History's Greatest Military Defeats

**snapper** · 13 Jun 11,, 20:00

I have to go with Fuller in adding the Battle of Warsaw in 1920 which stopped the Red Army getting into Central and Western Europe.

**Mihais** · 13 Jun 11,, 20:24

I'll call that a great victory

Don't know if it was mentioned,but Leipzig deserves a place.

**Falcon_16** · 04 Sep 11,, 22:36

I have four important wars in my mind.

1-) Battle of Gaugamela (331 BC)

casualties and losses: Alexander The Great lost 1000-2000 men, Darius III Lost at least 100.000 men.

2-) First Gulf War (1990)

casualties and losses: Coalition led by USA lost 2000-3000 men most of them were Kuwaiti soldier, Iraq lost at least 100.000-125.000 men mostly due to USA's Air superiority.

3-) Battle Of Cannae (216 BC)

casualties and losses: Carthaginians lost 5000-8000 men, Roman loss were massive nearly all of the army, 60.000 men.

4-) Six-Day War (1967)

casualties and losses: Israel lost nearly 5000 men most of them were wounded and 46 aircrafts shot down, Arab Coalition led by Egypt lost more than 30.000 men including 450+ aircraft.

**AceVendetta** · 04 Sep 11,, 23:43

The Battle for Moscow 1941- While this battle was not the worst casualty taking battle for the Germans (Germans lost apps. 400,000 men to Russia's almost 1 million), it insured that the war to conquer Russia would not be a fast war, as well as a fatal war that was now being waged on three fronts, bringing down the mighty Nazi Empire (Good thing for us, bad for them... well, for the Nazis, at least).

**BB61Vet** · 06 Sep 11,, 05:18

At this point I have to speak up and talk about the lopsided victory of Operation Desert Storm.

U.S. casualties: 148 battle deaths, 145 nonbattle deaths

#
Army: 98 battle; 105 nonbattle
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Navy 6 battle; 8 nonbattle
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Marines: 24 battle; 26 nonbattle
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Air Force: 20 battle; 6 nonbattle
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Women killed, 15

U.S. wounded in action: 467.

Estimated Iraqi Losses: (Reported by U.S. Central Command, March 7, 1991)

#
36 fixed-wing aircraft in air-to-air engagements
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6 helicopters in air-to-air engagements
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68 fixed- and 13 rotary-wing aircraft destroyed on the ground
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137 Iraqi aircraft flown to Iran
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3,700 of 4,280 battle tanks
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2,400 of 2,870 assorted other armored vehicles
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2,600 of 3,110 assorted artillery pieces
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19 naval ships sunk, 6 damaged
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42 divisions made combat-ineffective

Enemy prisoners of war captured: U.S. forces released 71,204 to Saudi control.

Source: Operation Desert Storm

I'd call that a pretty crushing defeat - even if it took until 2002 to go after Saddam himself.