David Versus Goliath / Real Life

• Physics act just the way they do in the biblical story. A sling stone has as much kinetic energy as a pistol bullet, and a skilled slinger can achieve uncanny accuracy. (That said, the slung stone was not the last blow; having felled Goliath, David decapitated him with his own sword. Likely because of the giant helmet he was wearing.) Agatha Christie traveled in the Middle East during the 1930s; after seeing shepherds at this time still protecting their folds against predators with deadly precision slingshots, she just remarked that the actual Aesop of David and Goliath story seemed to her like the ancient version of 'Never Bring A Knife To A Gunfight'.
• Humans. During the Ice Age and the time after, in which Humans first started diverging from their arboreal ancestors, were specialized to hunt large prey, such as mammoths, giant sloths, and similar, through a combination of throwing weapons, large numbers, and traps, humans hunted down and devoured megafauna that relied on their size and bulk for protection with devastating effect. Outside of African and Asian species like the elephant, rhino, and hippo, which had evolved alongside humans, and developed a healthy fear of them (and vice versa), whenever humans migrated to a new area, that area's megafauna quickly became extinct. (Indeed, Mammoths survived all the way to 2000 BC on islands with no humans, until said hairless apes arrived, disproving the claim that these animals died out as a result of Climate Change).
• The Vietnam War. No matter how many casualties the Allies inflicted on them, the Communists just would not give up. Most of Vietnamese history is like this when it comes to foreign invaders and occupiers. Despite Vietnam being occupied and invaded by several powerful empires and countries in the past that include the Mongols, the Ming Dynasty, the French empire, the Japanese Empire, and even the United States during the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese manage to successfully repel the invaders or kick the occupiers out despite the fact that many invaders and occupiers often have superior military equipment than the Vietnamese. One of the major factors to this is because of the Vietnamese geography of dense forests, high mountains, and cliffs makes it relatively easy to the Vietnamese to utilize Hit-and-Run Tactics and makes it incredibly difficult for empires to maintain control of the region.
• Afghanistan has a similar reputation to Vietnam, having earned the nickname "The Graveyard of Empires" for the number of times it has been invaded and tossed said invaders out (a short list includes Persia, the Greeks, the Mongols, the Mughals, the British Empire, the Soviet Union, and the United States).
• In its 2009 general election, Japan had the reigning Liberal Democratic Party (in power since the Fifties!) as Goliath versus the 13-year-old Democratic Party of Japan. Despite the LDP's clout, they were still beaten by the smaller and younger DPJ. Then subverted in 2012 when the DPJ's perceived inexperience (and possibly also the Fukushima nuclear disaster) allowed the LDP to be voted back into power.
• Nazi Germany vs. the Soviet Union... both in the size of the countries AND the number of people in said countries. The Soviet Union being the Goliath in the size of the country and the David in the population of the country.^note Most of the USSR was empty and everything east of the Urals may as well have been nonexistent for the European war effort.
  • In fact, it was the Soviets who were the David in this circumstance, at least for the first couple of years. So said the other wiki: "Germany had far greater resources than did the USSR, and dwarfed its production in every matrix except for oil, having over five times the USSR's coal production, over three times its iron production, three times its steel production, twice its electricity production, and about 2/3 of its oil production." From the initiation of hostilities it also had over three times the USSR's GDP. The Soviets did have a larger population than Germany, but that was a minor advantage at best (just ask China), and the disparity wasn't as big as is often thought.^note In fact, adding together Greater Germany, its allies and co-belligerents, and the anti-Soviet areas of the USSR (e.g. the Baltic states, Moldova, West Ukraine, most ethnic German communities), the USSR only had a twenty five percent population advantage.
  • Not only were they much weaker on paper, but the Soviets' reputation was far worse than that of the Germans' and no one seriously expected them to hold out. In the year just prior to Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany had overwhelmed France in a mere six weeks. France had, in World War I, held off most of the might of Imperial Germany and taken a lead role in defeating it. Germany also occupied or subverted pretty much the whole rest of Europe over the last two years. Meanwhile, Russia's last world war performance (in the first one) was comparatively pathetic, as the Germans and Austro-Hungarians were able to totally defeat them with the lesser part of their power. The last two decades hadn't done them any favors either: the fragile new Soviet Union had lost wars to minor powers like Poland, the Baltic states, and most famously, Finland. The embarrassing latter incident had only happened a few months prior to Barbarossa. Suffice to say, there was good reason for these reputations.
  • Yet, despite all of the above, the Soviets took on the brunt of the German war machine for two years, and while they suffered grievous losses and lost much of their territory, they eventually halted the German offensive at Moscow, rolled it back somewhat at Rzhev, and stumped their second strategic offensive at Stalingrad. Starting around the time of Kursk, in 1943, the Americans and British intensified their air and naval campaigns and opened up the first ground front in western Europe (Italy, to be followed the next year by France and the Low Countries). This resulted in the bulk of the German air force and 40% of the German army being redirected to fronts other than the Eastern Front. Faced with only half (roughly) of the German war effort, and invigorated further by American Lend-Lease aid, the Soviets were no longer the David, and with their allies collectively constituted the Goliath. Germany wasn't as successful as the David and were crushed by the Allies within the next year and a half.
• On a national scale, there was the Winter War of 1940 between Finland (a relatively small Nordic nation) and the Soviet Union (a colossal nation with one of the world's largest militaries, 30 times as many planes, and 100 times as many tanks). Thanks in no small part to exceptionally cold (even for Russians) winter and extremely well-entrenched defense line judged later to be impenetrable sans for with nuclear weapons, Finland was able to hold off the Soviets for far longer than anyone expected.
  • Also helped by the fact that Stalin purged (read: fired, imprisoned or killed) most of his competent officers prior to the invasion.
    • And helped by Simo Häyhä, aka the White Death, aka Sugar. Current record holder for the deadliest sniper alive with 505 confirmed kills by sniper rifle and 200 odd kills via machine gun in just 100 days. At 5'3" (1.60 m), could be considered a David.
• During The American Civil War, the Union blockaded the entire Confederate coastline. To counter this, they posted a bounty to anyone who could break the blockade. The most popular method to try were small torpedo boats that sat low in the water called, wait for it... Davids. No, they never managed to break the blockade.
• The Battle of Rorke's Drift, during which a platoon of around 150 men — a considerable proportion of which were ill — successfully stood off between 3 and 4,000 veteran Zulu warriors for over twelve hours with few casualties... after an army of British veterans had been massacred almost to a man (barely 50 of over 1700 troops) by the army of which said Zulu warriors were but a detachment (one that hadn't seen action) earlier the same day at the Battle of Isandlhwana.
• Taffy 3. If there was ever a naval battle that fits the description of David vs Goliath, it is the Battle Off Samar. 6 Escort Carriers, 3 Destroyers and 4 Destroyer Escorts against 4 Battleships,^note including the Yamato, the largest Battleship ever built itself weighing more then all of Taffy-3 put together (Its main turrets weighed more then any of the individual Destroyers all by themselves), 6 Heavy Cruisers, 2 Light Cruisers and 11 Destroyers. The flagship of the attacking fleet weighed more then the entirety of Taffy 3. Ironically, the Yamato played almost no part in the battle with most of the damage inflicted on Taffy 3 coming from the battleship Kongo. Not only did the Kongo sink the Roberts but it also is the ship that damaged the Johnston's engines as well. The smaller American force fought so tenaciously that the Japanese force ended up retreating. The unit received the Presidential Unit Citation as a result of their heroics in this action.
  • Robert Lundgren in his work The World Wonder'd actually makes the point that it was Yamato, not Kongo that scored the majority of the hits on Taffy 3's ships, including a hit on USS White Plains that overpenetrated and detonated under her keel, crippling her. This was the longest range naval gunnery hit ever.
  • Captain Ernest E. Evans and the USS Johnston. On his own initiative, Captain Evans turned his ship and charged into the attacking Japanese ships, torpedoing one Japanese Heavy Cruiser blowing the bow off^note causing another heavy cruiser to retire to assist it(he torpedoed that one too) and caused enough confusion to allow the Destroyer Escort Samuel B Roberts to close for its own attack run. After retreating under heavy damage (with Captain Evans steering the ship heavily wounded), the Johnston engaged a Japanese Heavy Cruiser and several Destroyers that were attacking one of the escort carriers. This ended up spoiling the Japanese torpedo run, in return for the ''Johnston'' being sunk. The Johnston fought so hard that the Japanese reported that they had sunk a South Dakota-class battleship in their logs. Ernest E. Evans abandoned ship with the rest of the crew but was not rescued. He received the Medal of Honor.
    • The Destroyer Escort Samuel B. Roberts made its own attack run, passing the now heavily damaged USS Johnston as it was retiring from the action. After expending its 3 torpedoes damaging one Heavy Cruiser, Samuel B. Roberts maneuvered so close to a Japanese heavy cruiser that the Japanese crew could not depress their guns low enough to return fire, leading to considerable damage to the Japanese cruiser. The Samuel B. Roberts was eventually crippled in the exchange, and while retreating, was hit and sunk by the Battleship Kongo. It was said of the ship that it was the Destroyer Escort that fought like a Battleship. Badass of the Week, Battle at Samar. Her ferocity in battle—her daring, danger-close attack resulted in the disabling and eventual destruction of both the Chokai and the Chikuma—led the Japanese to believe her to be a Baltimore-class heavy cruiser ten times her actual size, as they believed only a Baltimore could have mauled two IJN heavy cruisers in such a fashion.
• Wolverines are said to be able to kill a moose, and have been reported to take on polar bears.
• Torpedo Boats (and later on, attack aircraft) versus battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. These small craft were very fragile, and their targets very heavily armed, but they could deal out catastrophic damage with a successful attack. Swarm tactics were heavily favored in hopes of overwhelming the defenders. By the end of World War II, the list of warships that fell due to these small attackers would include Arizona, Oklahoma, Bismark, Repulse, Prince of Wales, Yamato, Musashi, Akagi, Lexington, Yorktown, Szent István, Knyaz Suvorov, Housatonic, and many others. The capabilities of anti-ship missiles in the modern age allowed the Soviets to fit them even on small corvettes / large torpedo boats, turning them into gnats with boxers' fists, able to strike down the largest warships if caught off guard.
• Stanley "Swede" Vejtasa in an SBD Dauntless dive bomber (not built for dogfights) against three Japanese Zero fighters (which were created for the express purpose of being pinpoint superiority fighters). He engaged them in a maneuvering fight, rendering his tail gunner useless, and still managed to take down all three on his own, the last one by ripping its wing off with his own aircraft's wing when they made a close head-on pass. How? Sheer raw guts, surviving twenty minutes of constant nine-G turns (which would have ripped the wings off the more lightly-constructed Zero and would have knocked a normal man unconscious after one turn), until he could finally get some shots off. It certainly helped that the Dauntless carried a pair of nose-mounted M2 .50 caliber machine guns, a respectable if not overwhelming amount of firepower. Vejtasa later transferred to fighter piloting and became one of the Goliaths, shooting down seven Japanese aircraft in one day during his first engagement, making him one of the rare "Ace in a Day" candidates.
• During the Battle of the Bulge an American M8 Armored Car was hidden alongside a road near St. Vith, Belgium, when a German King Tiger rumbled up. Waiting until the tank passed, the M8 then charged at it from behind and fired three 37mm armor-piercing rounds into the Tiger's engine bay from 25 yards, causing it to explode. They almost didn't make it, as the Tiger's commander spotted them coming and ordered the turret to swing around, but it wasn't quite fast enough. If it had, the 88mm high velocity gun would have blasted the M8 into confetti.
• Cracked cites some cases.
  • The 7 Most Badass Man vs. Beast Showdowns includes a man driving a bear away by kicking it in the face and a women driving away a hippo by hitting in the head with a stick.
  • 9 Old Timey Animal Photos You Won't Believe Are Real has another case with man named Gus Waldorf going into a boxing match against a bear, and as they put it "Since they followed boxing protocol as opposed to the bear's preferred combat style of straight up mauling everyone, its teeth and claws were restricted with a muzzle and boxing gloves. And even though the bear went into the ring severely handicapped, Waldorf still lost the fight due to the handicap of not being a bear."
  • The 6 Most Mismatched Battles Ever Won by Underdogs relates victories by severely outnumbered forces in Persia, the Ottomans, Korea, Hungary, and the Mongols.
• Five-year-old girl with lemonade stand is challenged by the Westboro Baptist Church. Church loses.
• During the Falklands War of 1982, Royal Marine Commandos as good as sunk an Argentinian Navy frigate that came close to shore in South Georgia by shooting at it with anti-tank bazookas. The Marines hit it repeatedly under the waterline with Carl Gustav weapons, from such a close range that very few weapons on the frigate could be brought to bear on them. In any case, individual Marines are a hard target for a warship's weapons systems to target. The Argentinian ship was deliberately run aground by its captain to prevent it from sinking, and surrendered later to the Royal Navy.
• In a nutshell, Battle of Okehazama in the Sengoku Period. Oda Nobunaga's forces of 2500 men, against Imagawa Yoshimoto's forces of 25000 to 40000 men. The Oda forces took advantage of the rainstorm to launch an ambush straight to Yoshimoto's head, killing him and sending his other men to chaos and not only did the Oda scored their greatest victory, but the Imagawa fell to ruin, and the name 'Oda Nobunaga' became known as one of the most fearsome warlords in the era, instead of just 'The Fool of Owari'.
• Wolves can take on large animals such as bears and moose, but the victors in such conflicts are always hard to determine.
• The Chilean corvette Esmeralda was something of a David. She was a little bright green fully rigged sailing ship, which even in 1855 looked quaint. She did have two smoke stacks: few observers could have guessed however that she had four boilers, letting her achieve a speed of 8 knots. She had a history of capturing or at least giving a tough time to ships much larger than her. She notably captured a schooner, a ship almost a fourth larger, called the Virgen de Covadonga (of Spain). This was during the Chincha Islands war in 1864-66. Ultimately though, she was sunk by the Peruvian ironclad Huáscar. Only however because Esmeralda's captain Arturo Pratt let honor (or perhaps frustration) get the better of him. For 3 hours, Huáscar bombarded Esmeralda with her 300lb Armstrong gun to no effect. Captain Pratt's fatal error was putting Esmeralda in boarding range of Huáscar.^note The objective of Captain Prat was to carry out the combat aboard the battleship Huascar, because the Esmeralda was not in conditions for combat or defensive maneuvers since its boilers were under repair and the guns could not pierce the armor of the Peruvian ship. The determining factor to change position was the attack of 4 Blakely guns by the Peruvian forces from the ground. By the time of the spur, the corvette was already sinking and the boilers exploded. The boarding did not work because the bugle that the instruction had to touch had died beheaded seconds before, if the plan had worked, a ship would have been lost in bad combat conditions, but with the capture of the most powerful ship in Peru. He and his boarding party were killed by Huáscar's Gatling gun, while the ironclad proceeded to ram Esmeralda repeatedly until she sank.
• The First Italo-Ethiopian War saw Ethiopia, a country of allegedly backwards and uncivilized black people, defeat Italy, a European country with a modern military and economy. The twist in this case was that Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II had used diplomacy with Italy's European rivals (specifically, France and Russia) to acquire an arsenal of modern weapons. The Ethiopians were arguably better-armed than the Italians, who were equipped with outdated weapons and ammunition that they were trying to use up. The Italians also suffered from poor morale and inaccurate maps, while the Ethiopians knew the terrain well and forced the Italians to fight on terrain of their choosing.
• Israel in the 1948 War of Independence. Surrounded by hostile Arab states with much larger populations and armies, the fledgling state also had to deal with arms embargoes imposed by the British up until the moment they left, while the already-independent Arab states of Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, etc. could buy arms freely. They got official diplomatic recognition by the United States and the Soviet Union within days of declaring independence, but in practice this didn't change much, as neither superpower offered any significant material or troop support. By the end of the war, 1% of the entire Israeli population (of 600,000) had been killed in the war.
  • In later wars, the Israeli leadership tried to exploit this to gain international support, but it was less effective after the Six-Day War, and especially after the Yom Kippur War, when Israel's conflicts shifted from being against numerically superior foreign armies to against Palestinian militants. Some Israeli politicians and foreign supporters have framed Israel's conflict with Iran this way.
• It is the early 1980s. The Neutral Austrians with No Navy are looking for a replacement for the antiquated Walther P38. Steyr and their new GB pistol are favorites to win and going up against Beretta, Sig-Sauer, Heckler & Koch, and Fabrique Nationale. Then in 1982 comes this no-name firm from Deutsch-Wagram who specializes in polymers. Its founder had invented sixteen things beforehand, none of which were firearms. This new pistol, his seventeenth invention developed from scratch with no prior experience with guns, was submitted... a polymer frame?! Surely Herr Glock jests. Who does this plastic-making bum think he is, John Browning? To Steyr's dismay and embarrassment and the shock of everyone else, the Glock 17 won and the Austrian Army awarded Glock the contract in 1983. Police and military adoption of the pistol spread like wildfire throughout the 90s and it made polymer-frame pistols mainstream. The GB, meanwhile, was primarily fielded by Lebanese and Pakistani cops and largely forgotten after Beretta won a contract from the US Army and Steyr discontinued the pistol.
• Ukraine during the Russo-Ukrainian war of 2022. Ukraine, unlike other countries such as Vietnam and Afghanistan, has relatively flat terrain that favors the invader. But, thanks to adopting the measures of more advanced countries within the Nato Alliance, Ukraine has been able to tear down the facade that is the Russian behemoth, and instead prove that it is possible to fight against large authoritarian regimes.

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