That is to ask, “what?” Was it the combined forces of the 7th and 3rd fleet looking to invade the Philippines and destroy the remnants of the Japanese navy at the same time? Was it the 3-million strong German force for Barbarossa? Or was it the Allied western front driving into Germany?
Far more likely to have been the Soviet Red Army driving westward into Germany.
I’d say the US-led coalition in either the first or second gulf war. The Soviets and Nazis certainly had a lot more people but if you had pitted them against the 1M (gulf war 1) or 265K (gulf war 2) strong forces of the US-led coalition, the technological, training, organizational and doctrinal gaps would have been too much.
The Soviets fielded about 2 million men for the battle of Kursk alone (against about 800,000 Germans).
I’d have to go with the Gulf War (either one) as well. What are 3 million Germans going to do against planes they can’t see, can’t shoot and can’t prevent from taking off? Especially when these planes can be armed with nuclear warheads.
And 100 years from now, the equivalent of a battalion will be able to defeat the entire Gulf War coalition. It never ends.
There’s little doubt, however, that relative to the technology at the time, the 2,500,000 Russian soldiers who took part in the final assault on Berlin were the most powerful force ever fielded. Maybe the armies of Xerxes or Genghis Khan came close, but I doubt it.
I’m guessing it’s either an H-bomb-equipped B52, or a single nuclear ICBM with MIRV warhead.
Yeah, I know that’s not what you meant. But for sheer destructive force, might one of these be the ace of trumps?
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Declan
In that line of thinking, I’d say either an Ohio or Typhoon class nuclear missile submarine would be it.
I have a friend who served with one of the Air Force “wings” that serviced the missile silos in Colorado who apparently claimed to be the most powerful military unit in history.
Thought you put this nicely. The Red Army late in ww2 was astonishingly powerful. Patton woulda
got spanked if he’d tried to take them on, IMHO.
How 'bout US strategic air command (combining ICBMs and long-range bombers) at some point in the cold war when they were all primed to attack?
During the late cold war years, the joke was that if North Dakota had seceded from the USA, they would have immediately become the world’s 3rd superpower.
And that was fairly accurate, actually, in terms of nuclear weapon power. There were several megatons for every single resident of North Dakota. In terms of megatonage per person, they were probably the top!