Posted on 03/07/2010 8:11:59 PM PST by ErnstStavroBlofeld
bump for later
The trouble with citing Valcour Island as an American victory is the name of the colonial commander, General Benedict Arnold.
Both ships? Must of taken 11 hours to find the second ship’s hiding place.
In that case, Saratoga must also have been a ‘loss’ for the American colonists, because Benedict Arnold was responsible for that Victory as well (yes, I know the English-Born general Horatio Gates was officially the most senior general on the American side, but BA did most of the heavy lifting in that battle before his wounds forced him to hand command over to Gates)....
Its usual :0
Anyway, this isn’t the ten greatest, its the ten best known. Jutland was a marginal at best. What about Lowestoft?
Yeah, it looks like the writer had to scrape to come up with ten “greatest”.
Which says more for the authors lack of research rather than a lack of naval actions to choose from.
He could have mentioned the 1st and 2nd battles of Narvik, which gutted the German destroyer fleet and had important repercussions for Operation Sealion.
Or the Battle of Cape Matapan where the Italians lost 3 cruisers, 2 destroyers, a Battleship heavily damaged along with thousands of sailors at cost of 3 dead.
Or The Battle of Camperdown 11 Dutch ships captured for no lost ships, or Battle of Copenhagen against the Danes 14 ships sunk or captured against no loss.....the list goes on...
Mers-el-Kébir was certainly a bigger victory than Bismark.
Umm. Not sure I’d want to include that Battle of Copenhagen. It was hardly our most glorious hour against a worthy and deserving opponent...
There are a few similar stories--the Emden in WW1 and the Graf Spee come to mind--that mostly seem to consist of the Germans sending out a single ship which causes havoc for a while, followed by the British hunting it down and sinking it.
Why ? Whatever the background, superior gunnery, strong command and good luck saw us victorious in a situation that could easily have gone the other way.
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