The Sheila Variations

Iran/Iraq?

Excellent work, Steve. Game over.

Iran-Iraq...

...although, technically, the Korean War has been going on for 54 years.

What I was going to say. Proves I should read this every morning.

(Note: The Iran/Iraq war also achieved another 'first' - -the largest tank-battle in history - the previous holder of that record was the Battle of Kursk; between Nazi forces and Stalin's T-34's).

> Excellent work, Steve. Game over.

I rule!

Largest tank battle in history:
Kursk on the WW II Russian front, then came the Chinese Farm during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, who would have thought the Iranians and the Iraqis together could generate over 1000 operable tanks (that might be the qualifier), but currently, the record holder is the U.S. Army against the Republican Guard, Gulf War 1991-1992. Go count the burned out hulks of Iraqi tanks....

You guys are all so cool. I don't even know what to do.

What about the Sino-Japanese war from 1931-1945? That was an awfully conventional conflict, even if it DID involve a lot of trickery, nastiness and guerrilla combat on both sides.

The Sino-Japanese counts as a long one, though no huge conventional battles and it was kind of on-again-off-again. More naval battle than anything else. It was just too hard/different for either side to sustain large forces. Premier weapon was the machine gun, though, the Japanese proved themselves adapt at "modern" warfare, the Soviets not overly competent on land. Soviet Far Eastern Fleet was considered formidable, though the Japanese won the largest and most significant naval battle by a Divine Wind that inspired a lot of nastiness in late WW II.

Outlaw,

You may be confusing "X-Japanese" wars. I think you're talking about the earlier Russo-Japanese War, while the Sino-Japanese War was the Japanese effort to control pretty much all of coastal China.

There was also a brief war over the Manchurian border in 1939. The Japanese were defeated pretty handily on the land and I don't recall any naval battles.

Whoopsssss! Yep, wrong part of the continent. I thought that looked wrong, but sounded right. Dangit. Okay okay, I plead temporary early senior moment. Shoulda studied that part of the world more...

I was sure that the Sino-Japanese war was going to the winner, but historians hold the "official" start to be 1937, at the Marco Polo Bridge. Prior to that, I think the Japanese were busy in Manchuria (which they called Manchukuo) since about 1931 or something like that.

It's no coincidence that the candidate wars are all 20th Century, when advances in logistics finally (if that's the word) allowed you to keep armies in the field year-round. Can you imagine a Gustavus Adoplhus or a Wallenstein being able to do that? The Thirty Years' War would have been ten times more horrible than it was.

Woops, that should be "Gustavus Adolphus.