How Important Was the Battle of Lepanto?
historytoday.com
historytoday.com
For Lepanto, it was the vulnerability of galleys and shipboard infantry to gunfire, as cannonfire from the 6 Venetian galleases caused mass confusion as the galleys and their shipboard infantry approached each other; afterwards, the galley was obsoleted by galleons and ships of the line. Hampton Roads demonstrated the invulnerability of ironclads to traditional cannons, numbering the days of wooden sailing ships. Tsushima showed the importance of being able to engage at range, ushering in the era of the dreadnought battleship. Pearl Harbor (and Midway) showed how useless fleets of battleships are against air power.
The article says as much, but for some reason focuses on the effects of the battle on politics rather than on technology.
> A pervasive ontology of sameness, rooted in notions of essential humanity and nascent sensitivity to cultural relativism soon developed. The Ottoman enemy and its Christian opponents became, over time, integrated parts of a discernible, albeit internally contentious unity, revealed by that great equaliser, war.
Why do people have to write like this?
Your quotes are from one individual - Kiril Petkov. He starts off fine in my opinion but his final paragraph looks like he might have hit the sherry too early.
I think he is saying: "It's six of one and half a dozen of the other".
> A pervasive ontology of sameness, rooted in notions of essential humanity and nascent sensitivity to cultural relativism soon developed
what I read in that is, the destruction was so obvious, that the participants on both sides had to retreat to some feelings of humanity, and found similarity that way
> At the highest level of abstraction, it is a database that shards data across many sets of Paxos state machines in data centers spread all over the world. Replication is used for global availability and geographic locality; clients automatically failover between replicas.
> provides externally consistent reads and writes, and globally-consistent reads across the database at a timestamp.
> Spanner assigns globally-meaningful commit timestamps to transactions, even though transactions may be distributed. The timestamps reflect serialization order.
they don't have to, but it's a beautifully written sentence, a pleasure to read; it's like you're asking "why do experts in an artform actually display their expertise?"
here's how to read it.
"A pervasive ontology of sameness soon developed."
ok, what does that mean? well, it's "rooted in notions of essential humanity and nascent sensitivity to cultural relativism." You probably believe in the essential humanity of all people, and you have sensitivity to relative differences between cultures: he's saying it started at this time, it's a hinge point between what was before and the modern era. We are all the same, our sameness is pervasive, and it's all of us because ontology is comprehensive.
Now that we've decoded the first sentence, the rest restates it:
The Ottoman enemy and its Christian opponents became, over time, integrated parts of a discernible, albeit internally contentious unity, revealed by that great equaliser, war.
now, it doesn't mean he's right, but that's what he's trying to say.
This article was written for laymen to learn about a battle, and I believe you could state that simply as "developed a shared sense of humanity"
The trouble with stating it clearly is that it's now easy to point out it wasn't a pervasive shift - 1/2 a century later there were millions of deaths in the 30 years war - showing a lack of common humanity across Protestant/Catholic lines, let alone Islam/Christianity.
I'm not sure about that. The Christian coalition (Venice, Spain, and the Roman Catholic Church (Note: this is during the Reformation)) had a history of backstabbing and repeatedly fell apart, including the year before when they might have been in a position to prevent the fall of Cyprus. In fact, as I understand it, the reason the battle of Lepanto occurred so late in the year was because the Coalition couldn't get their fleets together any earlier---which meant that even if they wanted to follow up, they could not until the next year.
"The economic damage of galley warfare had been considerable. Philip defaulted on his debts in 1575; the tax gradient in the Ottoman Empire rose. Lepanto revealed the first cracks in its system and signalled the start of a long, slow decline."
Got a bit of a problem with that, too. The economic damage of galley warfare was a drop in the bucket (for Spain and the Ottoman Empire; the loss of Cyprus was another is a list of major costs to Venice). I can't really speak to the Ottomans, but Spain was pretty near broke to start with, even with the revenues from the New World; Philip II wasn't getting his cut of the revenues due to corruption and those very revenues had caused hideous inflation.
On the other hand, the Battle of Lepanto, along with the defeat of the Spanish Armada by the English, did kind of put an exclamation point on the end of the power of galleys and the beginning of the age of sail.
At some point they start pushing back against the existing commercial world order, which leads to conflict with the dominant naval/air power, who plays the role of protecting trade.
Then they lose.
The Romans won against Carthage, even though they had no navy (apart some Liburnian ships copied from the Illyrians), and had to build it by scratch.
They actually won with no true experience.
Carthage was a mercantile navy power, while Rome was a land power at the time. The exact scenario repeated in the battle of Lepanto, but this time the navy power won. (the Ottomans being the land super power of the time, and Venice a mercantile navy power).
Lepanto was the opposite, the end of over a millennium of armies fighting at sea and the emergence of a new form of naval supremacy.
Usually when the naval power stays off the home turf, it goes alright, but I take this is a great counter point.
But I'd argue that the most important Naval Battle for the 20th century was Battle of Tsushima. Yes, even more important than Battle of Midway. Midway was more climactic for sure, but "important" is a bit different.
1. The Battle of Tsushima proved that Japan was a world-power and no longer a backwards country of sword wielders. Sinking the Russian fleet (who was considered one of the great Naval powers of the world) was a big deal, and put Japan on the world stage.
2. The overwhelming victory became Japanese Naval doctrine: the Japanese "learned" that if you sink the enemy's fleet, the enemy will surrender. This doctrine, Kantai Kessen, led to the Japanese strategy of WW2 (aka: Sink the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. Because American carriers luckily escaped the Pearl Harbor attack, the Japanese would pursue Midway to continue to try to decisively sink the remainder of the fleet, again). Indeed, the young "Yamamoto" (original name: Isoroku Takano) lost two fingers in the Battle of Tsushima.
3. The world watched the battle, and learned that bigger-guns were better. The Battle of Tsushima led to the development of Dreadnaught Battleships, which had fewer but bigger guns with longer range (much like the Battleship Mikasa, one of the most pivotal ships in the battle). All battleships built after Tsushima had this singular battle in mind as inspiration. This single battle inspired Germany's Bismark, USA's Iowa, and the Japanese Yamato.
4. The Battle of Tsushima was the last time ships lined up and attacked each other with their guns in a blaze of glory.
5. The Battle of Tsushima basically ended the Russo-Japanese war. As pivotal as Midway was for WW2, there would be a long, drawn-out conflict for years, regardless of who won Midway. If Japan hypothetically won the Midway Naval battle, it'd still be a grueling mission to actually take Midway from the garrisoned American forces. And, as we know from reality, even though USA won Midway decisively, it was a grueling "island hopping" mission (including Iwo Jima), followed by the Atomic Bomb, before the USA would win.
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Arguably, WW2 battles would demonstrate that battleships were obsolete and that the Carrier reigns supreme. The Battle of the Coral Sea, more so than Midway, demonstrated the new realities of Naval battle: Carriers attacking each other "beyond the horizon", far outside of the range of any gun and only accessible through fleets of aircraft.
But unlike Tsushima, this fact was already known and recognized by the major navies. Strategically, the Battle of the Coral Sea and even Midway were conducted where both sides recognized the importance of carriers in the Naval mission.
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As we enter the modern age: there are no such naval battles any more. There is a bunch of theorycraft with how missile destroyers, nuclear subs, and carriers would interact with each other, but none of which has been tested (and ideally, none of this equipment is ever truly tested).
The Dreadnaughts eventually clashed at Jutland and whilst there were horrendous losses, it was inconclusive.
Winnie's comment is pretty apt:
> Churchill ... described British Admiral John Jellicoe as "the only man who on either side could lose the war in an afternoon."
Technically, I believe that honor belongs to the Battle of Surigao Strait in 1944. (Darn you, Halsey!)
Here's the Russian view of the battle: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Tsushima...
Here's the Japanese view of the battle: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Battle_o...
And later: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Battle_o...
It seems insane, but for hundreds of years, "lining up" all your ships into neat little columns and firing all together was one of the main strategies. It was largely assumed that enemies would also try to do this, so you end up with big ships just broad-siding each other up-and-down the "line of battle".
I have to imagine that radio-communications obsoleted the practice. But pre-radio, it probably made more sense to send signals to each other up-and-down the line and coordinate the fleet. Tsushima was one of those awkward transition points from semaphore flags into radio communications.
https://ww2db.com/image.php?image_id=12162
Surigao Strait is actually very similar to Tsushima in that in both cases the victorious forces "Crossed the T" of the attacking force and inflicted heavy casualties. Actually had nothing to do with communications; battle lines are advantageous so that your force can bring all of its guns to bear on the enemy without worrying about hitting friendly forces (as happened disastrously in the 1st naval battle of Guadalcanal).
Yeah, so the doctrine is known by another name: Mahanian doctrine, because it featured very heavily in Alfred Mahan's The Influence of Sea Power upon History, which predates Tsushima by 15 years. The general thesis of Mahan, at least insofar as it covers naval strategy, is that the general aim of the navy should be to seek a decisive battle to destroy the enemy's fleet and clear the seas of their ships, rather than a more Jeune École approach of avoiding decisive battle and instead focusing on commerce raiding.
It's true that the Japanese did fetishize the decisive battle doctrine to the point that it overshadowed over elements of Mahan's strategy (like, what you do after decisively beating the enemy's navy). And it's also true that the Battle of Tsushima was instrumental in forming Japanese naval doctrine for WW2.
> (aka: Sink the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. Because American carriers luckily escaped the Pearl Harbor attack, the Japanese would pursue Midway to continue to try to decisively sink the remainder of the fleet, again).
Now let's also point something out. The attack on Pearl Harbor was not Kantai Kessen. Its explicit strategic goal was to prevent the US from meaningfully responding to Japanese advances for the next 6-9 months, and as it turns out, the Battle of Midway was almost exactly 6 months after Pearl Harbor, and Guadalcanal starts almost exactly 9 months after Pearl Harbor. It was not intended to be the supreme destruction of the enemy's fleet that Kantai Kessen was--it was at best a weakening of the enemy that would improve Japan's odds of the final Kantai Kessen, not the main event.
The attack on Midway was intended to be Kantai Kessen, but the actual battle was not. The Japanese goal was to occupy Midway, which it thought would enrage the US enough to come out with its full navy (following Mahanian doctrine, like Japan was) to contest it, at which point the Japanese navy would be victorious and crush the navy. American foreknowledge of the strike allowed US carriers to surprise and sink several carriers to the utter horror of the Japanese, but it was still not seen as the decisive battle effort.
The closest the Japanese got in WW2 to their actual Kantai Kessen plan was the Battle of Leyte Gulf, which was launched in a hope of actually forcing the decisive battle they craved, although from a position of pretty clear weakness. The actual battle went quite badly for the Japanese, with the Japanese withdrawing from the engagement at the Battle off Samar (suffering arguably greater losses) where the Americans were hopelessly outnumbered.
Talking about the Pacific theater in WW2 is hampered by the fact that, in retrospect, the importance and influence of aircraft carriers is undeniable. However, most naval officers at the time still believed in the supremacy of battleships, and the carrier engagements would have often been seen as sideshow engagements to the main course of the battleship engagement yet to come.
> 3. The world watched the battle, and learned that bigger-guns were better.
I'd use 'confirmed' rather than 'learned' here. The general thinking even before the Battle of Tsushima among the British Navy was to move to a more uniform gun caliber, and this was partially driven by the need for simplified logistics that would come about with such an effort. Even without the Battle of Tsushima, HMS Dreadnought would probably have had the same loadout that it had in our timeline, so I'm not sure that it's entirely fair to attribute dreadnoughts to Tsushima.
> 4. The Battle of Tsushima was the last time ships lined up and attacked each other with their guns in a blaze of glory.
This is just plain false. Both the Battle of Jutland and the Battle of Surigao Strait feature textbook battleship lines engaging on each other in a crossing-the-T maneuver. The Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal involved battleships engaging each other. There were a few pitched battles in the Mediterranean in WW2, whose names escape me, one of which even involved an aircraft carrier trying to fight in the line of battle. There's even more engagements involving just one or two battleships that you might struggle to count as "ships lined up and attacked each other," so I'll omit those, but Wikipedia has a list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_naval_battles_between_...
That war was won or lost on land, not at sea. Beating a fleet that had just been at sea for month and was in a terrible strategic situation was not that relevant. It might have been politically relevant strategically it really didn't effect the situation. The Russians actually had large amount of troupes inbound, if there had been political will, they very well might have changed the situation.
The war really ended because it was dumb idea in the first place. The Russians had far more important things to focus on then fighting in the East. The cost of the war was a serious problem for Russian Empire. Fighting that far away from their heartland put serious strain on them. The simply fact is that the war was more important for Japan then for Russia. The war was really based on Czars desire to drive events, when smarter people want to be more cooperative with Japan. And once the war was going badly the part of establishment that had not wanted the war in the first place strongly pushed for it to end in negotiation.
The changes to navel architecture were in the works before then. I don't think they impact the situation as much as you claim.
I have to disagree here. While a loss of Midway would not have changed the ending of WW2, it would have massively changed the way the ending was arrived at.
By mid-1942 the US was absolutely certain it could produce the bomb. With a loss at Midway, the US would have decided to focus on Germany (as pre-agreed with Churchill and Stalin) and then finish off Japan with the bomb. Germany would have been defeated maybe one year sooner, and the Pacific would have been taken back in no time by the US with a campaign of nuclear bombing. The final conclusion of the war would have been around the same time, Fall 1945.
But the US would not have invested so heavily in its Navy; it would not have ended the war with more than 100 aircraft carriers, about 20 of which were full size fleet carriers. The US Navy at the end of WW2 was larger than all the other navies of the world combined. That would definitely not have been the case if the US had lost at Midway, because the terms of any truce with Japan would have stipulated a freeze of the naval buildup.
With no armada of aircraft carriers at the end of the war, the course of the Cold War could very well have been different. I guess we'll never know.
But because of Midway, the war ended the way it did, with a massive and dominant US Navy. Which kept its dominance for the subsequent 76 years.
A loss at Midway (and the subsequent inevitable truce with Japan) would have meant no Essex-class fleet carriers and very likely no Independence-class light carriers. If all 3 carriers at Midway were lost, the US would end the war with only Saratoga and Wasp as its main fleet carriers. Maybe even those would have been scrapped as part of the armistice with Japan.
Building carriers then would have been unthinkable. The US, like all other countries were tired of war, and looking forward to peace, and disarmament. The bomb was the perceived guarantor of peace, what need was there for a strong Navy? The theory in the years before the Korean war was that the Navy was a thing of the past, the Air Force was the way to the future.
Now, if the US did not have a strong Navy, as soon as the Soviets had the bomb themselves, the balance of power would have been very, very different.
But the US did have and continues to have a strong Navy. It is because of this Navy that there are tensions now around Taiwan. Without the US Navy, Taiwan would have been a part of China long time ago. I'm personally happy that the US Navy is what it is, my point is that the victory at Midway made that possible, and we see the fruits of that bright and clear even to this day.
The Two-Ocean Navy Act was passed in 1940. The Essex class of carriers was designed around 1939, and Essex herself laid down before Pearl Harbor. Before Midway, the USN had already ordered 13 Essex-class carriers, although another 19 would be ordered subsequent to Midway.
In other words, the great naval buildup was already underway well before even Japan attacked the US at Pearl Harbor. Actually, the US had plans to build even more ships that were cancelled because they realized they had already sunk everybody else's navy.
> because the terms of any truce with Japan would have stipulated a freeze of the naval buildup.
Why would a loss at Midway have necessitated that Japan win the war? By the time of the Battle of Midway, the US has a dozen Essex-class carriers on the slipways. By mid-1943, the US is launching a carrier a month. The Japanese could only manage to start 6 carriers for the rest of the war, and completed half of them.
Japan didn't have the industrial base to compete against the US's production. Furthermore, the Japanese never had the capability to meaningfully strike at the US. Even reaching Hawaii took the logistic capabilities of the IJN to its stretching point; there was never any meaningful risk to any US West Coast (or Panama Canal) assets. Japan's only hope was that the US would tire of the war and give up, but they kind of blew that chance with their strike on Pearl Harbor.
But one could ask, why would the US rely on nukes, when they could grind it out, and eventually crush the Japanese with conventional weapons. The distinction between conventional and nuclear war is a post WWII concept. The question for Roosevelt was “should we lose 100000 people, or should we lose none, and still defeat Japan?” What do you think he would have answered?
> All in all, both the US and Japan had all the reasons to sign an armistice.
The US doesn't have any good reasons. The US isn't in an unwinnable position; if it just waits a year, it can go on the strategic offensive no matter what. Politically, it would be devastating: the US joins WW2 in part to enact revenge for Pearl Harbor; why should it accept the loss of all influence it had in the Pacific to bow out of the war? Politically, too, it would have been disastrous for US-British relations, especially since the US hadn't had any meaningful contribution to the war with Europe yet.
> The US would have been able to redirect its industrial might into its other megaprojects at the time, the Manhattan and the B-29 projects, and obviously into everything that was needed for the European campaign.
This ignores the historical fact that the US was already able to simultaneously pursue fighting two large wars, topping up the supplies of everybody else fighting those wars, and pursuing long-shot wonder weapons. The victory at the Battle of Midway happened in spite of focus already being placed on Europe at the time; it's unlikely that you could have meaningfully committed more resources to Europe simply for the lack of capacity to have more resources be committed.
[1] It's not implausible that Japan would have reconsidered this, but opposition to the invasion of Australia came largely from the army, not the navy, as the army didn't think it had the troops to take and hold Australia, which would have been a distraction from Japan's primary goal, conquering China. Which wasn't going great.
I think you're underestimating the amount of animosity that the Pearl Harbor strike created. When Doolittle's raids basically failed (all bombers crash-landed and destroyed), Doolittle was given a medal of honor for at least kinda-sorta attacking Tokyo.
The American people wanted a Pacific fight. The American people also knew that the "real fight" would begin after the Essex carriers arrived, and when the Pearl Harbor battleships were dug up / resurrected from their watery graves.
Midway was a surprise: that the USA could win a fight despite being outnumbered. I think the American people would have understood that an outmatched underdog Pacific fleet would lose to a stronger adversary.
The fact that the opposite happened: that Midway was a success for the Americans, allowed the USA to scale up Pacific efforts much faster than originally planned. But both Japan and USA knew that the "real fight" would begin in 1943, after the new Battleships and Carriers came online.
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If the USA lost "Midway", then the USA would have simply had a Midway-like moment come 1943, as the US Navy would begin to outnumber the Japanese by significant margins.
For Japan to win at this juncture, it would have had to repeatedly play "reverse-Midway" like battles for the remainder of the war, which seems unlikely. The amount of ships US Congress approved was insane.
The USA committed 3 carriers to the battle of Midway. In 1943, it would only take 3 months for 3x new, Essex-class top-of-the-line fleet carriers to replace them. If Japan somehow sunk those 3 new carriers, just 3 months later, we're back to the same situation.
In contrast: Japan had barely any industrial capacity to build more ships. (That's why they wanted to invade China after all).
The only reason the USA stopped building carriers was because we knew we won the war.
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IMO, the "reverse-Midway" timeline has the USA reaching Japan maybe a year later, and therefore nuking cities instead of using firebombs. But otherwise, the war ends very similarly: USA eventually gaining numeric supremacy and crushing the Japanese fleet. Then using an island hopping mission to get closer-and-closer to Tokyo before unleashing a devastating bombing campaign.
Maybe so, but the war was larger. The US was part of a coalition. And, while a good payback in the Pacific would have felt quite cool, the nightmare scenario was Stalin coming to terms with Hitler. And as of mid 1942 that was a real possibility. Stalin was at the end of his rope at that point: the second battle of Kharkov [1] had just concluded about one week prior to Midway, with close to 300k Soviet casualties and more than 1200 tanks lost, Sevastopol would fall in less than one month [2], with more than 100k casualties. In the month of July, the Soviets would suffer a crushing defeat at Voronezh [3], where they have almost 600k casualties. In all these cases the ratio of Soviet casualties to Axis casualties is between 5:1 and 10:1, and maybe worse in terms of loss of materiel. You could say that the Soviets could afford the materiel losses because of the Lend-Lease program, but no. Just as a coincidence, just 3 weeks after Midway, the Allies suffer the worse naval disaster in the Atlantic theater [4], the annihilation of the convoy PQ 17. Not only more than 400 tanks went to the bottom of the ocean with the ships that were carrying them, but the Allies suspended the convoys for the next 3 months (at about 2 convoys per month, it means Stalin effectively lost a few thousands of tanks that he could have put to good use). Stalin desperately needed the Allies to attack Germany somewhere, anywhere. But the Allies were not in such good shape either. At the time of Midway, the British and Germans were exchanging blows in Africa at the battle of Gazala [5], which ended with the capture of Tobruk, and the worse British defeat of the war (with the possible exception of Singapore). Malta was on the verge of collapse, and just about one week after Midway the British mounted two relief operations, Harpoon and Vigorous [6],[7], both ended in defeat. Did I mention the Soviets wanted their western Allies to do something? The Brits tried a raid at Dieppe in August [8], it didn't work out that well, with an Allied casualty rate of more than 60% (out of an admittedly small contingent of 6000 men).
Eventually the Allies delivered, with the massive Operation Torch (more then 100k troops, for comparison the Normandy landing had a bit more than 150k troops landed). Historians agree however that a "reverse Midway" would have delayed Torch by at least 6 months. Stalin wasn't very happy with Torch, he thought it was quite small and in an inconsequential theater. He would have been even more unhappy with no Torch at all.
Now, the US had huge industrial might, but a Soviet Union switching sides would have resulted in a truly scary Colossus. Imagine all the natural resources of the USSR and their manpower and the industrial capacity of Germany. Oh, and the industrial capacity of the USSR itself was nothing to sneeze at, especially with a bit of finishing touches from their new best friends the Nazi engineers.
So maybe the Americans were angry for the Japanese perfidious attack at Pearl Harbor, but the war in Europe was not waiting for them to have their revenge.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Kharkov
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Sevastopol_(1941%E2%8...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Voronezh_(1942)
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convoy_PQ_17
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gazala
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Harpoon_(1942)