History's most decisive battles

[Skyryder]

Been off line for a few days decorating the office etc. Done be a bit of reading to fill in time in the evening. Mostly history stuff which brings me to the subject.

There's been some decisive battles in history that if the other side have had won would have changed the course of history. There's a lot to choose from so the the question is both for ancient and modern battles. One of each. Those that are interested can google reples.

Mine would be

Ancient: Battle of Marathon. If the Persians had not retreated after the defeat of the Athenians they could hvae conqured all of Greece and probably all of Asia Minor.

Modern: Battle of the Atlantic. If the German U boats had been able to cut off supplies from America Britain would not have been able to maintain the war. Many maintain that the Battle of Britain was the crucial battle. In many respects it was but there is a school of thought that if Hitler had invaded Britain prior to the Battle of Britain he may well have succeeded due to Luftwaffe superiorty in numbers. It was Goring who persuaded Hitler that the British airforce needed to be desroyed prior to invasion. Big mistake.



Skyryder


Well that's my choice

Skyryder

[Indiana_Jones]

I agree fully with the Atlantic, Churchill said later on, the u-boats were the things that truely scared him. And I'm a silent hunter III g33k, so yeah lol.

-Indy

[gijoe1313]

For me ...

Ancient Battle :

Megiddo, Israel .. one of those old testament smack down sort of things between the Egyptians and the King of Syria (Kadesh ruler). Thutmose was a Pharaoh of the old school and he basically marched into Palestine to sort out the trouble makers. Thutmose the III was victorious and asserted Egyptian pre-eminence in the area. Apparantly it was one of the earliest battles that was documented and as a side note, this battle at Meggido was meant to be the spot where Armageddon was to occur!

Modern Battle :

Waterloo (no, not the Abba song! ) I can't be fecked typing it out so I cheated this and found linky~! http://www.lbdb.com/TMDisplayBattle.cfm?BID=256

I love war, I love the implements and technology that goes into war... but forever hate the implications and ramifications that only war can bring

[Biff]

Falklands...not so much as it being a decisive battle as such, but the fact that the Brits managed to get a Vulcan to the 'shitty isles' in the first place, as the Falklands are some 4,000 beyond the Vulcans normal strike range. And the Vulcan itself is/was an antique of a plane some three (?) weeks away from being decommissioned by the RAF at the time of the Argentine invasion.

I highly recommend a book entitled Vulcan 607. A wonderful narrative history detailing how British ingenuity and determination ensured that Stanley couldn't be used as a fighter base by the Argies.

[sAsLEX]

Biggest waste of money ever Biff, what did the WAFUs acheive with that bombing run? It was a political move as the RAF didnt want to be left out.

[Skyryder]

Biggest waste of money ever Biff, what did the WAFUs acheive with that bombing run? It was a political move as the RAF didnt want to be left out.

Can't remember if the Falklands came before Desert Storm of after but either way Maggie was trying to keep up with Bush or Bush wanted to out do the Brits. It was after all more about ego and Maggie Thatchers pride. I see the Argintines are making noises again about the Falkland or as the call them the Maldives.


Skyryder

[pzkpfw]

Can't remember if the Falklands came before Desert Storm of after

! !? ?! ???? !!!!!

Falkland or as the call them the Maldives

Malvinas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkland_Islands

Maldives: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maldives



(Stop drinking the anti-freeze!)

[Indiana_Jones]

Maybe not that decisive, but the chase for the Bismarck is one of my fav's.

They got very lucky with those old Swordfish hitting her rudder!

and some geek made this video using Silent hunter III

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CsZONf549g[/YOUTUBE]

DAS BOOT!!!

-Indy

[Sanx]

Many maintain that the Battle of Britain was the crucial battle. In many respects it was but there is a school of thought that if Hitler had invaded Britain prior to the Battle of Britain he may well have succeeded due to Luftwaffe superiorty in numbers. It was Goring who persuaded Hitler that the British airforce needed to be desroyed prior to invasion. Big mistake.

No ... the Germans realised they could not invade the UK without defeating the Royal Navy first. Even though the Germans had massive superiority in numbers, they could not take on the Royal Navy to an extent that would have allowed them to ship tens of thousands of soldiers and equipment over the English Channel. It's only 26 miles wide, but it may as well have been a thousand.

The British air force protected, amongst other things, the naval bases that were all-important to the defence of the UK. The Battle of Britain was designed to soften, and test out, those defences. And they almost succeeded. It was only Churchill's rather odd, but in hindsight genius, decision to hand over the responsibility for aircraft manufacture to a newspaper baron, Lord Beaverbrook, with no experience of the aviation industry that kept the RAF in the game.

[Indiana_Jones]

The German's needed to control the air, and thus the channel. The British owned the channel from day one, and kept it that way till the end.

-Indy

[Dave Lobster]

Can't remember if the Falklands came before Desert Storm of after but either way Maggie was trying to keep up with Bush or Bush wanted to out do the Brits. It was after all more about ego and Maggie Thatcher's pride. I see the Argintines are making noises again about the Falkland or as the call them the Maldives.


Skyryder

Nonsense. Bush was a vice president at the time, to Reagan. It was 1982. Desert Storm was ten years later.

Mrs Thatcher had a task force ready within days to retake what was/is British Sovereign land. She's the only person that (the formerly Great) Britain has had as PM with a spine for fifty years.

Had she not done this, can you imagine the ramifications?


The argies are making noises again because they know the brit forces are already stretched trying to keep the mudslums down. And, there's hardly any helis left in the RAF. They could easily retake the Falkland Islands, and britain could do precious little about it without SPAM help. I doubt Bush's god would be talking to him much about that..



Decisive Battle? Imagine if Operation Barbarossa had been a success.. We'd be living in a very different world now. I doubt we'd have any mudslums at all to worry about.

[Indiana_Jones]

Decisive Battle? Imagine if Operation Barbarossa had been a success.. We'd be living in a very different world now. I doubt we'd have any mudslums at all to worry about.

But that's not a battle, that's a campagin. One which the Germans were never going to win.

They should of watched what happened to Napoleon lol

-Indy

[The Pastor]

well once I was haxin the cs pretty hard on d3dust, i only had 1 clip left on the degal - 7 rounds, and it was 8 cts vs me, i managed 4hs well actually 5 but the last one was a bink - took two shots to kill one in the head the other in the stomach, so i was out of ammo and had 2 guys left I managed to find a dirsty ak lying around but im not used to the recoil and suck pretty hard at it, I saw one guy run around the corner and was thinking to myself BOOOM HEADSHOT but then his buddy ran around with his 30 call awp, put a massive hole in leg but I had 10 health left, so quick as dick I sprayed and prayed, wiped him out but my clip was empty so out came the knife and I slashed that dirty ct to bits to win the round.

[Mr Merde]

As a former soldier and an amatuer student of history, especially warfare, I find it hard to pinpoint a "decisive" or "great" battle that changed the course of world events.

All those that have been named rank as exceptional events but so many more have shaped the world as it is today.

Take for example the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

The influence of the Normans upon the culture that was the british Isles at the time. was enormous and our language still bears witness to this today. it paved the way to hundreds of years af warfare between the British and the French.

The british Civil war, this gave us a much changed parliamentary system.

The American Civil War, in my opinion the first of the modern wars. They used trench warfare, submarines, ironclad gunships, machine guns, arial observation platforms, breech loading weapons.

What about the campaigns of Julius Caesar. The Roman civilisation gave so much to the world and still does. Witness this in that the British "pound" still in use is a decendant from the Roman "punt et libre" (excuse my spelling) and as such pre empted the Euro by about 2000 years as a universal European monetary system.

The incursions into China by the Mongols led to the creation of the Great Wall. Could this wall have led to the insular mindset iof the chinese race that still persists today?

What about the sacking of Syracuse, in Sicily, by the Romans. This directly led to the killing of one of the worlds greatest thinkers. A man who had discovered calculus almost 2000 years before it was "rediscovered" by Newton. This man was Archimedes, killed by a roman soldier by accident as his capture was a specific objective for the battle.

I could go on for a long time on this subject.

Needless to say every war is notable in its own way. They all cause great suffering and loss. Unfortunately it seems that a lot of our greatest achievements have come about as a result of warfare. Social and technological advances seem to proliferate either as a concequence of warfare.

My 2 Cents

Mr

[Biff]

Biggest waste of money ever Biff, what did the WAFUs acheive with that bombing run? It was a political move as the RAF didnt want to be left out.

You're joking right ?!

Disabling, or at least reducing your enemy's air capabilities is one of the most important tasks of any modern warfare. By putting craters in Stanley's air field the Argies weren't able to fly their fast jets out of the airport, which helped give the Brits air superiority, which in turn ensured that the incoming naval fleet and ground forces were better protected by Brit fighters. Basic military tactics in any battle.