'd have been following the same course of action that Admiral Spruance had gotten soundly criticized for a few months earlier.

I could keep going but I don't want to get away from the point that 7 escort carriers (which quickly became useless in terms of dealing out damage as their small complements of planes quickly ran out of armament) and 6 destroyers not only caused 4 battleships, 8 cruisers, and around 15 destroyers but also dished out more damage than they took.

Bannockburn is a good example I hadn't thought of - good point on the small forces in amazing defensive positions. The Scots and Taffy 3 didn't have that.

Dunkirk and Midway weren't really improbable. Midway was decisive in a way, Dunkirk was a very important salvaging of a lost battle, but neither one was especially unlikely.
 
I would put Cannae on the list, 30,000 men in the carthaginian army destroyed 70,000 or so romans.

I think as a whole the first crusade has to be on the list.


As for Taffy 3 that is interesting. The threat of air and other sea power actually won the battle, not the US ships directly involved. The fact that US airpower sunk the Musashi and perhaps other ships (I forget) in prior days is what probably won the battle. I did read the lat Stand of the Tin Can Soldiers, worth reading for sure.

www.amazon.com/Last-Stand-Tin-Sailors-Extraordinary/dp/0553802577
 
i was playing risk and had a comfortable foothold in europe the only thing standing in my way of total world domination was red with 2 men. i attacked with my force of 15 and by some miracle red defeated all 15 of my men. the risk didn't pay off.

red used his 4 cards and proceeded to wipe my men off the face of the map.
 
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