How the Covenant won the Battle for Earth | Halo Battle Breakdown Fixed

On today's Battle Breakdown, we examine how the Covenant managed to overwhelm Earth's defenses and win the Battle for Earth.

The Battle of Earth is featured primarily in Halo 2 and Halo 3, and - despite the presence of the UNSC Home fleet and the various Orbital Defence Platrforms and their Super Macs - sees Earth fall to various Covenant fleets, and later the flood. I'll explain it all on today's Halo Battle Breakdown episode!

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Want to help the channel out?

[EckhartsLadder]

I'm going on vacation for a week! Still have 4 or so videos which I've set to go live. Wanna keep up to date? www.twitter.com/eckhatsladder

[ESFNinja]

Because the Marines had two sticks and a rock...and they had to share the rock.

[HectorMendoza-zsff]

Damn this is the feeling of desperation that the new Halo games sorely miss.

[Scts]

"Dear Humanity... We regret being alien bastards. We regret coming to Earth. And we most definitely regret that the Corps just blew up our raggedy-ass fleet!"- Sergeant Major Avery Johnson

[themadtacoeatingfool]

The battle of earth shows if not anything how outmatched the unsc was during the war. Just go to show you how deadly efficient they where in order to survive for so long

[DaManBearPig]

Bro you completely forgot to mention how Lord Hood was a genius and managed to almost wipe out most of the covenant with his ODPs and earths homes fleet, leaving only a handful of Covenant ships left after weeks of hit and run. You articulated it like humanity got its shit pushed in which is kind of true but they went down swinging and almost took both invasion fleets with them.

[ClarinetgirlMelissa]

Ummm, Earth isn't a colony world, it is a homeworld.

[arbiter]

The games didn't indicate the real size of the battle tho, maybe that's why Earth seems so weak in Halo. But when you think of the numbers, it doesn't add up, the invasion force of Reach is almost 700+ ships(or 350, depends on source) and Covenant lost two third of ships to win the battle, which is defended by only 20 ODPs and 150+ ships, a small force considering Earth is defended by 300 ODPs and 100+ ships.
So here are the actual battle's summary:
In the battle of Earth, after the break through and escape of Regret's ship, multiple large waves of Covenant ships reinforcement arrives battling Earth's force (which is still mostly intact, as the book ghost of Onyx indicates the battle on space has went on for 2 weeks, can't battle for weeks if nothing is left; In latter of the book, Earth's defend force spare 1 cruiser and 8 destroyers to aid Onyx, if the situation is dire enough how can they spare such a force?). As the battle rage on for weeks, then the ending event in halo 2 happened, many of the ships loyal to prophet of Truth went off to earth too, and they are the last and largest wave Earth ever met, probably in the hundreds. And in response, UNSC's fleet is mostly wipe out, with a few frigates left, but the Covenant's fleet is reduced to 40 or so. Then the events of halo 3 starts.

[mrcomp]

4:15 You have to upload that as a separate video.

[gavinyip]

Did you say Earth was the most important 'colony'....

[jediarchives]

What about the droid attack on the Wookies?

[justAguyDs]

I know real life battles isn't your thing but I'd like to see the great emu war covered

[JSSQuelloAutentico]

Every Alien invaders vs humans scenario in a nutshell

Humanity: Oh no they invaded earth
Humanity: Oh no they killed 90% of our population and we have no defenses anymore.
Humanity: Nvm we have a brave guy willing to fight for us, we are gonna win.
Aliens: OH SHIT

[chase]

This is such a cool new series, thanks EckartsLadder

[CT-Clone]

Humans gets completely wrecked 90% of the time in these kinda universes😖

[mid.nightrunners]

It still blows my mind how close humanity came to being wiped out, I mean the civilians on earth must have been in complete panic and hysteria once the covenant fleet began its attack with little to no resistance.

[sookendestroy]

Pro tip Regrets fleet was wiped along with a big chunk of the home fleet or atleast the parts we see (The 8 Marathons left in the entire navy is kind of meh), the UNSC recalled every ship for the most part to Earth and sort of held their own while sustaining losses as the Covenant basically set a rally point and trickled in. At some point they started jumping past the defense grid entirely and glassing major cities and important sites before Truths fleet arrived and the events of H3 followed. If home fleet got wiped and the Regret and Truths fleets had free roam of earth that whole time the planet would be glass.

[lucasclark]

Chief-‘permission to leave the station’
CO-‘To do what?’
Chief-‘To return their bomb.’

That one, very brief exchange sums up just how badass Master Chief actually is

[pigpig]

I highly recommend you read about the Battle of Sigma Octanus IV. One of the largest and most interesting space battles in Halo and described in depth, with the UNSC using some really cheeky tactics. It would make a great video. Absolutely LOVING this new series btw!

[Revan-vkld]

Battle of Kuat please the empire did a amazing strategy of using the rings walkers as turbolasers