The Most Famous Military Snipers in the World

Last updated September 2026 · By Nick Hall, firearm historian covering legendary snipers from Carlos Hathcock through modern operators

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The most famous military snipers in history are Simo Häyhä, Vasily Zaitsev, Chris Kyle, Lyudmila Pavlichenko and Carlos Hathcock, and behind them stands a list of names most people have never heard, from a Canadian Ojibwe scout to an Australian drover’s son at Gallipoli. Häyhä holds the highest credited count of any sniper, about 500 in 100 days. Kyle holds the American record. Pavlichenko is the deadliest woman sniper on record. And Hathcock set a distance record in Vietnam with a machine gun.

I’ve read just about every first-hand account and biography I could get my hands on about these shooters. The thing that blows my mind isn’t the distance of their shots or even the kill counts. It’s the patience: the discipline to lie still for hours, sometimes days, waiting for one shot. And a lot of them did it with bolt-action rifles from the early 1900s and iron sights. Modern military sniper rifles have match barrels, adjustable stocks and optics that cost more than your car. These guys had skill, nerve and an understanding of wind that bordered on supernatural.

The famous single shots are a different list. The longest confirmed sniper kill belongs to Ukrainian sniper Viacheslav Kovalskyi, who hit a Russian soldier at 3,800 meters, about 2.36 miles, in November 2023. We cover the distance records in their own section below. First, here are 11 of the most famous military snipers who ever lived, what they carried, and how solid their numbers really are.

Table of Contents

Famous Military Snipers at a Glance

Sniper	Country	War	Rifle	Credited kills
Simo Häyhä	Finland	Winter War	SAKO M/28-30, iron sights	259 rifle kills on record, about 500 in his own estimate
Vasily Zaitsev	Soviet Union	World War II	Mosin-Nagant 91/30, PU scope	265 at Stalingrad
Chris Kyle	United States	Iraq	.300 Win Mag Remington 700, .338 Lapua	160 confirmed, 255 claimed
Lyudmila Pavlichenko	Soviet Union	World War II	Mosin-Nagant 91/30, PE scope	309, including 36 snipers
Carlos Hathcock	United States	Vietnam	Winchester Model 70, M2 Browning	93 confirmed
Adelbert Waldron	United States	Vietnam	XM21	109 confirmed
Chuck Mawhinney	United States	Vietnam	M40	103 confirmed, 216 probable
Francis Pegahmagabow	Canada	World War I	Ross rifle	378, plus 300 captured
Billy Sing	Australia	World War I	Lee-Enfield .303	At least 150 confirmed
Roza Shanina	Soviet Union	World War II	Soviet sniper rifle	Over 50
“Juba”	Iraq	Iraq insurgency	Dragunov-type rifle	Unverified

A word on those numbers. Every army counted differently, most required a witness, and wartime tallies made good propaganda. Treat any single figure as the credited count, not a forensic one. That goes double for the Soviet and Finnish numbers from the 1940s.

1. Simo Häyhä, “The White Death” (Finland)

• Conflict: Winter War, 1939 to 1940
• Rifle: SAKO M/28-30, a Finnish Mosin-Nagant variant, with iron sights
• Credited kills: 259 by rifle in Finnish Army records, about 500 in his own estimate

Finnish sniper Simo Häyhä, often spelled Simo Hayha, holds the highest credited kill count of any sniper in any major war, all of it in under 100 days of the 1939 to 1940 Winter War against the Soviet Union. If you only know one name on this list, it’s probably his.

The numbers need a little care. Finnish Army records credit him with 259 rifle kills by March 7, 1940, plus an equal number with a submachine gun, which is where the famous figure of about 500 comes from. His private memoir, found in 2017, estimates about 500 as well. Some Finnish historians put it at “more than two hundred.” Any way you count it, he’s among the deadliest snipers who ever lived.

He did it without a scope. His own Civil Guard rifle, a SAKO-built M/28-30, had iron sights, and he kept it that way: a scope made him lift his head higher, it fogged in the cold, and the glint of glass could give him away. He wore white, packed snow in front of his position, and kept snow in his mouth so his breath wouldn’t steam in air as cold as 40 below. The “White Death” nickname is a great story, though it probably owes more to Finnish wartime propaganda than to the Red Army.

On March 6, 1940, an explosive bullet shattered his lower jaw. He woke a week later on the day peace was declared, recovered, and lived to 96. Asked how he got so good, he said: “Practice.” We cover his rifle, his Suomi submachine gun and his honorary rifle in Simo Häyhä’s guns. Finnish Mosins like his are prized collector rifles today:

2. Vasily Zaitsev (Soviet Union)

• Conflict: World War II, Battle of Stalingrad
• Rifle: Mosin-Nagant 91/30 with a PU scope
• Credited kills: 265 at Stalingrad, according to Soviet sources

Vasily Zaitsev, also spelled Zaytsev, was a Red Army sniper credited with 265 kills between September 22 and December 17, 1942, during the Battle of Stalingrad, and he’s the most famous Soviet sniper of the war. You probably know him from Enemy at the Gates, the 2001 film with Jude Law.

He grew up hunting deer and wolves in the Ural Mountains and was a Navy clerk in Vladivostok when Germany invaded. He volunteered for the front and reached Stalingrad with the 284th Rifle Division in September 1942. In the rubble he hid under wreckage and in water pipes, moved after a few shots, and worked out a team method with his partner Nikolai Kulikov that covered ground from three positions, each with a sniper and a scout. He also trained other snipers in the middle of the battle. His actual rifle, a Mosin 91/30 with a 3.5-power PU scope, is on display in Volgograd’s Stalingrad Panorama Museum.

The famous duel with a German sniper-school chief called Major König is shakier ground. Zaitsev described a three-day duel in his memoir, but historian Antony Beevor says the Russian Defense Ministry archives contradict it and that the duel was Soviet propaganda. A mortar blast injured his eyes in January 1943. He recovered, finished the war as a captain, and was made a Hero of the Soviet Union. A plain Mosin 91/30 is still the cheapest way into a real World War II rifle, and our where to buy a Mosin-Nagant guide covers the models:

3. Chris Kyle, “The Devil of Ramadi” (United States)

• Conflict: Iraq War, four tours
• Rifles: Remington 700 in .300 Win Mag, McMillan TAC-338, Mk 11 and Mk 12
• Credited kills: 160 confirmed out of 255 claimed

Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle is the deadliest sniper in American military history by the usual count, 160 confirmed kills out of 255 claimed across four tours in Iraq. His memoir American Sniper became a bestseller, and Clint Eastwood’s film with Bradley Cooper made him famous.

The 160 comes from his book, where he wrote that the number the Navy gave him changed from week to week. The one official figure in a public document is 91, from his Silver Star citation, which covers a single 2006 deployment to Ramadi. Kyle wrote that insurgents there called him the Devil of Ramadi and put a bounty on his head that rose from $20,000 to $80,000. His longest confirmed kill was about 2,100 yards near Sadr City in 2008 with a McMillan TAC-338 in .338 Lapua, a shot he called “a straight-up luck shot.”

Not everything around him holds up. The Navy corrected his medal count in 2016, and Jesse Ventura won a jury verdict over a bar fight in the book that was partly overturned on appeal and then settled. In 2013 Kyle was murdered at a Texas range by a troubled veteran he’d been trying to help. He was 38. We go through every rifle he carried, and the TRP 1911 he bought himself, in Chris Kyle’s guns. His main bolt-action was a Remington 700 in .300 Win Mag, which you can still buy, and we test it in our Remington 700 review:

4. Lyudmila Pavlichenko, “Lady Death” (Soviet Union)

• Conflict: World War II, Odessa and Sevastopol
• Rifle: Mosin-Nagant 91/30 with a PE scope, and the SVT-40
• Credited kills: 309, including 36 enemy snipers

Red Army sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko is credited with 309 kills, including 36 enemy snipers, at Odessa and Sevastopol in 1941 and 1942, which makes her the deadliest woman sniper on record and one of the deadliest snipers of either sex.

She was a 24-year-old history student at Kiev University when Germany invaded. The recruiter tried to make her a nurse. She showed him her shooting certificates instead and joined the 25th Rifle Division as a sniper. Her first rifle was a Mosin-Nagant handed to her by a wounded comrade, and Smithsonian magazine describes it as a Mosin with a 4-power PE scope. Wounded four times, she was taken out of besieged Sevastopol by submarine in June 1942.

Moscow then sent her to America, where she became the first Soviet citizen received at the White House and a friend of Eleanor Roosevelt. In Chicago she told a crowd: “Gentlemen, I am 25 years old and I have killed 309 fascist invaders by now. Don’t you think, gentlemen, that you have been hiding behind my back for too long?” Her 309 is a Soviet figure, and some historians question parts of her record. We cover her Mosin, the SVT-40 in her famous photo and the Colt America gave her in Lyudmila Pavlichenko’s guns.

5. Carlos Hathcock, “White Feather” (United States)

• Conflict: Vietnam War
• Rifles: Winchester Model 70 in .30-06, the M40, and a scoped M2 Browning .50
• Credited kills: 93 confirmed

Marine Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock is credited with 93 confirmed kills in Vietnam, and many Marines still call him the greatest sniper who ever lived. His number looks modest next to the World War II snipers here, but in Vietnam a kill only counted if his spotter and an officer both saw it.

The North Vietnamese called him Lông Trắng, White Feather, for the feather he wore in his bush hat, and the figure most often quoted for the bounty on his head is $30,000. His best-known kill was an enemy sniper called the Cobra near Hill 55: Hathcock saw the glint of a scope and fired, and the bullet went straight through the Cobra’s scope. Saving Private Ryan borrowed that shot, as we explain in the guns of Saving Private Ryan. In 1967 he mounted a scope on an M2 Browning .50 caliber machine gun and killed a Viet Cong guerrilla at 2,500 yards, a record that stood for 35 years.

His main rifle was a Winchester Model 70 in .30-06 with an 8-power Unertl scope. In 1969 he pulled seven Marines out of a burning amphibious tractor, and the Silver Star for it came in 1996. We cover all of his rifles in Carlos Hathcock’s guns, and we test the Model 70 you can buy today in our Winchester Model 70 review:

6. Adelbert Waldron (United States)

• Conflict: Vietnam War, 9th Infantry Division
• Rifle: XM21, a semi-automatic sniper version of the M14
• Credited kills: 109 confirmed

Army sniper Adelbert Waldron made 109 confirmed kills in just eight months in Vietnam, and that stood as the American record until Chris Kyle passed it. He does not get Hathcock’s name recognition, but his number is higher.

Waldron had already served 12 years in the Navy before he joined the Army. With the 9th Infantry Division he rode Navy patrol boats through the Mekong Delta, scanning the riverbanks, and at one point he made a confirmed kill at 900 yards from a moving boat. He won the Distinguished Service Cross twice, both for actions in 1969, one of the few men to do it, along with a Silver Star.

His rifle was the XM21, an accurized M14 with a Redfield scope. A semi-automatic gave him faster follow-up shots than Hathcock’s bolt-action Winchester, which mattered from a boat. The closest civilian rifle is Springfield’s M1A, reviewed in our Springfield M1A review, and real M14-family rifles turn up through the CMP M14 rifle sales:

7. Chuck Mawhinney (United States)

• Conflict: Vietnam War, 5th Marines
• Rifle: M40, the Remington 700-pattern Marine sniper rifle
• Credited kills: 103 confirmed, 216 probable

Marine sniper Chuck Mawhinney holds the Marine Corps record, 103 confirmed kills and 216 probable in 16 months in Vietnam starting in early 1968, and for decades almost nobody knew it.

An Oregon deer hunter and the son of a World War II Marine, he joined the Corps after deer season in 1967, went through Scout Sniper School at Camp Pendleton, and served mostly with Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines. He came home, worked for the Forest Service and never talked about it. In 1991 fellow Marine sniper Joseph Ward told his story in the book Dear Mom: A Sniper’s Vietnam. That was controversial at the time, since everyone assumed Hathcock’s 93 was the Marine record. The records confirmed 103. Mawhinney died in February 2024. His M40 is the rifle in the photo above, the same Remington 700 action covered in our Remington 700 review.

8. Francis Pegahmagabow (Canada)

• Conflict: World War I, Western Front
• Rifle: Ross rifle
• Credited kills: 378, plus 300 prisoners captured

Ojibwe scout and sniper Francis Pegahmagabow is credited with killing 378 Germans and capturing 300 more in World War I, and he’s the most highly decorated Indigenous soldier in Canadian military history.

He grew up on Parry Island in Ontario, enlisted in 1914, and began building his reputation as a sniper and scout at the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915, the battle where the Germans first used chlorine gas on the Western Front. He was wounded in the leg at the Somme in 1916 and fought at Passchendaele in 1917. He won the Military Medal three times, the medal plus two bars, which only 39 Canadians ever did.

He did it with the Ross rifle, the Canadian service rifle most Canadian troops came to hate because it jammed in mud and rapid fire, and which was replaced by the Lee-Enfield. After the war he was elected chief of the Parry Island Band in 1921 and spent the rest of his life fighting for First Nations rights. He died in 1952 at 61. The Lee-Enfield that replaced his Ross is covered in our Lee-Enfield rifle guide.

9. Billy Sing (Australia)

• Conflict: World War I, Gallipoli
• Rifle: Lee-Enfield .303
• Credited kills: At least 150 confirmed, possibly close to 300

Australian sniper Billy Sing took at least 150 confirmed kills at Gallipoli in 1915, and contemporary evidence puts his real tally close to 300, which makes him the most famous sniper of that campaign.

He was born in Clermont, Queensland, in 1886, the son of a Chinese drover from Shanghai and an English nurse, and he was a kangaroo shooter and rifle-club marksman before the war. At Gallipoli he worked from a position called Chatham’s Post with a Lee-Enfield .303. The story goes that the Turks sent a champion sniper the Allies nicknamed “Abdul the Terrible” to deal with him, and that Sing fired first when the two saw each other. He won the Distinguished Conduct Medal, came home, and died poor and forgotten in Brisbane in 1943. SMLE rifles like his are covered in our Lee-Enfield rifle guide:

10. Roza Shanina (Soviet Union)

• Conflict: World War II, Belarus and East Prussia
• Training: Central Women’s Sniper Training School
• Credited kills: Over 50

Soviet sniper Roza Shanina was credited with over 50 kills in 1944 and 1945, and a Canadian newspaper called her “the unseen terror of East Prussia.” She was killed in action at 20.

At 14 she walked 200 kilometers across the taiga to go to college in Arkhangelsk. After her brother died in the siege of Leningrad, she pushed her way into the Central Women’s Sniper Training School, where she became known for doublets, two hits from two quick shots. She became the first servicewoman of the 3rd Belorussian Front to receive the Order of Glory. She also kept a war diary, which was strictly against the rules, and it was published in 1965. She died on January 28, 1945, during the East Prussian Offensive, shielding a badly wounded artillery commander.

11. “Juba,” The Baghdad Sniper (Iraq)

• Conflict: Iraqi insurgency, 2005 to 2007 videos
• Rifle: What appears to be a Dragunov SVD
• Credited kills: Unverified; one video shows a tally of 37

“Juba” is the pseudonym of an anonymous insurgent sniper, or possibly several, featured in propaganda videos released by the Sunni group Islamic Army in Iraq between 2005 and 2007. He’s on this list for his notoriety, not his record, because nobody can verify either one.

The videos show American soldiers being shot at ranges from a few hundred meters to about a thousand, often through gaps in body armor, with what appears to be a Dragunov sniper rifle. The second video shows “Juba” marking a tally of 37 on a wall. Nobody knows who he was or whether he was one man. Marine sniper A.J. Pasciuti believes he killed him at Habbaniyah in June 2006, and another rumor had him captured in Baghdad, but neither was ever confirmed. We’re talking about someone who killed Americans, and his story is mostly propaganda. It’s here because it’s part of the history of the sniper war in Iraq.

The Longest Confirmed Sniper Kills

The famous snipers above are known for doing it again and again. The distance records are a different list, and most of them were set with .50 BMG or .338 Lapua rifles by snipers whose names were kept secret. Here’s where the record stands, from the longest down:

Sniper	Distance	Year and war	Rifle
Viacheslav Kovalskyi, Ukraine	3,800 m	2023, Russo-Ukrainian War	Horizon’s Lord
Unnamed Canadian special forces sniper	3,540 m	2017, Iraq	McMillan TAC-50
Unnamed Australian sniper	2,815 m	2012, Afghanistan	Not disclosed
Craig Harrison, Britain	2,475 m	2009, Afghanistan	L115A3 in .338 Lapua
Rob Furlong, Canada	2,430 m	2002, Afghanistan	McMillan TAC-50
Arron Perry, Canada	2,310 m	2002, Afghanistan	McMillan TAC-50
Carlos Hathcock, USMC	2,286 m	1967, Vietnam	M2 Browning machine gun

Hathcock’s machine-gun shot held the record for 35 years, and it’s a big part of why the .50 BMG became a real sniper cartridge. Chris Kyle’s 2,100-yard shot, about 1,920 meters, doesn’t make the top list but is still one of the longest by an American. The full story of each shot is in the longest sniper kills in history. The Barrett M82A1 is the rifle that brought the .50 BMG to civilian shooters, and we review it in our Barrett M82A1 review:

What Makes the Most Famous Military Snipers Great?

Looking at this list, raw marksmanship is just the starting point. Every sniper here could shoot. What separated them was everything else: the ability to stay motionless for hours, the patience to wait for the right shot instead of a good one, and the nerve to work alone or with one spotter in enemy territory day after day. Zaitsev’s teams, Hathcock and his spotter John Burke, and Mawhinney’s work with Marine rifle companies all show how much of the job was the spotter, the camouflage and the patience rather than the trigger.

The equipment gap between then and now is enormous. Häyhä used iron sights. Pegahmagabow used a Ross rifle his own army gave up on. Hathcock bolted a scope onto a machine gun because that’s what he had. Today’s snipers carry rifles, optics and ballistic computers that would have looked like science fiction to these men, and you can see the modern side of it in our best sniper rifles and best rifle scopes guides. Makes you wonder what Häyhä could have done with a modern precision rifle and a Nightforce scope.

And every one of them had an effect bigger than one rifle. Häyhä’s name became a Finnish legend while the war was still on. Zaitsev lifted Stalingrad’s defenders when morale was at rock bottom. Hathcock’s white feather was psychological warfare all by itself. These eleven come from different eras, different wars and different countries, but they share a rare mix of skill, nerve and will that most soldiers never reach.

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