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[DJ]

Bunker Hill doesn't seem very guerilla to me.

[Earthquake Damage]

I was mostly poking fun at your "parkour'd their asses outta there" line.  You make it sound like a superpower. 

[DJ]

BTW, isn't the expression "taking a level in badass" rather than class?

[Earthquake Damage]

BTW, isn't the expression "taking a level in badass" rather than class?

Maybe he meant Badass 101?

[RedKing]

Bunker Hill doesn't seem very guerilla to me.

Also wasn't the only battle of the war. But yeah, the Continental Army played a big part. The guerilla actions mostly served to do what they do best -- make British troops' lives a living Hell and contest their "control" of territory.

The war in the South (1778-1781) was particularly nasty, not that far removed from the sort of stuff you saw in Iraq a few years back. You'd have a band of Patriots go burn down a Loyalist's house and slaughter his livestock, then have a band of Loyalists kidnap and murder a Patriot. British garrisons had to move through rather long stretches of countryside to get between cities, and they were harrassed pretty much the whole way by guys taking potshots at them and then running like hell. But most of the nastiest fights were between Tory paramilitaries and Patriot irregulars, because neither side could present a large, organized force sufficient to make the other side run -- so you'd get these hours-long firefights at somebody's farm, usually ending with the whole farm being shot up and burnt to the ground.

[myrkul]

Bunker Hill doesn't seem very guerilla to me.

Really? Making your enemy fight tooth and nail for every inch of ground, and pulling out with most of your troops intact? Sounds pretty guerrilla to me. That said, wars aren't won in battles. They're won in supply line/troop movement skirmishes. The battles just provide the finishing blow.

I was mostly poking fun at your "parkour'd their asses outta there" line.  You make it sound like a superpower. 

Well, "turned tail and ran" made it sound like they were pissing their pants. I went with the more badass of the two.

[DJ]

Nope, not guerilla. Guerilla fighting is about avoiding pitched battles in favour of harassment, and Bunker Hill was pretty pitched.

Oh, and battles *do* decide wars. WW II would've turned out a lot different if the Battle of Britain or Battle of Stalingrad were won by the Germans.

[Il Palazzo]

I think the Allies' army caused more trouble for the Nazis than the French Resistance.

Says more about the french than about resistance fighters in general. Remember, the American revolution was won via guerrilla tactics.

Says more about the size of British expeditionary force, than about the resistance fighters.
Seriously, what's with the contempt for the French? In the thread about parkour, no less.
(they don't even deserve a capital letter, apparently)

[Darvi]

(they don't even deserve a capital letter, apparently)

Nope.

[Kogan Loloklam]

Considering the French guy got his inspiration from youths of Africa...

[myrkul]

Nope, not guerilla. Guerilla fighting is about avoiding pitched battles in favour of harassment, and Bunker Hill was pretty pitched.

Oh, and battles *do* decide wars. WW II would've turned out a lot different if the Battle of Britain or Battle of Stalingrad were won by the Germans.

As was pointed out, it also was not the only battle, and certainly not the decisive one.

Battle of Stalingrad? Thanks for proving my point.
Battle of Britain? That was all about setting up for an invasion, which required air superiority to protect the supply line...

I say again, battles provide the killing blow. This means they appear to decide the war. But a cold, tired, hungry soldier is not as effective as a warm, well-fed and rested one. Supply lines are key. To put it in a DF frame of reference, When you hack the head off of a foe who has "given in to the pain", did you win by decapitating him, or by hacking his foot off and causing him to pass out?

Seriously, what's with the contempt for the French? In the thread about parkour, no less.

My apologies to any Frenchmen/women in the audience. The French Military was surprised, and had erected a shell defense. The resistance did what they could with what little they had available to them. The Allies had an enormous army, backed by a supply chain that only America could provide at the time. The Germans were simply out-produced. Those two factors combine to make it seem as though the French did nothing. In fact, I doubt the Allies could have won without them.

As to my capitalization... It's a bad habit. If it doesn't get highlighted, I don't fix it. sometimes, I ignore it anyway.

[DJ]

Battle of Britain *was* the aerial battle. And it was lost by poor judgement in target selection rather than attrition. Having more resources is important, yeah, but using them effectively is just as important. There's plenty of battles where the combatants were evenly matched, and the result decided the entire war.

[RedKing]

Well, this was also this little thing called radar. The Germans got really tired of showing up over their targets, only to find a swarm of Hawker Hurricanes waiting for them.

Between radar and the superb coordination of the RAF and air-defense observation posts, it got to be very difficult for the Luftwaffe to make cost-effective bombing runs. It also helped that pre-war, Chamberlain had made the calculation that, in the face of German rearmament and the global economic depression of the 1930's, Britain could really only afford to signficantly rearm one branch of the military. And he very wisely chose the RAF over the Royal Navy or the Army. So by 1940, British aircraft production was proceeding far in advance of what the Germans thought. Goering expected to whittle down the RAF in a matter of months, and by their own calculations they kept thinking the RAF was virtually out of aircraft, and yet the RAF kept fielding wing after wing of fighters.


Winning is never as simple as one thing working in your favor. It's usually a convergance of factors.

[DJ]

AFAIK they were doing pretty good until they stopped bombing airfields in favour of cities.