Sniper Warfare - Notable Military Snipers - 20th Century

20th Century

• Billy Sing (World War I) – Australian sniper with at least 150 confirmed kills during the Gallipoli Campaign; he may have had close to 300 kills in total at Gallipoli, and went on to fight at the Western Front.
• Francis Pegahmagabow (World War I) - Native Canadian sniper credited with 378 kills, and an unknown number of unconfirmed kills. He only took credit for kills when they were verified by an officer.
• Finnish Lance Corporal Simo Häyhä, aka "White Death", was a sniper during the Winter War and is regarded by many as the most effective sniper in the history of warfare, being credited with killing up to 505 Soviet soldiers accomplished in fewer than 100 days. Häyhä used a White Guard M/28 "Pystykorva" or "Spitz", variant of the Russian Mosin-Nagant rifle, and iron sights.
• Lieutenant Lyudmila Pavlichenko (World War II) – female Soviet sniper with 309 confirmed kills, making her the most successful female sniper in history.
• Junior Lieutenant Vassili Zaitsev (World War II) – credited with killing about 200 German soldiers during the Battle of Stalingrad, he is portrayed in the film Enemy at the Gates and in the book War of the Rats; both however are fictionalized accounts.
• Mihail Ilyich Surkov has been said to have killed 702 enemy troops.
• Semen Nomokonov killed 367 persons, including a general.
• Gefreiter (Private) Matthäus Hetzenauer (World War II) - Austrian sniper who was credited with 345 confirmed kills on the Eastern Front, the most successful in the Wehrmacht. Unofficially, he killed about 500 Russian soldiers (there are some kills unverified by officers).
• Obergefreiter (Private First Class) Josef 'Sepp' Allerberger (World War II) - Austrian sniper credited with 257 confirmed kills on the Eastern Front. (the same situation as has Hetzenauer - German officers seldom confirmed kills).
• Helmuth Wirnsberger - German sniper, who has served in 3. Gebirgsjaegerdivision during WW II and credited 64 confirmed kills. Unofficially, he killed more than 200 Russians.
• Chinese Sergeant Tung Chih Yeh claimed to have shot and killed over 100 Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) soldiers using a Chiang Kai-Shek rifle with and without a scope in the Yangtze area during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
• Zhang Taofang (Chinese: 张桃芳; Traditional Chinese: 張桃芳; Wade-Giles: Zhang Tao-fang) was a Chinese soldier during the Korean War. He is credited with 214 confirmed kills in 32 days without using a sniper magnifying scope, but this is an improbable accreditation.
• Clive Hulme was a New Zealand recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces. He is credited with stalking and killing 33 German snipers in the Battle of Crete.
• Ian Robertson served as a sniper with Australia's 3RAR post World War 2. He became one of the most effective snipers during the Korean War where in one instance he killed 30 in a single morning.
• Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock (Vietnam war) – achieved 93 confirmed kills but believed to have over 200 unconfirmed kills. With a telescopic scoped .50 caliber M2 Browning heavy machine gun, he set a world record for the longest recorded sniper kill at 2,286 m (2,500 yd) which stood for 35 years until 2002.
• Chuck Mawhinney (Vietnam war) – 103 confirmed and 216 probable kills.
• Adelbert F. Waldron (Vietnam war) – achieved 109 confirmed kills.
• Master Sgt. Gary Gordon and Sgt. First Class Randy Shughart (Somalia: Operation Gothic Serpent) - were Delta Force snipers who were awarded the Medal of Honor for their fatal attempt to protect the injured crew of a downed helicopter during the Battle of Mogadishu. This action was later dramatized in the film Black Hawk Down.
• South Armagh Sniper (1990–1997) killed 9 British soldiers.