Most people miss that little fine point of the situation.

I have seen very little mention of the role that Company "B", of the 20th Maine, played in that engagement. The movie "Gettysburg" for example, doesn't even mention company "B". It gives the impression that the regiment was all together.

OK, I know who expects a movie to be historically accurate. But the point is that almost all historians do the same thing and fail to include what they do not understand. Therefore most historians make false assumptions based on incomplete information.

In Oates case it wasn't the shock of Chamberlains charge that broke the Confederate assualt. The weight of that charge was too weak. Had Chamberlain charged in a frontal assualt without the "swinging gate" manuver it would most likely have failed, and the Alabama boys would have been over the top of Little Round Top. It was the surprise of even a small number of Union soldiers, at the far end of that "swinging gate", in the Confederates rear and flank that surprised them and caused them to break.