Just how much firepower has the U.S. Navy assembled off the coast of Israel to aid that country in its fight against the terrorist cabal called Hamas?

The skipper of a nuclear-powered aircraft once told a visiting party off the California coast — of which I was a member — the amount of juice contained in a single carrier battle group.

Navy Capt. John Payne commanded the USS Carl Vinson in the early 1990s when I and several others joined the late U.S. Rep. Charles Wilson for a factfinding tour of the ship. Wilson, an East Texas Democrat, wanted to tour the Vinson and express his unwavering support for the men and women who defend this country from its enemy.

Payne told us that a single battle group — comprising an aircraft carrier, several cruisers, frigates, destroyers, submarines — contains more “explosive firepower” than all the bombs dropped in all the theaters of operation during World War II, which ran from 1939 until 1945.

The Navy has deployed two such battle groups: the USS Gerald R. Ford and the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.

I cannot fathom either of these groups firing all its ordnance on targets inside Gaza. Still, I trust the terrorists know the dire peril they face if they refuse to cease their hideous acts against civilians.