Simo Häyhä’s Guns: The White Death’s Iron-Sighted M/28-30 and Suomi KP/-31

Simo Häyhä, the deadliest sniper in history, didn’t use a scope. The Finnish farmer fought the Winter War of 1939 to 1940 with his own Civil Guard rifle, a SAKO-built M/28-30, the Finnish version of the Russian Mosin-Nagant, and he aimed with iron sights. His army credited him with 259 rifle kills in under 100 days, and his own memoir, found in 2017, estimates about 500. When he led his squad in close fighting he carried a Suomi KP/-31 submachine gun. In February 1940 he was given a presentation M/28-30 as an honor, and three weeks later an explosive bullet shattered his jaw.

Here’s every gun in the White Death story, why he refused a scope, how solid the kill numbers are, and what the same rifles cost today.

Table of Contents

Simo Häyhä’s Guns at a Glance

Gun	Caliber	How he used it
SAKO M/28-30 “Pystykorva,” serial 35281	7.62x53R	His sniper rifle, with iron sights only
Suomi KP/-31 submachine gun	9mm	Close fighting as a squad leader
SAKO M/28-30 honorary rifle, serial 100781	7.62x53R	Presented to him on February 17, 1940
Soviet Mosin-Nagant 91/30 with PE scope	7.62x54R	Available to him, and he turned it down

Who Was Simo Häyhä?

Simo Häyhä was born on December 17, 1905, in Rautjärvi, in the Karelian borderlands of southeastern Finland, the seventh of eight children in a farming family. He farmed, hunted and skied, and at 17 he joined the Civil Guard, Finland’s volunteer militia. He won so many regional shooting competitions that his home was reportedly full of marksmanship trophies. He did his compulsory service in a bicycle battalion starting in 1925 and went through the NCO school, but he didn’t get formal sniper training until 1938, a year before the war.

He was a small man, about 5 feet 3 inches tall, and quiet. Major Tapio Saarelainen, who met him several times and wrote his biography, said Häyhä could judge distances up to 150 meters to within a meter.

The Winter War at Kollaa

The Soviet Union invaded Finland on November 30, 1939. Häyhä served in the 6th Company of Infantry Regiment 34 under Lieutenant Aarne Juutilainen, a former French Foreign Legionnaire nicknamed “the Terror of Morocco,” holding the line at the Kollaa River. It was one of the coldest winters on record, with temperatures between -40 and -4 degrees Fahrenheit. The Finns fought in white snow smocks. Most Red Army soldiers had no winter camouflage at all, and against the snow they were easy to see.

The M/28-30: His Rifle

Häyhä went to war with his own issued Civil Guard rifle, an early SAKO M/28-30 with serial number 35281 and Civil Guard number S60974. The M/28-30 was Finland’s reworked Mosin-Nagant. Finland had inherited huge numbers of Russian rifles at independence, and Finnish arsenals rebuilt them with new barrels and improved iron sights. The Civil Guard’s version was nicknamed “Pystykorva,” the Finnish word for a spitz dog, because the protective ears around its front sight looked like a spitz’s pointed ears. It fired the Finnish 7.62x53R cartridge, a close relative of the Russian 7.62x54R.

The name SAKO comes from Suojeluskuntain Ase- ja Konepaja, “Civil Guard Gun and Machining Works.” The company began in 1919 as a Civil Guard shop reconditioning Russian rifles, and it’s still making rifles today in Riihimäki, Finland, now under Beretta ownership, along with the Tikka brand. The M/28-30 was accurate enough that SAKO built about 440 of them for the 1937 World Shooting Championships in Helsinki.

Why he refused a scope

Captured Soviet Mosin 91/30 sniper rifles with PE scopes were available to the Finns, and Häyhä wouldn’t switch. His reasons were practical. A scope makes a sniper lift his head a few inches higher to see through it, which makes a bigger target. In deep cold the lenses fog and ice up. Sun glinting off glass can give away a position, the same flash Carlos Hathcock used to find and kill an enemy sniper in Vietnam. And Häyhä hadn’t trained with a scope. Modern scopes are sealed and nitrogen-filled against fogging, and our best rifle scopes guide covers the ones that hold up in the cold.

Finnish Mosins are the most sought-after of all Mosin-Nagants today, and they cost more than the Russian rifles they were built from. Real Civil Guard M/28-30s are scarce, but the M/28 and the later M/39 still turn up at collector dealers. Our where to buy a Mosin-Nagant guide covers the Finnish models and what they sell for:

Finnish 7.62x53R is hard to find in the US, and Finnish rifles are chambered for it, but many American owners shoot standard 7.62x54R after a gunsmith confirms the bore and chamber. Have yours checked before you fire it:

The Suomi KP/-31 Submachine Gun

When Häyhä fought as a squad leader alongside the rest of his unit, he’s recorded as carrying a Suomi KP/-31, Finland’s 9mm submachine gun. Designed by Aimo Lahti, it entered Finnish service in 1931 and stayed in use until the 1980s. It was heavy and expensive to build, and it fed from box magazines or big 40- and 71-round drums.

A real Suomi is a machine gun under US law, so it’s out of reach for most buyers, and you’ll rarely see one for sale. The officers who credited Häyhä counted his submachine gun kills separately, as you’ll see below.

How Many Kills Did Simo Häyhä Have?

Nobody knows exactly, and the honest answer depends on whose count you trust. All his kills came in less than 100 days, in the depths of a Finnish winter with only a few hours of daylight. His count was based on his own reports, confirmed by comrades, and only men seen to be dead were counted. Kills shared with other snipers weren’t counted, and neither were enemy soldiers killed with a submachine gun when he was leading his squad.

Date	Credited sniper kills	Source
December 21, 1939	25 in one day	His highest single day
December 22, 1939	138	Finnish Army document
January 26, 1940	199	Finnish Army document
February 17, 1940	219, plus an equal number by submachine gun	Division commander Antero Svensson, with the honorary rifle
March 7, 1940	259, plus an equal number by submachine gun	Chaplain Antti Rantamaa’s diary, a day after he was wounded
Written 1940, found 2017	About 500 in total	Häyhä’s private memoir, which he called his “sin list”

Add the 259 rifle kills to an equal number with the submachine gun and you get the figure of about 500 that made him famous, and it matches his own estimate. Not everyone accepts it. Finnish historian Risto Marjomaa, writing in the National Biography of Finland, credits him with “more than two hundred,” pointing out that bodies were rarely recovered to confirm kills. The Finnish press also built Häyhä into a myth early in the war, when the country badly needed one. Even the lowest serious estimate puts him among the most lethal snipers who ever lived. Soviet sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko, credited with 309, needed about ten months of front-line service to do what Häyhä did in 100 days.

The White Death and How He Hunted

The nickname everyone knows, “the White Death,” probably isn’t what the Red Army called him. Finnish sources say it was, but according to Soviet prisoners, “White Death” was their name for the killing frost of the deep forest. The name was a favorite theme of Finnish wartime propaganda, and it wasn’t attached to Häyhä in print until Winter War books of the late 1980s. His comrades called him “the Magic Shooter.”

His methods are better documented than the legend. He moved into a position he’d prepared well before daybreak and stayed until after dark. He packed dense snow in front of his position to hide himself, rest his rifle, and stop the muzzle blast from kicking up a telltale puff of snow. He kept snow in his mouth so his breath wouldn’t steam in the freezing air. He wore layers, and he carried sugar and bread in his pockets to keep his body making heat.

The Honorary Rifle

On February 17, 1940, with 219 rifle kills credited, Häyhä was presented with a name-plated SAKO M/28-30 “Pystykorva,” serial number 100781, as an honorary rifle. It was paid for by Eugen Johansson, a Swedish businessman who supported Finland. Häyhä later gave it to the heritage room of the Karelia Jaeger Battalion, and since 2013 it has been in the collection of the Finnish Military Museum. The featured photo at the top of this page was taken at Kollaa the same day.

The Bullet That Ended His War

On March 6, 1940, a week before the war ended, an explosive bullet fired by a Red Army soldier tore through Häyhä’s face and shattered his lower left jaw. He looked dead and was put on a pile of bodies until someone saw his foot move. He woke up a week later, on March 13, the day peace was declared. Rumors of his death had spread across Finland and the Soviet Union, and when he read about it in a newspaper, he wrote to the paper to correct it.

Recovery took years and several surgeries, and the scars never went away. When the Continuation War with the Soviet Union began in 1941, he asked to go back to the front and was turned down. In August 1940 Field Marshal Mannerheim promoted him straight from corporal to second lieutenant, and he received the Cross of Kollaa, number four, after Mannerheim, the president and his division commander.

After the War

His family farm was in the part of Karelia Finland had to give up in the peace treaty, so he started again in Ruokolahti, near the new border. He farmed, bred dogs, and became a well-known moose hunter who hunted with Finland’s President Urho Kekkonen. He never married and rarely talked about the war. Asked in 1998 how he’d become such a good shot, he answered, “Practice.” In a 2001 interview, asked if he regretted the killing, he said: “I did what I was told, as well as I could. There would be no Finland unless everyone had done the same.”

Häyhä died in a veterans’ nursing home in Hamina on April 1, 2002, at 96, and he’s buried in Ruokolahti. The Kollaa and Simo Häyhä Museum in his home village of Miettilä, in Rautjärvi, tells his story. Sabaton’s 2010 song “White Death” is about him, the director of the 2022 action film Sisu has said Häyhä’s legend partly inspired it, and a Finnish feature film called Häyhä is scheduled to start shooting in January 2027.

Can You Buy a Rifle Like Häyhä’s?

A Finnish Mosin is the closest you’ll get, and our military surplus hub covers the rest of the World War II field. If you’d rather have a modern rifle from the company that built his, SAKO is still making them. The Sako 90 is one of its current hunting rifles, and Tikka, SAKO’s more affordable brand, makes the popular T3x. We review the T3x in our Tikka T3x review and SAKO’s tactical rifle in our Sako TRG review:

Prices update live from more than 200 retailers. For the other great snipers, read Carlos Hathcock’s guns, Chris Kyle’s guns, the most famous military snipers in the world and the longest sniper kills in history. For today’s rifles see our best sniper rifles and best military sniper rifles guides.

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