History OneManArmy / RealLife

* The probable top kill score in human history goes to Heinrich Severloh, the [[BadassUnintentional everyman German soldier]] assigned to man WN 62, the machinegun nest that the Americans optimistically codenamed "Easy Red." Firing [[MoreDakka over 12,000 shots from his machinegun]] and 400 shots from two rifles, he managed to rack up between ''1500 and 2500 casualties'' in a single day's fighting, only retreating when all three of his guns failed due to heat warping. His testimony is, however, rather unreliable when one considers that he also claims that there were 30 men defending Omaha, when his own emplacement held 19... reliable figures aside, no-one doubts that he caused a 'lot' of casualties. When he was taken prisoner, he was afraid to speak about the battle for decades for fear of retaliation, and the American [=GIs=] and their families simply nicknamed the unknown enemy [[RedBaron "the Beast of Omaha Beach."]]

** Ironically, the bomber didn't really kill that many of the fighters (One Dinah and atleast 3 of the Zeros), but, what makes her famous is that the ''ENTIRE'' crew got atleast the Distinguished Flying Cross, while the Pilot (Jay Zeemer), and the Bombardier (Joe Sarnoski) were both awarded the Medal of Honor [note] Joe Sarnoskis was posthumous [.note].
** The bomber itself was also one-plane-air-force for the other missions it flew. It bristled with seven extra .50cals compared to a standard B-17E at the time. While adding extra guns was common practice, one of those guns was wired to the pilots control yoke... so Jay Zeemer had a gun to shoot with. These were all added because [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor:the crew wanted to take on the missions no one else would fly.]] These included a Skip bombing mission on a carrier [note] B-17s normally drop their bombs from an altitude of 10,000ft or higher [/note], a low-altitude raid on Rabaul Island, and a ''diving'' attack on Japanese search-lights during a night raid... all these were things that the B-17s smaller cousins like the B-25 Mitchel were used for, and yet, this crew did them any way.

** Well, each gurkha is a one man army. One regiment of gurkhas is a good reason to say "screw this, I'm outta here"

* Captain Benjamin L. Salomon earned a posthumous Medal of Honor during the Battle of Saipan. Among pother things, he took on four Japanese soldiers at once, and as his citation stated, he "kicked the knife out of the hand of one, shot another, and bayoneted a third. Captain Salomon butted the fourth enemy soldier in the stomach and a wounded comrade then shot and killed the enemy soldier." Later on, he took over a machine gun whose crew had been killed to cover the withdrawl of wounded Americans. When his body was found after the battle, almost 100 enemy soldiers were in front of his machine gun.

* Now for a one ''plane'' army, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_666 Old 666]], a B-17E Bomber. For short, we'll only give you its most infamous mission, a mapping mission of Bougain island. With 22 minutes still on the clock and no fighter escort, Old 666 got ambushed by at the very least 17 Japanese fighters (15 A6M Zeroes and 2 Ki-46 Dinahs). Old 666 then proceeded to ''dogfight them for said 22 minutes''. Let me say this again, a ''heavy bomber'' dogfights 17 Japanese fighters. It proceeds to fight them until they ran out of fuel and/or ammo, having taken down many of them in the ensuing dogfight. Bombers aren't even meant to dogfight (though American ones where usually bristling with flexibly-mounted Browning .50s to fire everywhere at once) and this one takes 17 fighters on.

** Of course, the ''other'' thing Russians call "the white death" is... [[HoYay sugar]]. Making this the unlikely intersection of FoeYay and TastesLikeDiabetes.
*** Well these are the Russians we're talking about here. When a single man can make the Russian Army (''the'' '''Russian''' '' '''army''' '' ) look like fish in a barrel, one wouldn't be surprised at the prospect of them developing something of a crush.

* Now for a one ''plane'' army, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_666 Old 666]], a B-17E Bomber. For short, we'll only give you its most infamous mission, a mapping mission of Bougain island. With 22 minutes still on the clock and no fighter escort, Old 666 got ambushed by at the very least 17 Japanese fighters (15 A6M Zeroes and 2 Ki-46 Dinahs). Old 666 then proceeded to ''dogfight them for said 22 minutes''. Let me say this again, a ''bomber'' dogfights 17 Japanese fighters. It proceeds to fight them until they ran out of fuel and/or ammo, having taken down many of them in the ensuing dogfight. Bombers aren't even meant to dogfight and this one takes 17 fighters on.

* The Viking at Stamford Bridge. This was a huge, nameless warrior clad in chain mail, a helmet with a nose guard and an axe who stepped up to cover regrouping of Harald Hardrada's forces after they were ambushed without their armor and pushed into retreat by King Harold Godwinson, the Saxon king during the time. The Norsemen fled across a bridge(later dubbed Stamford Bridge although a bridge by that name didn't exist at the time) to provide a choke point so the English army wouldn't be able to surround them with their metaphorical pants down. Then this man volunteered to stand alone on a brige wide enough for three men to cross, facing an army thousands strong and ''held''. He stood alone for hours, fighting back against the Saxon horde, killing 40 men and wounding untold numbers. Presumably the vikings were to busy standing in awe of him to realize they should be using this opportunity to run, because they were still there when the Saxons finally broke through. Oh, and the kicker? he was brought down(according to legend) by an intrepid Saxon soldier who hopped in the river, floated under the bridge and stabbed him in the groin(which based on his exploits presumably provided a pretty damn big target).

* Now for a one ''plane'' army, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_666 Old 666]] A B-17E Bomber, For short, we'll only give you it's most infamous mission. It was a mapping mission of Bougain island. With 22 minutes still on the clock and no fighter escort, Old 666 got ambushed by at the very least 17 Japanese fighters (15 A6M Zeroes and 2 Ki-46 Dinahs). Old 666 then proceeded to ''Dogfight them for said 22 minutes''. Let me say this again, an ''bomber'' dogfights 17 Japanese fighters. It proceeds to fight them until they ran out of fuel and/or ammo . having taken down many of them in the ensuing dogfight. Bombers aren't even meant to dogfight and this one takes 17 fighters on.

* That's compared to another of history's great snipers, Vasily Zaytsev, who while fighting against the Nazis, only managed to rack up a '''''mere''''' 242 confirmed kills to his name. Zaytsev was active on the front for the very short time, basically less than half a year. Remember, he wasn't an infantryman, he was a Marine, and he was transferred to Stalingrad from the Pacific Fleet only in Summer 1942. By the end of the summer he was raking kills so quickly that the Soviet media made him a posterboy of all snipers in the army, despite his relatively average kill count. In the end the brass realized that they [[SlaveToPR couldn't risk the morale by letting him to be killed at the front]], and recalled him to Moscow where he helped organize a sniper schools and served as an instructor. Soviet snipers in general, because of the desperate conditions they fought in and how long the brass kept them at the front, tended to rack up enormous kill counts far in excess of other Allied forces, who rotated their snipers through combat zones.
* The first time the German Army encountered a T-34 tank during Operation Barbarossa near the Dniepr river, it was like nothing they had ever seen. A [=PaK=] 36 anti tank gun was brought up to engage it. It advanced through the gun's fire, ignoring it entirely, and crushed it. It then engaged and destroyed two Panzer IIs of the 17th Panzer Division before proceeding to carve a nine mile swath through the rest of the German forces sent to destroy it. Finally, the Hitlerites managed to get a howitzer behind it and destroy it at close range. From the German report:
-->''Half a dozen anti-tank gun fire shells at him which sound like a drumroll. But he drives staunchly through our line like an impregnable prehistoric monster...''
** The Germans had an even nastier surprise when they met the TonkaTough Klimenti Voroshilov (KV) heavy tanks, especially the massive KV-2 which mounted an enormous howitzer and was nicknamed "Dreadnought". When the 6th Panzer Divisiom established a bridgehead on the Dubsya River, ''one'' KV-2 held the entire decision off for a day. It wasn't destroyed either - it retreated when it ran out of ammunition.

** The Germans had an even nastier surprise when they met the TonkaTough Klimenti Voroshilov (KV) heavy tanks, especially the massive KV-2 which mounted an enormous howitzer and was nicknamed "Dreadnought". When the 6th Panzer Divisiom established a bridgehead on the Dubsya River, ''one'' KV-2 held the entire decision off for a day.

* That's compared to the second greatest sniper in history, Vasily Zaytsev, who while fighting against the Nazis, only managed to rack up a '''''mere''''' 242 confirmed kills to his name.
** It's now widely known that Vasily Zaitsev's exploits (and especially his body count) were mostly fictional, created for the purposes of propaganda by the Soviets.
*** How Zaytsev can be the second greatest if Ivan Kulbertinov had 487 confirmed kills and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyudmila_Pavlichenko Lyudmila Pavlichenko]] (just ''one'' of the many soviet distinquished female snipers) had over 300 confirmed kills?
** It's the other way round. Zaytsev's exploits were for the most part true, but he was active on the front for the very short time, basically less than half a year. Remember, he wasn't an infantryman, he was a Marine, and he was transferred to Stalingrad from the Pacific Fleet only in Summer 1942. By the end of the summer he was raking kills so quickly that the Soviet media made him a posterboy of all snipers in the army, despite his relatively average kill count. In the end the brass realized that they [[SlaveToPR couldn't risk the morale by letting him to be killed at the front]], and recalled him to Moscow where he helped organize a sniper schools and served as an instructor.

** [[BadassPacifist And he was a pacifist]].

** [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking And he was a pacifist]].

* A Two Man Army example: American sniper Carlos Hathcock and spotter Johnny Burke were on a mission behind enemy lines in the Vietnam War when they encountered a company of NVA soldiers (about 80 men) marching across a rice field. Hathcock and Burke each shot one of the officers, and the NVA soldiers, instead of running for the nearest forest, tried to hide behind a small embankment about 1000 meters from any more good cover. The two Americans picked off the NVA soldiers at long range for five days before calling in an artillery strike on the few remaining NVA soldiers. Only one Vietnamese soldier survived.

* AudieMurphy. While still bandaged from an earlier wound, he was wounded by mortar fragments in two feet of snow at -14F. When the ammunition for his personal weapon ran out, he climbed on a burning tank destroyer, that could explode at any minute, and used the .50 caliber machine gun to continue to lay a withering fire at the enemy, while calling down highly accurate artillery fire against the enemy. He received a further leg wound during this phase of the battle, which LASTED OVER AN HOUR, under constant attack from, as the citation for his Medal of Honor reads, "6 tanks, supported by waves of infantry". When the survivors of his squad regrouped with reinforcements, he personally led a counter-attack that forced an enemy withdrawal. According to his citation, he personally killed more than 50 soldiers in that battle.

* The probable top kill score in human history goes to Heinrich Severloh, the [[BadassUnintentional everyman German soldier]] assigned to man WN 62, the machinegun nest that the Americans optimistically codenamed "Easy Red." Firing [[MoreDakka over 12,000 shots from his machinegun]] and 400 shots from two rifles, he managed to rack up between ''1500 and 2500 casualties'' in a single day's fighting, only retreating when all three of his guns failed due to heat warping. His testimony is, however, rather unreliable when one considers that he also claims that there were 30 men defending Omaha, when his own emplacement held 19... reliable figures aside, no-one doubts that he caused a 'lot' of casualties. When he was taken prisoner, he was afraid to speak about the battle for decades for fear of retaliation, and the American GIs and their families simply nicknamed the unknown enemy [[RedBaron "the Beast of Omaha Beach."]]

* Audie Murphy. While still bandaged from an earlier wound, he was wounded by mortar fragments in two feet of snow at -14F. When the ammunition for his personal weapon ran out, he climbed on a burning tank destroyer, that could explode at any minute, and used the .50 caliber machine gun to continue to lay a withering fire at the enemy, while calling down highly accurate artillery fire against the enemy. He received a further leg wound during this phase of the battle, which LASTED OVER AN HOUR, under constant attack from, as the citation for his Medal of Honor reads, "6 tanks, supported by waves of infantry". When the survivors of his squad regrouped with reinforcements, he personally led a counter-attack that forced an enemy withdrawal. According to his citation, he personally killed more than 50 soldiers in that battle.

* Canadian LeoMajor in World War 2. He started his career on D Day, capturing a German half track. Then, he went on to single handedly liberate the Dutch down of Zwolle. During a whole night he stormed the city, firing a machine gun and throwing grenades, making the germans believing a whole detachment of the Canadian Army was attacking, causing them to retreat.

* The Viking at Stamford Bridge. This was a huge, nameless warrior clad in chain mail, a helmet with a nose guard and an axe who stepped up to cover the retreat®rouping of Harald Hardrada's forces after they were ambushed without their armor and pushed into retreat by King Harold Godwinson, the Saxon king during the time. The Norsemen fled across a bridge(later dubbed Stamford Bridge although it didn't exist at the time)to provide a choke point so the english army wouldn't be able to surround them. Then this man volunteered to stand alone on a brige wide enough for three men to cross, facing an army thousands strong and ''held''. He stood alone for hours, fighting back against the Saxon horde, killing 40 men and wounding untold numbers. Presumably the vikings were to busy standing in awe of him to realize they should be using this opportunity to run, because they were still there when the Saxons finally broke through. Oh, and the kicker? he was brought down(according to legend) by an intrepid Saxon soldier who hopped in the river, floated under the bridge and stabbed him in the groin(which based on his exploits presumably provided a pretty damn big target).

* The Viking at Stamford Bridge. This was a huge, nameless warrior clad in chain mail, a helmet with a nose guard and an axe who stepped up to cover the retreat&regrouping of Harald Hardrada's forces after they were ambushed and pushed into retreat by King Harold Godwinson, the Saxon king during the time. The Norsemen fled across a bridge(later dubbed Stamford Bridge although it didn't exist at the time)to provide a choke point so the english army wouldn't be able to surround them. Then this man volunteered to stand alone on a brige wide enough for three men to cross, facing an army thousands strong and ''held''. He stood alone for hours, fighting back against the Saxon horde, killing 40 men and wounding untold numbers. Presumably the vikings were to busy standing in awe of him to realize they should be using this opportunity to run, because they were still there when the Saxons finally broke through. Oh, and the kicker? he was brought down(according to legend) by an intrepid Saxon soldier who hopped in the river, floated under the bridge and stabbed him in the groin(which based on his exploits presumably provided a pretty damn big target).

*** Truer than you know. The story goes that during the Falklands War, entire formations of Argentinian soldiers surrendered ''just on hearing the Gurkhas had been deployed there.''

* Captain Benjamin L. Salomon earned a posthumous Medal of Honor during the Battle of Saipan. Among pother things, he took on four Japanese soldiers at once, even kicking the knife out of one of their hands. Later on, he took over a machine gun whose crew had been killed to cover the withdrawl of wounded Americans. When his body was found after the battle, almost 100 enemy soldiers were in front of his machine gun.

** Zhang Fei also belongs here: when Liu Bei, his friend, had to retreat from a city about to be attacked by Cao Cao's army, Guan Yu went to the only bridge leading to the city, planted his staff, and ''dared the army to attack him.'' There was very obviously no one backing him up, but the army, rather than face him, ''turned and ran''.

** Guan Yu also belongs here: when Liu Bei, his friend, had to retreat from a city about to be attacked by Cao Cao's army, Guan Yu went to the only bridge leading to the city, planted his staff, and ''dared the army to attack him.'' There was very obviously no one backing him up, but the army, rather than face him, ''turned and ran''.