Historic Dispays of Tactical Ingenuity

[Rodion Romanovich]

Thermopylea- I shouldn’t have to go into any detail about the single greatest stand in military history.

Thermopylae was cool because the spartans were vastly outnumbered, but the tactics were not very impressive - just put a phalanx in a narrow pass and watch a stupid enemy charge it. Hold the pass like that until your men get too fatigued by two days (or whatever it was) of fighting like that. It was an impressive and for the greeks very useful achievement, but there's no tactical genius behind it, only strategical and technological. The choice of holding the pass and the development of the phalanx was the crucial thing. A thing that most people foresee is the importance of the naval battle outside Thermopylae, which ended in a tie and kept the persians from landing a force on the other side of the pass and crush the spartans.

The Marne and Gulf War - same thing there: no tactical skills at all, it was only about technology. The tank determined the outcome of ww1, the anti-anti-aircraft missiles determined the gulf war. The gulf war was a turkey shoot due to technological, not tactical, acheivements. It's basically the same thing as Genghis khan's horse archers and their ability to kill enemies without the enemies being able to kill any of them. If you want an example of great tactics used in a war where Us army was involved, look at the Vietnam war. The vietcong guerilla with shitty equipment defeating the most powerful army in the world is one of the most impressive tactical achievements in the history of warfare.

Barbarossa was not an impressive tactical or strategical achievement either. It was however impressive compared to the otherwise quite primitive and stupid tactics used by european armies at that time. The use of numeral superiority in one place to break through was an old, ancient trick rediscovered after the cruel turkey shoot battles of the colonial era, where the europeans didn't need any tactics because their opponents fought with spears instead of rifles. Soon the allies also started to remember these basic tactics and made accurate judgements of how strong the german spearhead offensives were and then the war became more even. Rommel and Guderian were the only really good German generals in ww2, Montgomery was one of the greatest British generals. The person responsible for sending half the British tank reserve to North Africa during the blitz also deserves a lot of credit because that was one of the most clever moves of the war. The American naval commanders in the Pacific as well as the British naval commanders in the Atlantic and Mediterranean also did well. Pearl harbor was a well-coordinated attack too, but the British were the first to carry out a successful large-scale combined attack against a harbor (against the Italians).

[HalfThere]

If you want an example of great tactics used in a war where Us army was involved, look at the Vietnam war. The vietcong guerilla with shitty equipment defeating the most powerful army in the world is one of the most impressive tactical achievements in the history of warfare.

By body count, the U.S. was overwhelmingly successful in Vietnam. Something like a million Vietcong and NVA died to America's 50K casualties. It's simply proof that winning battles isn't the same as winning the war.

[Ravenloch]

I would throw in for debate The Battle of Britain. Even though it was a air campaign, it was decisive in the outcome of WWII. Never have so many owed so much to so few.