Has the Enterprise in the films ever won a straight-up fight

[Eternal_Freedom]

It occurred to me just now that the Big E, in the films at least, doesn't ever fight another ship that it doesn't beat with some sort of trick. Let's run through the list:

STII: Big E heavily damaged by Reliant, forced to ambush her in a nebula where neither ship's shields work. (second closest straight-up fight for me).

STIII: Gets in the first shot at the BoP but fails to kill it, crippled by return fire, crew forced to abandon ship.

STVI: Gets the shit kicked out of her by the cloaked BoP before gaining the upper hand with the special torpedo. Big E damaged enough to be decommissioned afterwards.

Generations: Utterly embarrassing battle against yet another BoP. Pyrrhic victory through technobabble, E-D still destroyed.

First Contact: Helps the Fleet destroy the Cube thanks to Picard's inside knowledge. Destroys the Borg Sphere, although the Sphere's shields were down at the time. This second one is the closest one I can think of.

Insurrection: Pursued by Son'a warships, unable to inflict damage, eventually uses that gas crap to blow up one and cripple another. Disables small Son'a vessel (although I don't think that small ship was actually a warship so I don't think it counts).

Nemesis: Get's battered by the Scimitar, survives only due to Picard and then Data boarding the enemy and destroying them.

2009: Get's utterly hammered by the Narada, only able to destroy her because she's in the middle of a black hole. Then again, the Big-E's weapons did seem quite effective and once they had enough warning they could shoot down the torpedoes just fine.

Into Darkness: Get's really fucked up by USS Vengeance, only survives due to Spock's cunning plan. Incidentally that just highlights how absurdly tough nuTrek ships are built, the dreanought survived 72 torpedoe detonations inside her hull.

Am I missing something here, or do the varied incarnations of the Big-E have a really shit combat record? Especially against BoP's: Two Enterprises's destroyed with the third crippled to the point of being decommissioned. Maybe that explains why the Klingons used BoP's in such large numbers in DS9.

[Batman]

Your point being? She was shot to shit in TWOK because Kirk was a moron, in TSFS because guess what, a ship several times the size of a Nimitz ( that has been shot to shit a movie ago so maybe she isn't exactly up to specs yet) isn't set up to be handled by a crew of-five?, Generations was thanks to Riker being a moron and technobabble (but mostly Riker being a moron), and the nuTrek ones were due to the Big E being outgunned like nobody's business. About the only one you can really complain about is TUC (where NCC-2000 showed even less durability than the Big E).

[Eternal_Freedom]

Original series, granted. But you kinda skipped over the later TNG films.

[Batman]

She killed the Cube in 'First Contact' without taking any damage and was again hopelessly outgunned in 'Nemesis' (and was again hampered by crew stupidity. 'Hey, the Phaser Death Blossom worked. Let's NOT try that again.') Same goes for 'Insurrection'. Riker turned and opened up with all available weapons on the So'na...oh wait, that never happened.
The Big E's problem is that even before the abomination that was ENT, she's commanded by people who occasionally not only need help to count but find their toes.

[Eternal_Freedom]

She blew up the Cube with the help of an entire fleet. Unless you mean the Sphere, which, as I said, had it's shields down.

Granted, crew stupidity is an element. But it's still hardly a sterling record for a legendary ship.

[Batman]

No, it is most certainly not. But again, the only incident where you can incontroversibly lay the blame on the ship is TUC. Where, guess what, she survived reasonably intact (to the point that Kirk intended to take her out for one final voyage).

[Lord Revan]

considering that Borg cube is 3000m*3000m*3000m in size and went thru a fleet of 39 ships without problems, the fact it took a fleet to beat the cube shouldn't really consindered a trick no more then a soldier having to use an anti-tank weapon to kill a tank instead of punching it with his fists could considered a trick, remember that when the Undine where introduced it was a big deal then could 1-shot kill a borg cube.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Batman:
Yeah but that's Kirk's bravado I think. Certainly she was damaged enough that Starfleet didn't think it worth repairing her.

Although, I still think that all these incidents do reflect badly on the Enterprise. Not so much on the ship itself, but in her status as flagship and the legend-ship of Starfleet, if such poor crews are assigned to her.

Lord revan:
True. Then again, even with the Big E there (and the Defiant) it was still a "trick shot" if you like, relying on Picard's Borg knowledge.

[Batman]

Batman:
Yeah but that's Kirk's bravado I think. Certainly she was damaged enough that Starfleet didn't think it worth repairing her.

Which you know because of? All the movie tells us is they intend to retire the Big E. They never mention it's because of the damage she took in that fight.

[Lord Revan]

About First Contact to return to my tank vs. a single soldier analog there, most man-portable anti-tank weapons can't really kill a main battle tank without hitting a weak spot and do we really know that it was a vital system Picard told them to hit, for all we know it was just a spot where the shields were low and Picard needed the to focus fire there, instead of spreading their fire all over, which means it was really the "trick" that killed the Cube but getting the fleet to Focus on 1 spot.

[Eternal_Freedom]

There was no mention of the Big E being decommissioned before the battle, she was only, what, ten years old at that point? There had to be a good reason to suddenly decide to get rid of her, and heavy battle damage that is considered too costly to repair (especially with that talk in the briefing about heavily reducing the fleet post Khitomer) is an easy excuse.

[Batman]

Define 'kill'. No, no manportable antitank weapon can turn a tank into a rapidly expanding cloud of tank fragments. But modern manportable antitank missiles absolutely can mission-kill a tank, and have been able to since the 1970s at the very latest.

[Purple]

Define 'kill'. No, no manportable antitank weapon can turn a tank into a rapidly expanding cloud of tank fragments. But modern manportable antitank missiles absolutely can mission-kill a tank, and have been able to since the 1970s at the very latest.

Well actually that is not entirely correct. There are conditions, rare as they are when this can indeed occur. In particular, a hit to the ammunition storage can cause a catastrophic cook off which will blow the vehicle up. And whilst you will not get a movie style ball of fire and no a pile of pieces no larger than a ball point pen you will see catastrophic damage. Soviet tanks in particular are vulnerable to this due to the fact that all their munitions are positioned inside the turret ring.

[Batman]

Am I allowed to ammend my post to say'no modern manportable anti-tank missile can do so on its on without involving secondary explosions?'

[Nephtys]

This thread actually goes onto something else entirely... which is, 'Has a Bird of Prey ever LOST a straight-up fight?'

A little bird of prey with what, like 30 crew members? Pretty much aces a Constitution, an Excelsior, a Galaxy, and messes up the Defiant on several occasions. Not bad for a shipclass that's had a service life of what? 90 years?

[Purple]

Am I allowed to ammend my post to say'no modern manportable anti-tank missile can do so on its on without involving secondary explosions?'

That depends on if you consider the Davy Crockett man portable.

This thread actually goes onto something else entirely... which is, 'Has a Bird of Prey ever LOST a straight-up fight?'

A little bird of prey with what, like 30 crew members? Pretty much aces a Constitution, an Excelsior, a Galaxy, and messes up the Defiant on several occasions. Not bad for a shipclass that's had a service life of what? 90 years?

Are we sure that the BOP we see in the various movies are the same craft? Sure, they may look just the same on the outside. But so do the T-90 and T-72. We might well be seeing a whole family of designs linearly progressing from one another in the same way as the mentioned tanks. Which would explain the continually good performance over the period.

[Eternal_Freedom]

This thread actually goes onto something else entirely... which is, 'Has a Bird of Prey ever LOST a straight-up fight?'

A little bird of prey with what, like 30 crew members? Pretty much aces a Constitution, an Excelsior, a Galaxy, and messes up the Defiant on several occasions. Not bad for a shipclass that's had a service life of what? 90 years?

Very true.

[Batman]

There's at least two classes of BoP and I don't see how it ever 'aced' a Constitution given the one in TSFS only persevered because guess what, Constitution's aren't designed to run with a less-than-dozen crew, and the one in TUC not only completely failed to destroy the Big E, but wound up the destroydest starship in filmed SciFi. (And yes,I'm perfectly aware 'destroydest isn't actually a word. ).
The fact that she managed to hurt an Excelsior at all is, however, cause for concern.

[Lord Revan]

considering that Bird of Prey seems to really heavily armed for it's size, it's not that odd it can harm or even take out cruisers should it take a jump on them, it's really a Star Trek equilvant of a submarine, it's not like german U-boats could fight of a medium cruisers on equal terms either.

On the other hand there's plenty of times when BoP have been destroyed or driven off in straight up fight (and yes having to flee still counts as a loss).

as for AT weapons as others have pointed out you have to hit a weak spot like the Turret base, ammo storage or treads to take out a modern MTB, hitting it on the side or front armor is gonna do jack shit, which was my point to begin with, sure there's weapons like Hellfire missiles that take out tanks no matter where they hit but those aren't really man-portable (even by the very generous standards that militaries use).

[Purple]

Whilst we are on the topic of tanks and lucky hits to an unlucky place. Can anyone say warp core?

[Enigma]

I wouldn't add Galaxy to the list of kills that a BoP won in a straight up fight. They needed the E-D's shield frequency in order to bypass it and hit the hull itself. Other than that, yeah that ship class can hit above its weight.

[Prometheus Unbound]

TMP: The Ent survived a direct hit from V'Ger, the same thing that 1 shot three klingon cruisers and an entire space station.

[Borgholio]

In TOS we see the Enterprise often going up against Klingon Battlecruisers and beating the snot out of them. You would think that a battlecruiser would be a much more dangerous foe than a bird of prey...

[Lord Revan]

In TOS we see the Enterprise often going up against Klingon Battlecruisers and beating the snot out of them. You would think that a battlecruiser would be a much more dangerous foe than a bird of prey...

I used the U-boat analogy on purpose, like U-boats Birds of Prey have not chance against a cruiser on even ground, but when using their stealth to get the first blow they can easily cause signifigant enough damage to a cruiser to for it to retreat or even destroy it.

[Borgholio]

Good analogy...but the only time we see it actually function as a U-boat is in ST-6 and even then after at least a dozen hits, the Enterprise is still combat capable.

On a related note, I've always had a gripe with how cloaked ships were used. They shouldn't need to decloak to launch a torpedo. They've always used the excuse of power consumption, but how much power does it take to physically shove a missile out of the hatch and have the missile speed towards the target under it's own power while the cloaked ship escapes?