Why did the spanish armada fail in 1582

Why did the Spanish armada fail in 1582 In 1588 Phillip 11 sent an armada to other throw Elizabeth and replaces her with a catholic monarch. In this essay i am going to explain why the armada failed by looking at the difference between the Spanish and English and how these affected the outcome of the conflict. An important reason for the failure of the Spanish armada was the planning. The Spanish plan was simple but could have been effective. The Spanish had the strongest army in Europe and 34, 000 men. All the Spanish had to do was pick the soldiers up and take them to Kent and kill the queen. It was a very simple plan but would be deadly if worked . the thing that they didn’t think about was communication. The messenger ships travelled at the same speed as the armada, so they were useless. The communication wasn’t the only problem. King Phillip hadn’t thought of the area. The coast, where they had to pick the army up was to shallow and if they carried on going the armada would get stuck, so the Spanish couldn’t pick their soldiers up. They soon solved this problem by building small barges. The next problem was that the army needed to get t the armada without the Dutch seeing. If the Dutch saw them, they would kill them all and the armada couldn’t do anything because of shallow water, the plan would be ruined. The evidence shows that the planning of the Spanish armada was an important reason for the failure. Another important reason for the failure of the armada is the weapons. The Spanish army expected to fire their cannons only once, so it took them an hour to reload, but the English cannon could be reloaded in 10 minutes and were built for sea battles. This gave the English an advantage and the Spanish couldn’t fire back. The English had long range guns which meant they could shoot from a further distance and didn’t have to get close to shoot. Therefore, evidence suggests, that the difference between the English and Spanish were an important reason for the failure of the Spanish armada. Another reason for the failure of the armada is the luck. The tides were not going the way where the Spanish wanted them to, this meant the Spanish had to go all the way around Britain, from doing this they ran out of food and many people died off starvation. The English new the tides well which meant they knew what to do. From this evidence you can tell that this is a less important reason for the failure of the Spanish armada. One of the greatest problems was the leadership. Phillip didn’t know much about battle vut neither did Elizabeth, but Elizabeth was clever unlike Phillip and put Charles Howard and Francis Drake in charge of the military