Unforgettable Legends: 35 Badasses Who Deserve Recognition – Part 2

During World War 1, Dominic “Fats” McCarthy was awarded the Victoria Cross after he; virtually unaided, killed 22 Germans; captured 5 machine-guns, 50 prisoners; and half a kilometer of the German front. When it was over, even the prisoners he had captured patted him on the back for what he had done.

Erich Hartmann was a German fighter pilot during World War 2. From 1940 to 1945, he engaged in 824 air fights and he shot down 352 Allied aircraft without being shot down even once. The Soviet pilots nicknamed him Cherniy Chort (Black Devil) because of the black tulip design on his aircraft. Late during the war, Soviet pilots tended to retreat if they saw his aircraft, resulting in his aircraft being given to novice pilots. The reluctance of the Soviet airmen to fight caused Hartmann's kill rate to drop.

In 2003, female A-10 Thunderbolt pilot Kim Campbell was heavily lit by anti-aircraft munitions while flying over Baghdad. The plane lost all hydraulics, rolled left and pointed towards the ground, but after reverting to manual mode, she regained control, flew for an hour and landed without brakes.

During the Korean War in 1951 the American F Company came under attack from a vast Korean force, so everyone retreated leaving behind just a machine gunner named Jack G. Hanson to cover their retreat. Hours later when Americans retook the position, they found Hanson’s body in front of his machine gun nest with all his ammo expended. In his right hand was an empty pistol and in his left was a machete covered in blood. In front of him lay approximately 22 dead enemy soldiers, riddled with bullets and stab holes.

Frenchwoman Violette Morris won over 20 French national athletic titles (from boxing to shotput), earned over 50 medals in national and international competitions, took the field in over 200 professional soccer matches, placed first in almost two dozen auto and motorcycle long-distance endurance races. She even underwent a voluntary mastectomy in order to better fit inside her race cars. She was barred for life from French sports when she joined the Gestapo. She terrorized the French Resistance. She became such a headache for allies that British Commandos and French Resistance organized a special mission to take her out of the picture by ambushing her and firing a dozen machine guns at her sports car.