Posted on 02/17/2017 10:16:40 AM PST by C19fan
James Erwin was browsing Reddit on his lunch break when a thread piqued his interest. A user called The_Quiet_Earth had posed the question: "Could I destroy the entire Roman Empire during the reign of Augustus if I traveled back in time with a modern U.S. Marine infantry battalion or MEU?"
The question struck a chord with the 37-year-old Erwin, a technical writer from Des Moines, Iowa, who happened to be finishing a book called The Encyclopedia of U.S. Military Actions (Through Facts on File). Erwin tells PM that he wasn't impressed by other users' early attempts to answer this question, and so, posting under the username Prufrock451, he came up with his own response. Erwin wrote a 350-word short story chronicling the fictitious 35th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), which suddenly disappears from modern-day Kabul and reappears on the Tiber River in 23 B.C. Erwin posted the piece, finished his meal, and went back to work.
(Excerpt) Read more at popularmechanics.com ...
The Marines could definitely leverage the skills of renegade or captive Romans who had technology equal to that of Renaissance Europe.
Another huge advantage they would have would be the printing press and the knowledge of how to make paper. Wars are run on ideas and they could saturate the Roman world not only with propaganda but information that would destabilize the Roman worldview.
Even though their maps might not be accurate a the local level they would geographically and topographically far ahead of anything the Romans had with accurate latitude and longitude. Their understanding of the classical Roman socio-ethnic and geopolitical situation would be abysmal.
I think their best bet would be to quickly get into the Alps into an easily defended territory and to build up from there. In a matter of a few years of preparation and, with a Hernan Cortez strategy of leveraging the oppressed non-Roman tribes and a ruthless ideology/religion to subjugate Roman culture, they would win.
And ginger is like crack & viagra to them.
I love how James Farentino gets left behind in 1941 on an island.
He turns out to be the "designer" of the aircraft carrier in the future (1979).
Don’t modern tanks have turbine engines, and can’t turbines be adapted to run off of a variety of flammable liquids? I don’t know anything about tanks, I’m just asking.
sorry...I had to go back and look...
It was the USS Nimtz that went back in time.
USS Nimtz not Enterprise...
I think nearly all of them run on diesels tho the Abrams uses a turbine originally developed by Chrysler.
It also occurs to me that the Marines could snipe the Roman generals, emperors, and anyone they wanted. The Romans would have no idea what was happening or how to defend themselves. Just a few demonstrations of modern technology and modern weaponry would seem like absolute magic to a 1st Century Roman. Fear and awe from a few artillery rounds whistling in from over the horizon might be all that’s needed to convince the Romans who lived in a world of superstition and witchcraft to submit to the new-found green gods.
Almost all fighting could be done from distances outside the range of Roman weaponry. What’s the range of the best archer, a couple of hundred yards, tops? Stay out of range and pick them off. Just bring along lots of ammo! And against night-vision equipped troops they’d be sitting ducks.
I got to give U.S. Marines credit. They adapt and overcome.
The Jarheads would eventually rule the empire.
And then the Christ...
5.56mm
Good afternoon.
“Are they allowed to have tactical nukes?”
An MEU has a one star, and an additional officer who has release authority. If they deployed with tactical nukes, the empire falls without the expenditures of stores.
They rule for a thousand years.
5.56mm
Yep. Figure out what is going on via recon. Develop a strategy to capture or kill leadership.. Including the senate and emperor. Do most of that at night using night vision.
The Marines would also have to conserve everything while they worked on chemistry and metallurgy. I would not bet on them producing a comparable gunpowder on their own quickly, but a full combat load of ammo could last a long time if limited to sniper-quality shots. The officers would be college graduates, many of them with some engineering and almost all with at least calculus and modern chemistry. Throw in senior enlisted who reload, and they might have some potential to resupply, over time and as they learned the right Greek/Latin words for what they wanted.
As for the tanks, I’m not betting on horses or slaves dragging them around. They’d be great as fixed defensive guns, but I don’t think maintenance would keep them mobile for very long. Depending on the propellants in tank guns, they might even be better off cannibalizing the powder from tank shells for reloading small arms - if they could figure out the primer issue. That’s after an initial shock and awe that would be epic, of course.
If they saw themselves as Green Berets embedded with the local army (Roman Legions) as force multipliers, their initial supplies would matter for a VERY long time though. Any Roman army with a squad of riflemen would have very high moral and face an army already expecting to lose almost from the start (if the Marines could avoid being betrayed, surrounded, etc.). Classic Roman attacks, but with the certainty that the defense would collapse at the point of attack (as officers and men in key positions dropped due to almost unstoppable sniper fire) would be powerful.
That is pretty much what I visualized, except that I don’t believe a good commander would continue the attack. If you’ve never seen a tank gun and you find it’s being fired at your swordsmen, you back off as soon as you realize that “magic” is controlled by your enemy.
Let's not go overboard. Tactical nukes is as far as we can reasonably go before it's overkill.
While not exactly the same, the “Empire of Man” series by John Ringo and David Weber cover pretty much this premise.
A very advanced “Empress’s Own” battalion gets stranded on a backwater planet full of Barbarians. Once the ammo, power armor, grenades and plasma weapons are nearly depleted, they eventually resort Roman tactics with the use of natives as vanguard and shock troops.
It’s a great series of books.
The Romans would unleash the Kraken.
Oops. Wrong fictional universe.
IIRC marines on average carry between 200 and 300 rounds of ammunition. 2200 x 300 = 660000 rounds. Thats ~2 rounds each per 300000 Roman soldiers. Even conserving ammo it is probably not enough.
That would be a turkey shoot, and everybody knew it, with a 1979 carrier vs the 1941 Japanese. But how would a carrier of today fare against a carrier of 1979? I'd think a carrier of today would have it's work cut out for it against a 1979 carrier. Now maybe some stealth planes could get thru and sink the 1979 carrier. But when you think about it, it certainly appears to have been more technological change from 1941 to 1979 than 1979 to 2017.
The Anime Network just finished episode 24 of Gate.
Episode 2 would have worked too.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.