Major battles that could change on a single POD

Battle of Britain. If the German command had stayed with the original objective of targeting Airfields and forcing the RAF into the open they would have won.
 

Markus

Banned
How about Pearl Harbour?

A recently repaired plane is taken for an early test flight and bumps into the 1st wave, say 30+ minutes out. That would be enough time to get all the triple-A ready and reach watertight condition Z on all ships. I guess damage to the fleet would be reduced sharply:

USS Oklahoma: badly damaged, probably sunk on an even keel
USS West Virginia: less badly damaged and likely afloat
USS California: light to medium damage, afloat
USS Arizona: light damage

Japanese losses on the other hand: https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?p=3917017#post3917017
 
Two War-Between-the-States Battles

Sharpsburg - Two obvious PODs - Lee's Gen. Ord. #191 not lost by that feckless Lt. OR McClellan decides it is a trap and does not move from Washington until his cavalry confirms Lee is moving north.

Gettysburg - Four obvious PODs - General Early orders a late afternoon advance after winning the first day's fighting OR Joshua L. Chamberlain falls in the first minutes of fighting for Little Round Top on the second day OR General Lee decides that General Longstreet is right and cancels the attack on the Union center on the third day OR George A. Custer is killed in the first minutes of fighting the Confederate cavalry on the third day.

Hero of Canton
 
Hitler panicked at Bagration (and rightly so)... he pulled forces from a lot of different places to try to stop the bleeding... he couldn't use the 10 mobile divisions in the west because they where actively engaged trying to box in the normandy beachhead... if they where sitting around not doing anything he could be tempted to pull a corps or two out stating that he would transfer them back west as soon as the landings started or the eastern front stabilized

he pulled forces from the west (Leibstandarte, 9th and 10th ss divisions) to rescue the first panzer army at kaments even though he was on pins and needles about a potential landing in france in the spring of '44

Maybe, but I doubt it.Bagration was a storm and pulling forces from elsewhere wasdone, but I stll think Hitler was aware that there would be storm in France very soon. Depends on Wallied deception he might remove something from western theatre but not France itself. Not sure what was in Belgium and Netherlands.
 
I would contend that the Russian and Austrian armies are hardly unbeatable if Napoleon can avoid a battle with both at the same time through.


Seeing as it was my utter stupidity which started this oxbow and I don't want to further derail an excellent thread, how about I do a little research tonight and post a WI on the topic in Before 1900? That way you, I, and anyone else interested can discuss it there. Okay?

The research is minimal. I just need to pin down the name of the corps and the proper spelling of Napoleon's long serving chief of staff who fell out of a window and died just before the campaign kicked off.
 
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