History’s 50 Most Awesome Badasses You Should Know About – Part 5

Despite never having received naval training or participating in naval combat prior to the war, and constantly being outnumbered and out supplied during the Battle of Myeongnyang in 1597, Admiral Yi Sun Shin defeated 333 Japanese ships with only 13 Korean ships.

Captain Jonathan R. Davis in a well-documented incident single-handedly killed 11 armed bandits who ambushed him in 1854. He killed 7 with his dual-wielding revolvers and then finished the remaining 4 with a Bowie knife. He sustained only two slight flesh wounds.

On the first day of the assault on Iwo Jima, Corporal Tony Stein cleared multiple enemy pillboxes using his custom M1919 machine gun which he named “Stinger.” During the assault, he made a total of 8 trips back to the beach to reload on ammunition and carried a wounded soldier on his back each trip. He was killed in action 10 days later and posthumously received Medal of Honor.

Owen J. Baggett became legendary as being the only person to have downed a Japanese aircraft with an M1911 pistol. He shot the pilot in the head while he was parachuting down.

El Cid was a military leader in the Middle Ages who was so feared that after his death, his embalmed body was placed on a horse and sent into battle causing the enemy to flee.

During one of their numerous battles in the early 1700s, an unnamed South Carolina Catawba warrior was ambushed by a New York Seneca war party. He took off and shot and killed seven Senecas before being captured. They stripped him naked, tied him up and marched him back to New York, allowing people to whip him as he passed. When they untied him after traveling 500 miles, he dashed off into the nearby river, swam it without popping up once and took off into the woods. That night he killed the Seneca search party that was sent after him. The Senecas decided he was a wizard and gave up. He made his way back to South Carolina, dug up the bodies of the seven Senecas he had killed when he was caught and scalped them.

In 1922, a fur trapper named Ben Cochrum was attacked by a wolf pack in Manitoba. After shooting 7, beating four more to death, and shattering his rifle stock, he gave up and was torn to pieces. His body was found surrounded by the remains of the 11 wolves he had killed fighting for his life.

In 2015, MMA fighter Matt Hamill noticed a car speeding down the wrong side of the highway. So he turned his car around, gave a chase and safely forced the car to a grassy area. He then punched out a window to stop the car, potentially saving the child passenger and the inebriated mother’s lives.

John Clem was a drummer boy in the Union Army during the Civil War, who at the age of 11 shot a confederate colonel who had demanded his surrender. Promoted to sergeant, he became the youngest NCO in Army history. He retired in 1915 as a general and the last actively serving veteran of the Civil War.

During World War 2, a Spaniard named Joan Pujol Garcia was a double agent that spied on Germany for the British. He was supposed to recruit spies in Britain for the Germans. Eventually, the Germans were funding a network of 27 fictional agents and decided they had enough “agents” spying for them in Britain and didn’t want anymore. He played an important role in the deceptive operation intended to mislead the Germans about the D-day invasions. He received the medal of service from both the Allies and Axis.