History buffs: "underdog" battles?

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Marko Kloos

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I've been reading up some more on the battle of Agincourt, and I tried to come up with historical battles where the weaker and numerically inferior force solidly trounced the opponent. Here's what I can come up with off the top of my head:

Agincourt: Five thousand English longbow archers nail twenty thousand French knights into the mud. To add insult to injury, the English are mostly peasant draftees, while the French field and lose most of their high-ranking knights and nobility.

Stirling Bridge: William Wallace and his merry band rout the mighty English army with a far inferior force as they attempt to cross Stirling Bridge.

Rourke's Drift: A scant hundred English infantry yokels with Henry-Martinis fight off a two-day onslaught of six thousand spear-wielding Zulus.

Bannockburn: Robert the Bruce uses terrain and superior tactics against the English army, pinning and routing fifteen thousand English under Edward II with a scant six thousand Scots. The Scottish schiltrons prevail against the invincible English heavy cavalry, a feat unheard of in medieval warfare until then.

There are many more battles where the underdogs lost the fight after a long and heroic struggle (Thermopylae, Alamo etc.). What else was fought along the lines of the above battles, with the "weaker" army living to tell about it?
 
Crecy, the battle that makes the actions of the French at Agincourt all the more baffling since they'd had their crepes folded in an almost identical fashion by the English before.

Moving a few miles northeast and half a millenium into the future, we have the seizure of the fortress of Eben Emael by the Fallschirmjaeger, and four years later, the defense of Bastogne by the "Screaming Eagles" of the 101st.

The Marines fighting their way out of the encirclement at Chosin is a tale for the ages, as well.

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"..but never ever Fear. Fear is for the enemy. Fear and Bullets."
10mm: It's not the size of the Dawg in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog!

[This message has been edited by Tamara (edited May 13, 2000).]
 
Originally posted by lendringser:
[I tried to come up with historical battles where the weaker and numerically inferior force solidly trounced the opponent.

battle of leyte gulf, 3 dd's and 3 DE's

vs 2 BB's 5 CA's and 10 DD's(more or less)

totaly mindblowing battle.

rms/pa
Click to expand...
 
The Winter War: Finland holds out against USSR an inflicts 1:9 or 1:10 casualty ration AND ends up with more gear than they started with.
 
rms/pa:

"I intend to take this ship into harm's way, anyone who's afraid to die better get off now."

"It was like a puppy getting smacked by a truck..."

You're right, Leyte Gulf and specifically the heroics of 'Taffy 3', was pretty heady stuff...

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"..but never ever Fear. Fear is for the enemy. Fear and Bullets."
10mm: It's not the size of the Dawg in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog!

[This message has been edited by Tamara (edited May 13, 2000).]
 
The Wagon Box fight where 40 soldiers from the US Army's 18th Infantry Regiment defeted several hundred Sioux warriors.
 
Battle of Chancellorsville. May, 1863.

Lee's last great victory, but it cost him Stonewall Jackson, a vicitm of friendly fire.

Fightin' Joe Hooker had Lee outnumbered 2:1 at least and Lee still rolled up his lines and sent him packin' his bags. But, after losing Jackson, Lee's "right arm," he was never the same commander again. Too bad.

The Leyte Gulf thing was amazing. The Gambier Bay and assorted escorts put up such a fight that the Japanese BBs thought they faced a bigger force and got a case of cold feet. Makes you wonder what would have happened if Yamamoto had still been around.

Battle of Midway is another case of the underdog carrying the day. I suggest Walter Lord's Incredible Victory if you're interested. One of the best books about the battle IMHO. The heroism of Torpedo 8 and its skipper John Waldron was also very heady stuff...


[This message has been edited by Gopher a 45 (edited May 13, 2000).]
 
Two points.

1. The troops at Rourke's Drift were WELSH not English!

2. At the battle of Agincourt, the French planned to cut off the middle fingers of the English longbowmen, so that they could no longer "Pluck yew".

To this day the up raised middle finger and a modern version of the phrase "Pluck yew" commemorate the taunt hurled at the defeated French Knights by the victorious English archers.

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BOYCOTT SLICK & WESSON

"To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it."
Confucius
 
Would the Battle of Trafalgar count? 27 British ships against 33 Spanish and French ships.

No British ships were lost, compared to 20 French/Spanish vessels that went to the bottom.

LawDog
 
PTGDVC:

Right on! The troops who fought at Rorkes Drift were members of the 24th Reigement of Foot. A Wesh regiment in the British Army/
 
Cannae 216BC...Hannibal (40,000) utterly annihilates the Romans (80,000). 70,000 Romans killed, 7000 taken prisoner and only 3000 escaped.

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"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" RKBA!
 
LawDog & DC,

Good ones! Although allowing any force commanded by Admiral Lord Nelson or Hannibal to be considered the 'underdog' may be stretching the term a bit... ;)

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"..but never ever Fear. Fear is for the enemy. Fear and Bullets."
10mm: It's not the size of the Dawg in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog!
 
There was an encounter of some sorts between part of a SEAL team and about a regiment of NVA around Ban Me Tout?? Perhaps Harry Humphries could provide the specifics.

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Better days to be,

Ed
 
The first battle of Wake island in early WW2. 400 marines and 5 wildcats drive off the Japanese invasion force, sinking two destroyers, damaging the Japanese flagship and six other ships and causing between 400-500 casualties among the Japanese.

The only invasion turned back in WW2.

The battle of Midway needs no introduction.

The defense of Henderson Field by the first Marine Division for four months is a classic.

How about the AVG (Flying tigers) defeat of the Japanese armored column at the Salwein Gorge (Burma)


Geoff Ross
 
Not exactly a victory, but how about the French Foreign Legion at Cameroun in 1863? 47 of them against ~3,000 Mexicans. The last five made a bayonet attack, and were stopped by a white flag so the Mexicans could offer surrender terms so generous they can only be called a truce. Does just being allowed to walk away from it count when you're outnumbered 60-1?


Rommel's first big advance was amazing, as was his second. Barbarossa was the underdog doing well----for a while.

Michael Wittman at Villers Bocage used his one Tiger tank to blow up dozens of Allied tanks and softer vehicles.

Saburo Sakai, while blind in one eye, took on 16 F6Fs and emerged without a bullet hole in his aircraft. Immelman et al did similar things, and Hartmann was known to bounce entire squadrons of P-51s. Marseille took out 17 aircraft in one day. There was a guy in either Korea or Viet Nam who had 32 MiGs dancing with him and survived.

Otherwise, there's the German merchant raider Pinguin sinking the British heavy cruiser Sydney.

How do we score two guys in a rowboat who sank a submarine in WW1 with hand grenades?

I know Chosin and Wake have been mentioned, but they were magnificent. Cannae is hard to knock, too. Chosin and Wake give me a warm, squishy feeling, though. Either that, or I need diapers ;)
Steve
 
The Regiment at Rourke's Drift was the 24th South Wales Borderers. Originally raised in 1689 as Dering's Regiment, it was numbered as the 24th Foot in 1751. I believe they were sent to quell the rebellion in the colonies and arrived in time to surrender at Yorktown.

The Penguin did not sink the HMAS Sydney. Credit goes to the Kormorman under Theodore Detmers. What makes this a victory of note is that the Kormorman was an auxilary cruiser - that is, a disguised merchantman. Like the more famous Atlantis, she plyed the trade routes and snuck up on unsuspecting merchantmen with intent to capture or destroy. While both the Sydney and the Kormorman had 6" guns (Sydney had 8 6" guns arranged in 4 turrets) the Kormorman's guns were of WW I or earlier vintage and did not have the range of the Sydney and were arranged such that her broadside consisted of only 4 of those 6 guns. Further, the Sydney had the advantage of armor and speed and could choose her battle. Detmers played the one card he had: deception. By protraying himself as an inept merchantman incapable of hoisting the proper signal flags, he lured the Sydney into complacency and within range of his guns. At close range, Detmers then hoisted his ensign and let loose with a salvo at close range, took out the Sydney's conning tower (command and control), torpedoed her (which put two turrets out of action). While the battle was mutually fatal and the Sydney limped off to the horizon (and purportedly exploded), that an armed merchantman took out a light cruiser is quite a feat. For you naval buffs, Neptun models of Germany makes an excellant 1/1250 scale model of the Kormorman.

Another remarkable battle was between the Stephen Hopkins and the German Auxiallary Cruiser Stier. Like the Kormorman, the Stier had 6 150 mm guns of WW I (or earlier) vintage. Her opponent was a slower (11.5 knots compared to 14 knots) liberty ship manned by civilians along with a naval gun crew. The naval gun crew, known as the Armed Guard, were reservist of all ages who were unfit for duty (or unlucky to be passed up) upon a regular ship and generally commanded by an ensign, put up such a terrific fight, that the German skipper believed he had unwittingly attacked an armed merchant cruiser instead of a merchantman. The Stier career as a raider ended as a result of this battle.

[This message has been edited by 4V50 Gary (edited May 13, 2000).]
 
I wish I could remember all the particulars, but there was, during WW2 a British( I believe) seaman picked out of the water by a German cruiser as a POW who is credited with CAPTURING said ship. Seems they put into an inlet on an uninhabited island to repair hull damage, the fellow knocked out a sentry,escaped ashore with an M98 Mauser & ammo and pinned down their repair crew long enough for an allied group to get there and take charge. For full details, ask Jeff Cooper. crankshaft
 
Sorry. Got my cruiser/raider engagements mixed up. Pinguin lasted 11 minutes against Cornwall, which was a little more representative of how that kind of fight is supposed to go.

I also remembered Doolittle's Tokyo raid and the Marine Brigade at Belleau Wood.

Is the Enola Gay eligible, or is that just sick?

Steve
 
Stephen:

Or as Belleau Wood was officially renamed: "Woods of the Marine Brigade", which causes me to hum The Marine's Hymn, which causes me to recall (and nominate) Lt. Presley O'Bannon and "The Shores of Tripoli"...

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"..but never ever Fear. Fear is for the enemy. Fear and Bullets."
10mm: It's not the size of the Dawg in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog!

[This message has been edited by Tamara (edited May 13, 2000).]
 
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