Historical and/or mythological examples of "never bring a knife to a gunfight".

[xiphias]

Over on Facebook, james_nicoll brought up the Battle of Myeongnyang in 1597, where Admiral Yi of Korea used his 13 ships to completely crush more than ten times as many Japanese warships.

Among the reasons he was able to do this was because the Japanese naval tactics were "close and board" -- their ships might have a couple low-powered cannon on them, but the Korean ships carried 22 guns or more, of much, much higher quality, range, and power. It doesn't matter how good your boarding parties are if they just plain can't get there.

A similar thing happened in 1610 in Nagasaki when 1,200 samurai attempted to attack a single Portuguese carrack commanded by Andrea Pessoa. The crew complement of a carrack could be a few dozen people, or, in the case of the Mary Rose, could be stuffed with as many as 500 people, but Pessoa's crew was probably closer to the 60-100 people. Waves of over a thousand samurai attacked night after night, and were blown out of the water before they could get there.

The earliest mythological/historical version I can think of is David and Goliath.

The general rule here, as exemplified by "never bring a knife to a gunfight" is "ranged weapons beat melee weapons, if you can defeat your enemy before they close." Any other good historical examples?

Comments

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

The Somme.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Oh, man. Yeah.

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Not to mention the Blitzkrieg-- pushing past to encircle and destroy enemy fortifications and strong points, supported by fast armor and air units. It worked pretty well in the Spanish Civil War, but it REALLY worked well in the invasion of Poland and Belgium and France. The French had learned the lessons of WW1 pretty much entirely wrong and had invested heavily in the Maginot line. The Wehrmacht took a look at all of those heavy, immobile fortifications (and arguably, French tanks were ALSO heavy immobile fortifications) and cheerfully went around them, through Belgium, and took France with almost no resistance. The French defenses would have been great if there had been a straight-up invasion and WW1-style trench warfare, but German strategy evolved much faster and the Maginot line was pretty much useless.

If the Germans had been able to get their supply lines intact, WW2 would have been a very different war. But of course they decided to invade Russia, and we know how well _that_ works.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Among the horrible things in WWI was that BOTH sides brought guns to the gunfight, but decided to attack with knives, anyway.

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

True, but the British were strikingly arrogant and tried to fit their class system into modern warfare-- the nobility sending the commoners to die by droves was just foolishness, no matter how you cut it. They also didn't have effective communications, so nobody knew quite how badly it was going, and they just kept sending waves over the top to die in bloody mud, thinking that, you know, they were just about to break through and maybe just one more wave would do it!

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Agincourt?

Though terrain and arrogance may have played a part as well.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's another excellent example. Terrain and arrogance ALWAYS play a part in "knife to a gunfight" battles, anyway.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Another like that would be Bannockburn.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

An interesting reverse example is Islandawana, where the Zulus with spears won a crushing victory over the British with guns. At Gaugamela, Alexander won a huge victory over Darius with a much smaller force using what we call "combined arms" today.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I wonder if one of the reasons the Zulus did so well at Islandawana was their LACK of arrogance. In the other knife-to-gunfight scenarios, the melee warriors were expecting a reasonably easy victory. The Zulus, on the other hand, knew what they were getting into, and were prepared for it.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm sure their preparation and superior training had a lot to do with it.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Heh. Seems plausible, doesn't it?

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

The British seem to lose due to arrogance pretty often...

[bemused-leftist.livejournal.com]

In 1491 Mann talks about Indians' bows having better range and accuracy than early English settlers' guns. Don't remember a particular battle, though.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Even during the 19th century plains wars, this was still true. Comanches routinely rode straight into formations of US Cavalry with their osage bows, betting on their superior skills to even the odds. It worked too. They were only defeated when General MacKenzie figured out that he'd have to kill their horses at Palo Duro canyon.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Bows had superior range and accuracy to guns until quite recent times. The reason why guns took over is that the training required to achieve the bow's superior range/accuracy was extremely expensive. You could turn a raw recruit into an effective soldier much faster/cheaper with a gun than with a bow pretty early in the development of guns.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

A modern example would be the battle of Kuwait City airport, where the American M-60 and M-1 tanks were able to destroy a larger force of Iraqi T-72 and T-80 tanks due to their superior targeting abilities. With infra-red optics, the US armored vehicle commanders could see their targets through the dust and were able to execute a "time on target" strike that was so quick and effective the battle was over before the Iraqis knew it had begun.

In this case both sides had ranged weapons, but the US had the greater range afforded by the better optics.

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

It didn't help that the Soviets were selling the Iraqis the "monkey model" of their equipment, either, I'm sure.

Are you sure they were T-80's? I don't think many T-80's were exported, and I can't find mention of more than a handful being sold outside of the Soviet (or ex-Soviet) states. I think they were mostly T-72s and older. I know Iraq had a bunch of T-55s still in service, which were laughably old even back then. And T-72s don't have the kind of composite armor required to defend against kinetic energy penetrator rounds, and were probably firing HEAT rather than penetrators back at the US forces, who of course had modern armor and modern everything else, too. So even if the Iraqis had been able to see the US armor, they wouldn't have been able to damage anything, assuming they could even hit them in the first place.

So that's a good example, yep. I kind of wish I'd thought of it. 8)

Here's a T-54 at a local armor museum...

[wcg.livejournal.com]

No, I don't have any direct knowledge of T-80s being present. I'm just repeating things I saw in unclassified briefings when I was an operations analyst in 1991.

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Ha, okay. Your sources may be better than mine...

[bemused-leftist.livejournal.com]

The novel of THE AFRICAN QUEEN had both the Queen and the German boat decisively trumped by some new boat the British brought up in pieces and assembled on site.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Crecy, Poitiers, Agincourt- battles won (according to legend anyway) by the English longbow.

I forget the name of the battle (it's not taught in English schools) but this sequence of crushing victories was halted when the French went away- did some thinking- and came back at the English with guns.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

The Battle of Bywater?

I know, I know, but it counts as mythology. :)

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Seems like a lot more of that was just plain better tactics. The Hobbits used knowledge of their home terrain to their advantage, and set up effective ambushes and flanking movements. Merry, Pippin, and Sam just plain had better military experience and training than the Ruffians, so the Ruffians were outmaneuvered, outfought, outnumbered more than three to one, and just plain totally outclassed. They didn't realize that they were fighting WAY outside their weight class.

[holyhippie]

I'm somewhat surprised nobody here has mentioned the Mythbusters check on this issue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2012_season)#Episode_188_.E2.80.93_Duel_Dilemmas

What they found is consistent with your your thesis. Guns win, but only if the weapon can be used before the opponent has closed to a knife's range. If the knife can be used before the gun is drawn: knife wins.