| I do believe I'd rather stay out of this one. My tendency is to think in terms of why a given event was and/or wasn't important (i.e., what happened as a result of it, what its long-term impact on history - if any - was, etc.). Setting up ranked lists is harmless, interesting, thought-provoking fun, but I've found that it usually results in comparing apples and oranges. There's also a natural tendency for any of us to acquire our own personal "favorites," irrespective of the possibility that some other events we haven't studied so intensively may in fact have been more "important." I'll cheerfully plead guilty to having spent a fair amount of time studying the Battle of the Chesapeake (aka Battle of the Capes - Sept. 5, 1781), and I think it can legitimately be described as one of the most decisive sea battles in history. But I'd be uncomfortable trying to rank it higher or lower than any of several other actions that have already been mentioned in this thread. (Was the Battle of the Chesapeake more important than the Battle of Leyte Gulf? I wouldn't touch that one with a ten-foot pole.) One aspect of military/naval history that I find interesting is the way the alleged importance of a given event, or for that matter a given historical character, seems to change as different generations analyze it. In another Forum thread recently, the name of John Paul Jones came up several times. Several generations of American students scarcely heard of him, his ships, or his exploits. He really didn't get his ultra-prominent place among early American naval heroes until the early twentieth century, when, under the auspices of Theodore Roosevelt, his body was exhumed from its grave in Paris, brought back to the U.S., and entombed in the chapel of the Naval Academy. Prior to that time people like Esek Hopkins, John Barry, John Glover, and John Manly figured just as prominently in naval histories of the Revolutionary War. The image of JPJ wasn't exactly manufactured out of thin air; he was a skilled seaman and an outstandingly daring man. But to my way of thinking he's largely of interest as a demonstration of how military institutions (the U.S. Navy in this case) use history to build up an "inspirational tradition," even if doing so entails playing fast and loose with the truth. There is, for example, no contemporary evidence whatsoever that JPJ ever actually said "I have not yet begun to fight." And it could easily be argued that the action between the Bonhomme Richard and H.M.S. Serapis was a strategic blunder on JPJ's part. From the moment the Serapis placed herself between the American squadron and the British convoy, it became to all intents and purposes impossible for the Americans to intercept the convoy before it made its way to safety. The defeat of the Serapis cost JPJ his own ship and the lives of many of his crew - and brought to an abrupt end a commerce-raiding cruise that, had it continued for a few more weeks, might have done a great deal more damage to the British economy. The "victory" brought JPJ's combat career under the American flag to an end. Small wonder that the British government treated the captain of the Serapis as a hero. On the other hand, it deserves to be noted that reputable historians are capable of figuring out that they've missed important events. The Cambridge Companion to Military History contains a list of the ten most important battles of all time. I can't remember all of them, but one is the Battle of Khalkin-Gol - which, I suspect, most Americans have never heard of. It was a huge fight between the Soviet and Imperial Japanese Armies in Mongolia in the fall of 1939 - almost at the same time as the German assault on Poland. The Soviets won decisively, largely because of their more skillful use of armor and airpower. The Japanese high command had, up to that time, been considering two possible approaches to the problem of acquiring natural resources to support its ongoing campaign in China: the "northern option" against the Russians and the "southern option" against the British, French, Dutch, and Americans. Khalkin-Gol established that the "northern option" wouldn't work. It thereby led the Japanese to commit themselves to the "southern option," with, of course, disastrous results. Later research establishes with disturbing frequency that battles seen as "decisive" at the time actually weren't. Postwar study of German archives made it pretty clear that, for instance, the famous "Dambuster" raids didn't do nearly as much long-term damage to German industry as the British thought at the time. One contrary example, though, jumps to mind - and is perhaps relevant to this thread. The "Doolittle Raid" on Tokyo and other Japanese cities in April, 1942 was conceived as what might uncharitably be labeled a publicity stunt. Everybody concerned acknowledged that those sixteen B-25s couldn't possibly do substantial damage to the Japanese war effort - and in the short term they didn't. Research in Japanese documents later revealed, though, that the horror on the part of the Japanese high command at the revelation that the home islands could be bombed led directly to the decision to launch the Coral Sea and Midway campaigns. (That's a point that one of my un-favorite WWII movies, "Midway," got right.) American thinkers didn't know it at the time, but it appears now that the Doolittle Raid was a key moment of the war. Ranking battles in 1-2-3 order, though....Thanks, but I think I'll pass. |