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4* During UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution, Peter Francisco, known as "the Virginia Giant" or "the Virginia Hercules", was flat out called a OneManArmy by George Washington himself, credited him as perhaps being the reason America won the war. The man lives up to it, as he is credited with killing eleven men in one battle and twelve in another singlehandedly, among other moments.
5--> '''George Washington''': Without him, we would have lost two crucial battles, perhaps the war, and with it our freedom. He was truly a one-man army.
6* During UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar, Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest killed more men (30) than perhaps any other military General in recorded history. This does not even include a case where he killed one of his own officers in self-defense during a murder attempt.
7* The Wild West is filled with these one-man armies.
8** Jonathan R. Davis was a miner who was striking a claim in California in 1854 when 15 bandits suddenly ambushed him, killing his two companions almost immediately. Davis killed 7 of the robbers with a pair of revolvers, and 4 more with a Bowie knife, while the remaining bandits fled. This was perhaps the largest case of "mass justified homicide" by one man in a single incident in U. S. history.
9** Legendary lawmen Wyatt Earp was once ambushed by the cowboy gang he was tracking down, and while some of his allies were pinned down or retreated in the face of ambush, Earp rode straight into the gang, fired his shotgun and pistol, and killed two of them before riding away.
10** New Mexico lawman Elfego Baca once arrested and disarmed a drunk cowboy, which got him accosted at a house later by about 40 armed cowboys. He shot one of their horses out from under them (leading to the man's death when his horse crushed them), and proceeded to fight a one-man siege against dozens of attackers. After about 33 hours and thousands of bullets being fired (the door alone was later found to have 400 bullet holes in it), the cowboys withdrew, having exhausted their ammo. In addition to the man Baca arrested and the first man he killed, the cowboys lost another 4 dead and 8 wounded. Baca was unharmed and later acquitted in a court of law.
11** It was said that when scout Luke Short was ambushed by a band of fifteen Sioux, he drew his pistols and fired back, killing three of them in quick succession. Some of the Sioux gave chase on horseback, and Short killed two of them before finally reaching safety.
12* Sergeant [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_York Alvin York]] singlehandedly wiped out a German machine gun nest in WW I, making the leader of that nest and his men (133 people) surrender to him after killing over 25 soldiers with his rifle and pistol. He took fire from 32 Maxim machine guns and took out twenty of them with fire from his M1917 Enfield rifle before they gave up.
13** And they surrendered because he was an ''American''. To iterate, Germans at the time often thought that the recently arrived American troops were sissies compared to the seasoned British. So their thought process was basically, if a single American who'd probably never seen action against them before could pull ''that'' off, [[FridgeHorror imagine what people who'd been fighting from the start of the war could do]].
14** [[ReluctantWarrior York was also a pacifist]] that went back to the battlefield to pray for both his dead comrades and the Germans he'd killed.
15--> I prayed for the Germans too. They were all brother men of mine.
16* American Tony Stein from World War II is famous for two things: [[MoreDakka his improvised Browning M1919 rifle]] and how he received the Medal Of Honor for taking out immense amounts of Japanese forces with it, while running all over the battlefield, barefoot, and carrying back the wounded soldiers.
17* Captain Benjamin L. Salomon earned a posthumous Medal of Honor during the Battle of Saipan. Among other 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 withdrawal of wounded Americans. When his body was found after the battle, almost 100 enemy soldiers were in front of his machine gun. He had been shot fifty times.
18* 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's say this again, a ''heavy bomber'' in a dogfight with 17 Japanese fighters. 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 were usually bristling with flexibly-mounted Browning .50s to fire everywhere at once) and this one takes 17 fighters on. Ironically, the bomber didn't really kill that many of the fighters (One Dinah and at least 3 of the Zeros), but, what makes her famous is that the ''ENTIRE'' crew got at least the Distinguished Flying Cross, while the Pilot (Jay Zeemer), and the Bombardier (Joe Sarnoski) were both awarded the Medal of Honor [[note]] Joe Sarnoski's 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 anyway.
19* The ''USS Enterprise'' CV-06 can qualify as a one-ship navy. Especially during the period of 30 October 1942 to 27 May 1943 where it served as the only operation US carrier in the Pacific after the loss of the ''Hornet'' in the Battle of Santa Cruz. At the start of the period, the ship sailed out into action with a placard on its deck labeled "Enterprise vs Japan." (The ''Enterprise'' won) During this period the ship sank a Japanese battleship and sixteen other ships while crippling 8 more. ''Enterprise'' and her air corps would go on to sink or damage almost 263 Japanese ships and shoot down or destroy 911 planes over the course of the war, becoming the most highly decorated American warship of World War II.
20* Stanley "Swede" Vejtasa, an American bomber pilot during the Second World War; took down three Japanese Zeroes whilst flying a ''Dauntless''[[note]]a large and somewhat unwieldy dive bomber, not a fighter[[/note]] - one of which tried to ram him. He would then go on to shoot down another seven planes whilst flying a ''Wildcat'' in the Battle of Santa Cruz [[note]]at the time, a somewhat outdated and outclassed fighter craft[[/note]].
21* Medal of Honor recipient Paul L. Bolden apparently forgot that real life isn't VideoGame/CallOfDuty, but reality didn't have the guts to correct him. He earned that medal by crawling across the snow during the Battle of the Bulge under heavy machine gun and mortar fire, sneaking up on a building full of 35 heavily armed German soldiers, and killing 20 of them with a combination of his submachine gun and white phosphorous grenades. But of course, taking on 1:35 odds ended in his death after his rampage... nah, just kidding. He took heavy wounds in the initial encounter, but he managed to retreat, before coming back and killing the other 15 SS troopers. He survived the war, served out the rest of his tour, and died decades later in his home state of Alabama.
22* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lafayette_G._Pool Lafayette G. Pool]] was the most successful American tank ace of all time. In his command of 3 Sherman tanks, he is credited with knocking out 258 armored vehicles (including 12 confirmed kills of enemy tanks which were likely better-armored and armed than his) and inflicting over 1,250 casualties on the Germans in just 81 days of service - that is, he took out about 3 vehicles and 15 men per day, every day, for three months. The Axis was fortunate enough that a tank shell [[HandicappedBadass took out his leg]] fairly early into his active service, though even after that he got a prosthetic limb and reenlisted in a non-combat role.
23* Creator/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. This was only his most notable achievement, by the way; he did similar things (though on a smaller scale) repeatedly in Italy. He also had malaria since the Italian campaign. Didn't get it cured until after the war was over. He was eventually credited with having killed more than 240 German soldiers ([[AndZoidberg and some Italians]]) - likely exaggerated, but even half or a third of this number is ''insane'' for one person (he also wounded or captured many more). In the film adaptation (called ''To Hell And Back'') he played himself, and he asked for some parts of the film to be removed because [[RealityIsUnrealistic "people wouldn't believe it"]]. We're talking about a biographic movie. He continued to be a badass in his post-war life, at one point famously beating up a much larger and ''armed'' mugger effortlessly.
24* While Audie Murphy is widely recognized as the best American soldier of the second world war, before his most famous achievements took place, it seemed that honor would go to Charles "Commando" Kelly, who was the first America GI to earn the medal of honor in the European theater. On September 13th 1943, during an assault on the German-held town of Altavilla, Italy, the 22-year old private Kelly crawled over 2 miles through German mortar and machine gun fire to provide a recon report on the enemy positions. Once that was done, he led a three-man team to assault a German machine gun post, killing the gun crew and then fighting off a German counterattack by about 70 troops. According to reports from the other members of his team, Kelly personally killed approximately ''40'' of them. Then he spent the rest of the day ferrying ammunition to the front for the army as they captured the town. Amazingly, this incredible day was NOT what Kelly received the Medal of Honor for. That was to occur the following day during a massive German counter-attack, which was focused primarily on a building Kelly had been assigned to guard. Kelly spent all day defending it with a massive array of different weapons, including a Tommy gun, a bazooka, an [[BreakOutTheMuseumPiece '03 Springfield rifle from World War I]], a carbine, and an M1 Garand. At one point, he manned a 37mm anti-tank gun in the courtyard and destroyed a sniper's perch in a church steeple. Later when the Germans were massing below for an assault, he fought it off with a crate of 60mm mortal shells by removing their safety devices, turning them into live bombs that would go off with enough pressure. Then he tossed them out the window directly into the mass of Germans below, causing massive casualties and breaking up the attack. Kelly fought on until late in the night to allow his fellow troops time to evacuate before joining them. He was the last one to leave.
25* An unconventional version, but technically speaking, the man with the single highest personal body count is undoubtedly Paul Tibbets Jr. - the American pilot who dropped the Little Boy on Hiroshima. He killed over 90,000 people, of whom 20,000+ were Japanese soldiers.
26* American PFC Jack G. Hanson, with four other men, took on probably hundreds of North Korean soldiers (they were noted to outnumber his company in the MOH citation) to cover his unit's retreat. The four men with him got wounded and evacuated fairly early on, leaving him to stage a one-man rearguard action to protect his platoon. When the North Koreans retreated from that position and the Americans occupied it again two hours later, they found that Hanson had killed at least 22 enemy soldiers with his machine gun, pistol, and a machete (less any wounded and any bodies carried away by their comrades), at the cost of his own life.
27* 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. Over his career, Hathcock had a total of 93 confirmed kills, and this was with kill-counting rules much more stringent than they were in previous decades (in the Vietnam War, kills had to be confirmed by an acting third party, who had to be an officer, besides the sniper's spotter; snipers often did not have an acting third party present, making confirmation difficult). Hathcock is also famous for ''[[ScopeSnipe firing a shot down the scope of an enemy sniper]]'', which is possibly the most incredible feat of military physics ever accomplished.
28* The deadliest USMC sniper in the Vietnam War was Chuck Mawhinney, who to this day holds the Corps' record for the most confirmed sniper kills, having recorded 103 confirmed kills and 216 probable kills in 16 months. His best day was Feb. 14, 1969, when Mawhinney encountered an enemy platoon and killed 16 PAVN soldiers with headshots.
29* U.S. Army sniper Adelbert Waldron scored 109 confirmed kills in only 8 months, also in Vietnam.
30* If the official record of the eight-hour [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Shewan Battle of Shewan, Afghanistan]] is to be believed, an individual U.S. Marine designated marksman (not a sniper) went 20 for 20 -- 20 kills with 20 shots -- while his platoon and three Afghan police squads were fighting off a company-sized Taliban ambush.
31* [[https://web.archive.org/web/20080313184408/http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf/lookupstoryref/200456162723 Brian Chontosh's]] exploits kind of sound like Call of Duty infiltrated reality, complete with picking up enemy weapons and discarding them when they run dry. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, following an ambush on his convoy, he launched a one-man assault of some Iraqi trenches with just his [=M16A2=] rifle and pistol. He twice picked up discarded enemy AK-47s and continued his ferocious attack after exhausting his own ammunition. When a Marine following him found an enemy rocket-propelled grenade launcher, Chontosh used it to destroy yet another group of enemy soldiers. When his attack ended, he had cleared over 200 meters of the enemy trench, killing more than 20 enemy soldiers and wounding several others.
32* Los Angeles watch merchant Lance Thomas managed to survive no less than 4 different gunfights with armed robbers in his store from 1989 to 1992, killing 5 and getting another 4 arrested. In the second incident, Thomas was shot 4 times by a .25 caliber pistol, three in the shoulder and one in the neck, but still managed to kill 2 members of the 5-man robbery team opposing him and force the other three to flee, where they were later arrested. In the third incident, Thomas was shot in the neck at point-blank range with a 9mm Glock but still managed to grab a gun and kill the attacker. In both cases, Thomas recovered and returned to man his store after less than a month in the hospital.
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36* Michael Wittmann, maybe the most successful tank commander in the war. He racked up 138 confirmed destroyed tanks. At one point in the war, he defeated a British tank battalion and an infantry battalion almost singlehandedly. The British lost about 30 tanks.
37* The famous RedBaron got the most kills of any flying ace in World War I, with eighty. He did eventually die in battle, though. In World War II, his record was beaten by [[SerialEscalation over a hundred people.]] For a fair comparison, they had modern fighter jets. He had several different Albatross biplanes, and in his final days, his infamous Fokker Dr.1 (a triplane).
38* Heinrich Severloh, the everyman German soldier assigned to man WN 62, the machine gun nest that the Americans optimistically codenamed "Easy Red."[[note]] Each of the Normandy landing beaches was divided on Allied maps into sections designated by a radio phonetic alphabet letter ("Easy" being Allied phonetic for E) and a color. Easy Red was the section of Omaha Beach between Easy Green and Fox Green. Utah Beach ran from Able Green to Charlie Red, Omaha Beach from Dog Green to Fox Red, Gold Beach from George Green to Item Red, Juno Beach from Jig Green to Love Red, and Sword Beach from Mike Green to Oboe Red.[[/note]] Firing [[MoreDakka over 12,000 shots from his machinegun]] and 400 shots from two rifles, he managed to rack up dozens to hundreds of 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 only 30 Germans defending all of Omaha when his own emplacement alone held 19 men... 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."]]
39* 20-year old SS-''Sturmmann'' Anti-Tank Gunner Fritz Christen, 3rd ''Waffen''-SS Division ''Totenkopf'', was left the lone survivor of his AT gun battery after a Soviet counter-attack with tanks and infantry wiped out the rest of the battery on September 24, 1941. He manned his gun for 3 days, fighting with his submachine gun when attacked by infantry, crawling among leftover guns to drag ammo boxes for his weapons, firing at Soviet tanks with his AT gun when they approached. When German reinforcements found him, they counted 13 destroyed tanks and about 100 dead Soviet soldiers.
40* Georg von Frundsberg. A simple mercenary in service of the Habsburgs. Realized heavy armoured knights were not feasible anymore. Basically invented the Landsknecht type of mercenary after Swiss model and successful enough to be a nigh-mythical figure in Landsknecht-culture.
41* The top-ranking World War II flying aces according to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_flying_aces this]]. The one who scored the most kills that was finally himself killed in battle was Otto Kittel.
42* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Rudel Hans Rudel]], Stuka dive-bomber pilot of the Luftwaffe. Per German claims, he destroyed over 2000 targets, including, but not limited to, 519 tanks, 150 artillery pieces, a destroyer, two cruisers, and a battleship. He also shot down 11 planes. VERY likely exaggerated, though even just 10% of those figures would be insanely impressive.
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46* One of history's greatest snipers was Vasily Zaytsev, who while fighting against the Nazis, managed to rack up 242 confirmed kills to his name. Zaytsev was active on the front for a 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 poster boy of all snipers in the army, despite his relatively average kill count. In the end, the brass realized that they [[SlaveToPR couldn't risk him getting killed on the front due to the effect it would have on morale]] and recalled him to Moscow, where he helped organize sniper schools and served as an [[VeteranInstructor 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.
47* Soviet UsefulNotes/WorldWarII sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko, the most accomplished known female sniper in history with 309 kills, including 36 German snipers sent with [[AssassinOutclassin specific orders to kill her]].
48* Other Soviet snipers credited with 100+ kills include [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Adamia Noah Adamia]] (200), [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedir_Dyachenko Fedir Dyachenko]] (425), [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyodor_Okhlopkov Fyodor Okhlopkov]] (429), [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Sidorenko Ivan Sidorenko]] (500), [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abukhadzhi_Idrisov Abukhadzhi Idrisov]] (349), [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semyon_Nomokonov Semyon Nomokonov]] (367), [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasilij_Kvachantiradze Vasilij Kvachantiradze]] (534), and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Surkov Mikhail Surkov]] (Officially credited with 702; this is likely propaganda, but there is no doubt he killed many enemy soldiers).
49* 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 [[TheJuggernaut advanced through the gun's fire, ignoring it entirely]], and [[CarFu crushed it underneath its treads]]. 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 Germans managed to get a howitzer behind it and destroy it at close range. From the German report:
50-->''Half a dozen anti-tank gunfire shells at him which sound like a drumroll. But he drives staunchly through our line like an impregnable prehistoric monster...''
51* The highest-scoring Allied tank ace of the whole war, Dmitry Lavrinenko, scored his 52-58 kills [[CurbStompCushion over the course of the disastrous Autumn 1941]], by exploiting the fact that T-34 was a LightningBruiser before the LensmanArmsRace took effect.
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55* Bhanbhagta Gurung, when his unit was ambushed near Tamandu, immediately took charge. First, he killed a sniper pinning his squad down with his rifle. Then he dashed out to attack a Japanese fox hole, braving machine gun fire to toss two grenades in the hole, killing two more enemies. He then cleared another foxhole by killing the occupants with his bayonet, and then two ''more'' foxholes with his grenades, all while being subjected to machine gunfire. When he finally got to the main enemy position, a bunker, he was out of frag grenades; so he chucked a smoke bomb in, waited for it to flush the Japanese soldiers out, and immediately cleaved two of them to death with his kukri before walking in to do the same to the third. To cap it off, he ordered three other men to stay with him and help fend off a platoon-sized counterattack, which they did, killing several more Japanese soldiers and holding their position.
56* Lachhiman Gurung. He's credited with a mere 31 kills in his most famous action, where he fought off 200 Japanese soldiers at Taungdaw, Burma, but considering he racked those up with a bolt-action rifle, firing one-handed, immediately after losing an eye and an arm to a hand grenade...
57* On one side: forty armed thieves, robbing, pillaging, and raping on a Nepalese train. On the other side: one retired [[UsefulNotes/NepaliWithNastyKnives Gurkha with a kukri]]. [[http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shrestha They shoulda brought more thieves.]]
58* Also from [[strike:Gurkha]] Badass Of The Week: [[http://www.badassoftheweek.com/pun Dipprasad Pun]]. He was credited with single-handedly fighting off between 15 and 30 Taliban insurgents, killing three, wounding several others, and causing the rest to flee. During the engagement, he reportedly spent all his ammunition (more than 400 rounds), used 17 hand grenades and a Claymore mine before battering the last fighter with the tripod of his machine gun.
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62* Not so much a god of war, but they didn't call Masutatsu Oyama "The Godhand" for nothing. Able to kill a bull with one bare-handed strike (on the times he had to "settle for" two blows, he often chopped off one of their horns), he also engaged in [[http://www.masutatsuoyama.com/100mankumite.htm 300 fights]] with the best students of his dojo in a row over the course of 3 days, stopped only because everyone else's asses were so thoroughly kicked that they couldn't or wouldn't continue.
63* UsefulNotes/MiyamotoMusashi gained his reputation after pulling one of these on the entire Yoshioka school. After he beat its two heirs in one-on-one combat, the entire school attacked him with bowmen, gunmen, and swords. Musashi ambushed them, killed their figurehead leader, and got away.
64* Similarly, there was UsefulNotes/MusashiboBenkei, whose fighting prowess was considered borderline demonic, as he also stood at a towering 6'7". After [[DefeatMeansFriendship being defeated by Minamoto no Yoshitsune]], he became a loyal retainer. So loyal, in fact, that he held the bridge to a castle his master had fled to [[BetterToDieThanBeKilled to commit seppuku]], killing over 300 enemy soldiers that attempted to pass and forced the army he faced to shoot arrows at him instead. By the time they worked up the nerve to approach, Yoshitsune had completed the suicide, and Benkei himself had DiedStandingUp, held there by his naginata and [[HumanPincushion the innumerable arrows they'd shot at him]].
65* The warrior-monk Tsutsui Jōmyō Meishū allegedly fended off an entire enemy unit single-handedly at the Battle of Uji in 1180. So says ''[[Literature/TheTaleOfTheHeike The Tale of the Heike]]'': ''"And loosing off his twenty-four arrows like lightning flashes he slew twelve of the Heike soldiers and wounded eleven more. One arrow yet remained in his quiver, but flinging away his bow he stripped off his quiver and threw that after it, cast off his footwear and springing barefoot on to the beams of the bridge he strode across. [...] With his naginata he mows down five of the enemy, but with the sixth the naginata snaps asunder in the midst, and flinging it away, he draws his tachi, wielding it in the zig-zag style, the interlacing, cross, reversed dragonfly, waterwheel and eight-sides-at-once styles of sword fighting, thus cutting down eight men; but as he brought down the ninth with an exceedingly mighty blow on the helmet the blade snapped at the hilt and fell with a splash into the water beneath. Then, seizing his tantō, which was the only weapon he had left, he plied it as one in a death fury."''
66* Hiromichi Shinohara, an IJAAF pilot nicknamed "the Richthofen of the Orient." He was the highest-scoring fighter ace in the history of the Japanese military, having claimed 58 air victories in only three months of combat, all against the Soviet Air Force in the Khalkin Gol campaign. He scored 10 of these victories on his first ''day'' of combat. To be fair, his Ki-27 was a far superior machine to the Polikarpov fighters and recon planes he shot down, and his kill count is likely inflated by x2 or x3 (standard for [=WWII=] air kill claims), but it's still damn impressive. Especially since he had no combat experience and was quite young (25 when the campaign began- 26 by the time he died).
67* Subverted with Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda. During the UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar, a newspaper report claimed that the two had entered a contest to see who would be the first to kill 100 soldiers in combat just using a sword. Postwar investigations assessed that the killings weren't of soldiers in combat, but executions of Chinese [=POWs=], and the pair were executed for war crimes.
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71* Larus the Cantabrian, an Hispanic mercenary in the service of Carthage during the [[UsefulNotes/PunicWars Second Punic War]] according to the ''Literature/{{Punica}}'' poem, might be an example OlderThanPrint. According to the chronicle, when the Romans caught the Carthaginian camp off guard and decimated their army, Larus lost his entire mercenary unit, yet he stood where he was and slew Romans left and right with his double-bladed axe until they managed to take him down. Historians are unsure whether Larus was a real life person or a poetic embellishment of the events, but it's notable that the poem's narrator has a sort of OutOfCharacterMoment and states openly that Larus was the only relevant Punic in the battle rather than making up more characters of the like.
72* 15th century soldier UsefulNotes/DiegoGarciaDeParedes was sought out by UsefulNotes/TheCatholicMonarchs, UsefulNotes/PopeAlexanderVI and the [[UsefulNotes/TheSoundOfMartialMusic House of Habsburg]] due to his utterly insane battle exploits, in which is impossible to tell apart legend from reality. His long career features a long list of incidents where he fought and bested literal waves of enemies by himself, chief of them being an instance during the campaign of the Garigliano in which he smartly placed himself in a bridge, challenged the French to come at him, and started mowing them down by dozens with his zweinhander until more Spanish soldiers came and the thing become a literal battle, supposedly leaving the thing with hundreds of enemy kills. In another, the Turks caught him with a hook during the siege of Cephalonia and hoisted him up to the walls to capture him, only for him to fight back there and defend a portion of the wall for three days before being captured - and then, only for him to free himself from the dungeons and keep wreaking havoc until the Spanish took the whole fortress. He also reportedly fought a hundred of duels and was never defeated.
73* Cristóbal de Olea, UsefulNotes/HernanCortez's BattleButler, saved his master from being captured and carried away by bands of Aztecs twice, the second time jumping on them and cutting down enemy after enemy until Cortés' Tlaxcaltec guards arrived to rescue them. Olea was eventually killed in the melee, which was deeply felt by the Spanish camp, as he was a very friendly and popular guy aside from an imposing fighter.
74* María de Estrada was the main ActionGirl out of several that served under Cortés. She became famous for her feats in battle even in the most hard-pressed moments of the Sad Night, which reportedly downright scared people in her own side.
75* The night of his murder, UsefulNotes/FranciscoPizarro, Cortés' uncle and conqueror of the Inca, battled alone twelve assassins who had assaulted his palace and killed or routed everybody but him. Despite his advanced age and being caught off guard, he killed two opponents and wounded several, to the point some of them panicked and retreated to ask for reinforcements. He went finally down when the killers' leader [[DevourTheDragon threw one of his partners against Pizarro's blade]], allowing them to pounce on him and shower him with sword thrusts on the floor.
76* Cristóbal de Mondragón, known as the "best soldier of the best ''tercio''", debuted with a DynamicEntry in the Battle of Muhlberg taking down five enemies in the first contact, after which he followed with so many other kills during the battle (which sadly nobody could keep the count of) that King UsefulNotes/CharlesV personally declared him the hero of the day. He went to become a veteran general over the years and literally died of old age in midst of a campaign sixty years later.
77* Ensign Sancho Ortiz, one of the defenders of the city of Manilla during the attack of the Sino-Japanese pirate fleet commanded by Limahon in 1574. Alone and surrounded by a growing number of Chinese pirates, without more weapon left than a halberd, Ortiz killed two, wounded many and repealed the rest until being shot dead by a sharpshooter.
78* Soldier and inventor UsefulNotes/JeronimoDeAyanz, known more as a sort of Spanish UsefulNotes/LeonardoDaVinci, was a famous GeniusBruiser, to the point of being nicknamed the "New Hercules". He was surrounded and wounded by multiple soldiers during the siege of Zierikzee, yet took all the damage, managed to fell everybody, and ultimately returned alive.
79* UsefulNotes/AlexanderFarnese, Duke of Parma, was more known as a general, but he was also fearsome with the weapons. Aside from a great performance in the UsefulNotes/BattleOfLepanto, it's said he became so bored in times of peace that he went out disguised at night and wasted gangs of thugs to clean up his city Franchise/{{Batman}}-style.
80* Tiburcio de Redín was a 17th century soldier and marine nicknamed the "Spanish Jupiter" by self-evident reasons. Reputed to be a barely restrained BloodKnight, yet also surprisingly cunning, he had a long history of wiping the floor with many opponents in bar brawls and could reportedly turn the tide of land and naval engagements only by coming himself to the front lines. At the end of his life, he became a Capuchin monk, yet in one occasion he had to revive his talents to beat up an entire gang of bandits that were trying to rape a woman in an inn.
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84* During the 100 day Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union, UsefulNotes/SimoHayha of Finland (generally considered to be the greatest sniper the world has ever seen) made over 505 confirmed sniper kills, and is credited for around 200 other kills with a submachine gun, ranking up at least 705 kills to his name. He ended his part in the war after getting shot in the jaw (read: head) with an ''explosive round'' and surviving. After getting shot he was in a coma for a week. The day he woke up was the day the Moscow peace treaty went into effect, ending the war. Despite his severe wound, Hayha lived on until 2002, finally passing away at the age of 96 after outliving Soviet Union by more than a decade.
85* Mexican outlaw Augustine Chacon had a habit of going up against more than one gunfighter and always seemingly won. Like one time where a posse followed Chacon's trail to a box canyon, cornered him in, and then called out for his surrender, but, the day-old outlaw decided he wasn't going to. Chacon then equipped himself with two revolvers and charged his pursuers on horseback. Four more cowboys were killed and Chacon rode off with a slight wound to one of his arms.
86* The real Cyrano de Bergerac (the scene appears in the play as well) once fought a hundred armed men at once and won, killing so many the rest turned and ran. This was with a ''sword'' and no armor.
87* Zhao Yun is probably unknown to most of the Western World, apart from [[VideoGame/DynastyWarriors Dynasty Warriors]]. In China, though (and most of Asia, for that matter), his name literally defines this concept. At the Battle of [=ChangBanPo=], he was tasked with finding and protecting his master's family, who had gotten lost in a retreat from an overwhelmingly superior force, and ended up fighting his way out of the entire army single-handedly. In the process, he killed about 50 officers and hundreds of soldiers, all the while cradling a baby boy in front of his chest. Rather hilariously, when Zhao Yun presented Liu Bei's baby to him after returning, Liu Bei ''slapped him'', saying "I can have many more children, but there is only one Zhao Yun."
88* Zhang Fei. When his friend Liu Bei had to retreat from a city about to be attacked by Cao Cao's army, Zhang Fei 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''.
89* William Marshall definitely qualifies and is one of the most badass of people ever. A medieval knight with a record of 500 tournaments with no losses (and these were in the 12th-13th centuries before full-plate when they were extremely dangerous), he had such a great reputation that other fighters used to gang-up on him to try to take him down. He was once so battered that they had to delay the award ceremony while a blacksmith hammered his helmet back into shape so he could get it off. Not only was he a brilliant tourney fighter, but also a great battlefield leader and warrior. At the age of 75, he led the charge at the Battle of Lincoln and personally killed the Count of Perche, the French leader and a man some 40 years his junior.
90* Cathal Brugha was one of the only rebel leaders to survive the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland. And why's that? When defending his post, he took a whole platoon of British soldiers alone. He ended up in a coma for a while and was not thought to survive, but he pulled through (though he was later shot down by his former comrades during the Civil War).
91* Ancient Greek king Pyrrhus of Epirus qualifies for this. [[TropeNamer Known primarily]] for his battles against the Romans, in which he won, [[PyrrhicVictory but at such cost as it made the campaign untenable]], Plutarch's Life of Pyrrhus is full of heroic deeds, such as:
92** Winning a duel against a Macedonian officer, which impressed his army and enabled his conquest of Macedon
93** Engaging in a competition with his own Elephants to break the Roman line at the Battle of Asculum
94** Conquering the Carthaginian fortress of Eryx, Sicily by being the first man over the walls and cutting down all who approached him without taking a wound
95** Scaring off an entire Mamertine (the Sons of Mars) army that harassed his army's retreat from Sicily by cutting their biggest warrior in half with one blow
96** Leading the assault on Sparta
97** Going into an utter frenzy in another battle against the Spartans in which his son died, getting knocked from his horse and then proceeding to slay all the 'picked band' of Spartans sent to capture his son's body
98** Finally being killed because he was paralyzed from behind because he was too much raw badass to actually kill in face-to-face combat
99* German WWI commander Erich Ludendorff called August 8th, 1918 the "Black Day" for Germany when it was reported to him entire German units were finding individual British soldiers they could surrender to.
100** Not a one-man army but a one-tank army, the Whippet tank ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_Mark_A_Whippet#Combat_history Musical Box]]'', which engaged in a bloody nine-hour rampage behind German lines during the Battle of Amiens, 1918 (the aforementioned "Black Day"). It destroyed an infantry staging area, transport column, artillery battery, and even shot down an observation balloon. But it couldn't last forever, and understandably the Germans were very upset with the crew when they finally bailed out of their burning tank (one at least was shot and killed, and a German officer had to intervene to save the others from being butchered by his men), but it remains quite the exploit to this day.
101* Those that earn the title of an AcePilot are a one-man Air Force. They only need five kills to gain this status, but it's a lot harder than it sounds (even if there are rarely World War II-scale air battles these days).
102* Canadian UsefulNotes/LeoMajor in World War 2. He started his career on D Day, capturing a German half-track. Then, he went on to capture 93 German soldiers during the Battle of the Scheldt, and then single-handedly liberated the Dutch town of Zwolle. After the [[ItsPersonal death of a comrade]], he grabbed his friend's firearms and charged into the town. He found a German soldier and told him [[BackupBluff the town was surrounded]], promising their safety if they left quietly. After freeing the man, he wandered through the town firing his gun and setting off grenades to make his threat seem real - before finding the town's Gestapo headquarters and setting it on fire. He took several German prisoners but did have the help of local resistance fighters by then. Upon returning home he kept his exploits secret from his family until an official telegram with words of gratitude arrived from the Netherlands. When asked why he kept quiet, he replied that [[RealityIsUnrealistic he didn't think anyone would believe him]]. The town has a street named after him, and his story is taught in area schools to this day.
103* Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard successfully defended a bridge against 200 Spaniards.
104* Zvika Greengold, an Israeli tank commander during the Yom Kippur War. Commanded a ragtag group of four tanks in the Golan Heights he dubbed the 'Zvika Force' while Israel was still reeling from the surprise attack. Later fought with his own tank, changing vehicles half a dozen times and continuing to fight despite injuries such as burns and exhaustion. He fooled the Syrian army (and, unintentionally, his own commanders) into believing that he alone was a brigade-sized force of tanks and was credited with 40 tank kills over the course of a full day's fighting. His HeroicBSOD ("I can't anymore") turned out to be a PostVictoryCollapse.
105* 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 Hårdråde'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 bridge 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 too 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). Notably, unlike many legendary medieval soldiers, his exploits are [[WorthyOpponent mentioned in the accounts of his enemies as well as his allies]], so it's fair to say that he really did do everything described.
106* Aviators who became an ace in one day:
107** The four Luftwaffe pilots that all made Triple Ace in a day (15+ kills over any number of sorties within a single day) - Emil Lang, Hans-Joachim Marseille, August Lambert, and Hubert Strassel. Closely followed by Erich Rudorffer, who managed 13 kills within a single sortie.
108** Hans Wind of [=HLeLv=] 24, Finnish Air Force, scored five kills in a day five separate times during the Soviet Summer Offensive 1944, a total of 30 kills in 12 days, of his final tally of 75.
109** Finnish top-scoring fighter ace, Warrant Officer Ilmari Juutilainen, shot down six Soviet planes on 30 June 1944. His final score was 94.
110* If you talked to any gangster in Chicago or New York during the 1920s, they'd tell you that the Thompson M1921/[=M1928A1=] was expensive and heavy, but could instantly turn one man into a man with the firepower of an entire army. It should be noted that most gangsters carried far cheaper handguns or a SawedOffShotgun, and only professional hitmen, nicknamed "torpedoes", wielded the feared Tommy gun.
111* The final charge of King UsefulNotes/RichardIII at the Battle of Bosworth certainly qualifies. Backed up only by a few mounted knights from his personal household, Richard charged straight into the highly-defended lines of Henry Tudor's personal guard, killing Tudor's standard-bearer with his lance and then using the ''broken end'' to unhorse the famed giant (over 6'2") and renowned jousting champion John Cheney before proceeding to cut a swath through the men and coming ''within a sword's-length'' of ''Tudor himself'' before reinforcements arrived in the form of Lord Stanley's ''entire army'' (usually believed to have numbered around 6,000 men). Even that, though, couldn't take Richard down (even his being unhorsed is usually believed to have had more to do with the fact that the area was marshy than any action on the part of Stanley's men), with him proceeding to kick the collective asses of the entire army and taking ''at least'' six or seven wounds to the head (plus an unknown number of soft-tissue or blunt-trauma injuries which cannot be discerned from the skeleton) while (''very'' loudly) proclaiming his enemies' blatant treason at their faces apparently for no other reason than that he felt like it. In between this and stabbing people in the faces, he also was calling for someone to fetch him a horse so that he could charge right back into the rather large ''army'' defending Henry Tudor in order to ''[[RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething personally]]'' [[RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething take down the "Welsh bastard" who dared to challenge his right to rule]], only being taken out by a halberd shaving off ''[[NoOneCouldSurviveThat the back of]]'' ''[[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill his skull]]''. This incident was apparently impressive enough that despite the Tudors doing pretty much everything they could to discredit Richard in order to legitimize their own reigns, the tale of "King Richard's badass death" survives in every single record from that time period. Did we mention that all of the above was accomplished by someone who was more-or-less universally known as being [[PintsizedPowerhouse rather small and frail]] (even for that time period) and who had [[HandicappedBadass scoliosis with a curve of up to]] ''[[HandicappedBadass eighty degrees]]'' that, had he lived in modern times, would have qualified him for the [[UsefulNotes/ParalympicGames Paralympics]]?
112* An unidentified fugitive known under the pseudonym, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Johnson_(criminal) Albert Johnson]], survived three shootouts against multiple people on his own. One against 4 police officers that attempted to arrest him. The second shootout was against a posse of 9 men armed with dynamite, and 42 hunting dogs. The third shootout was against a larger posse, this time costing the life of Constable Edgar Millen. Albert Johnson was finally killed a month later from a shot to the pelvis as he attempted to cross a riverbank.
113* A slightly unorthodox, yet hilarious, non-lethal example: in December 2013, a man named Andrew Frey walked into a tavern outside of Salem, Oregon, high on methamphetamine, and proceeded to masturbate in the middle of the bar. Police were called to respond, and [[http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2013/12/alleged_masturbating_man_in_sa.html it ultimately took 15 cops from three different agencies and multiple hits from a Taser to bring him down]] -- ''while he was still masturbating.'' Frey woke up the following morning in the Marion County jail with absolutely no memory of the incident.
114* One-ship-navy. In 1591, the English ship [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_ship_Revenge_(1577) HMS Revenge]] was part of a fleet of 6 ships stationed in the Azores. When they sighted 53 Spanish ships approaching, the other 5 vessels fled, but the Revenge stayed behind because half the crew was sick with fever and [[https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Grenville Captain Sir Richard Grenville]] wouldn't leave them for the Spanish Inquisition. People are still arguing about whether or not the Revenge couldn't escape in time or whether Captain Grenville was just crazy enough to order the ship to turn back and attack, but either way, the Revenge ended up fighting all 53 Spanish ships on her own. The Revenge was 400 tonnes; the Spanish flagship San Felipe alone was three times her size, making this a good example of a PintsizedPowerhouse. The Revenge still managed to sink or disable sixteen enemy ships in a battle that lasted for a full day and a night, before eventually surrendering when she ran out of ammo. Of her 190 crew, only 16 survivors made it home.
115* Another one-ship navy was the Greek cruiser ''Averof'' during the First Balkan War (1912-1913). With neither the Greeks nor the Ottoman Empire having modern battleships (the only true battleships on either side were a pair of hopelessly obsolete German surplus pre-dreadnoughts in the Ottoman fleet), ''Averof'' was the most powerful ship in the Aegean at the time and also [[LightningBruiser faster than any other cruiser on either side]]. The first time ''Averof'' went into battle was in the Battle of Elli in December 1912. Greek Admiral Kountouriotis was frustrated that he was being slowed down by the rest of his fleet (a trio of old ironclad coast defense ships), so he simply left them behind, hoisting a signal flag for "independent action" to denote that the rest of the fleet was no longer to follow the flagship in formation. Using that superior speed, ''Averof'' was able to completely dictate the course of the battle, battering the Ottoman flagship (battleship ''Barbaros Hayreddin'') while coming out unharmed. The Ottomans fled. A month later, they sent one of their own cruisers as bait in hopes of drawing ''Averof'' away from the impending Battle of Lemnos. Admiral Kountouriotis, recognizing the bait for what it was, [[MilitaryMaverick ignored his orders to pursue the cruiser]]. At Lemnos, he again left the older battleships behind and again badly battered the Ottoman battleships while suffering no damage in return. The Ottoman fleet never attempted to enter the Aegean again for the rest of the war. ''Averof'' became known as "[[AffectionateNickname Lucky Uncle George]]"[[note]]It was named after shipping tycoon Georgios Averoff, who left 2.5 million gold francs (the equivalent to nearly 150 million US dollars today) to the Greek Navy in his will at his death in 1899), which was the money ultimately used to purchase the ship.[[/note]] to the Greeks and "[[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Satan's Ship]]" to the Turks. Though ''Averoff'' was much less important in later Greek wars (the rapid advance of technology left her behind), she survived to the modern-day as a museum ship in Athens and is still the ceremonial flagship of the Greek Navy. And remains capable of sailing under her own power, which is rarely the case for preserved museum ships.
116* On November 13th, 2010, 77-year old Mexican rancher Alejo Tamez received a visit from several members of the Los Zetas cartel, who told him they would be coming back the next day to take over his property. Tamez responded by sending his workers home, barricading his ranch house, getting out his collection of hunting rifles, and preparing for battle. When the cartel members arrived the next day, they found themselves in a wild gunfight against Tamez, who had set up his rifles behind multiple windows and moved from one to the next, laying out a wide field of fire, and giving the impression that there was more than one person in the house. Pinned down by highly accurate rifle fire, the cartel members were eventually forced to flee just before the authorities arrived, leaving behind 4 dead and 2 critically wounded. Tragically, Tamez was also killed in the fighting.
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