From the number of confirmed kills to the longest shots ever made, here are 8 of the deadliest snipers in history!
8.
Billy Dixon (US Civilian)
Billy Dixon was known for being a skilled marksman, buffalo hunter and Indian fighter
in the late 1800s.
He is one of only 8 civilians to receive the US Medal of Honor.
Originally from West Virginia, he was of European and Native American ancestry and eventually
moved to the Texas Panhandle to hunt buffalo.
He moved to Adobe Walls (now Hutchinson County, TX) where hundreds of buffalo hunters roamed
the area and the buffalo population began to drop.
The Native Americans from the area realized the threat of the Adobe Walls trading post
and the buffalo hunters and organized to try to get rid of them.
Early in the morning on June 27, 1874 combined force of Comanche, Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Arapaho
warriors attacked the town.
There was a reported force of 700 warriors, and Billy Dixon was one of 28 men (and 1 woman)
who participated in the Second Battle of Adobe Walls from inside James Hanrahan’s saloon.
Over the following three days, the buffalo hunters repelled the attacks with their pistols
and short range weapons.
On the third day, 15 warriors rode onto a bluff to decide how to proceed.
Billy Dixon took a shot with a ‘Big Fifty’ Sharps rifle.
Already known as a great shot, Dixon shocked even himself when he cleanly hit a warrior
from his horse nearly a mile away.
While now controversy reigns over the exact distance, US Army Surveyors who conducted
a post battle survey determined that the shot had, in fact, been over 1,500 yards, or nine-tenths
of a mile away.
Supposedly an impossible shot.
Following these events, Dixon joined the army as a scout, and three months later found himself
in another battle at Buffalo Wallow.
His gallantry in battle at this subsequent fight earned him the Medal of Honor.
7.
Roza Shanina (Soviet Red Army)
Roza Shanina was 19 when she joined the Soviet Red Army after the death of her brother in
1941.
Smart, beautiful, and deadly, she is credited with 59 confirmed kills.
It took her 18 months to convince the military to let her sign up after learning how to shoot
at a range, and she was finally accepted into the Central Female Sniper Academy.
From there she became one of the most prolific snipers in the war, taking part in crucial
operations to repel the German forces.
She would become renowned for her ability to score doublets (hitting two targets, one
right after the other), and became obsessed with taking out the snipers of the opposition.
In 1944 a Canadian newspaper described Shanina as the “unseen terror of East Prussia.”
She became the first Soviet female sniper to be awarded the Order of Glory in 1944.
She died in January 1945 during the East Prussian offensive as she tried to protect an injured
artillery officer while the Germans attacked.
She was 20 years old.
Her legend remains as one of the most deadly snipers in the war.
6.
Carlos Norman Hathcock (US Marines)
Carlos Hathcock was a Marine Corps sniper whose success in the Vietnam war became legendary.
Although his confirmed kill count was 93, since that was the number that had witnesses,
Carlos estimated that he’d probably taken out over 300 enemy fighters.
This suspicion is backed up by the fact that a bounty was put on his head by the North
Vietnamese Army of $30,000 – about 15 times more than the usual rate for snipers.
They called him the ‘White Feather’, because of a feather that he would wear on his hat-
a name that would be given to a variant of the M21 rifle in his honor.
He first deployed to Vietnam in 1966 and returned to the US a year later after a particularly
brutal mission.
He returned to Vietnam again in 1969 to command a platoon of snipers.
While he was never hit by an enemy bullet, he was severely injured when the armored vehicle
he was travelling in hit an anti-tank mine.
He suffered third degree burns before escaping the wreckage, and received the purple heart
for his brave efforts.
He would later also receive a silver star.
Hathcock served almost 20 years in the Marine Corps and helped to set up the Marine Corps
Sniper school in Virginia.
5.
Chris Kyle (US Navy SEAL)
No list of snipers would be complete without mentioning Chris Kyle.
He is the most accomplished sniper in US history, and his bestselling autobiography American
Sniper was later turned into a movie directed by Clint Eastwood.
Kyle received an invitation to the 24-week Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL school (BUDS)
in 1999, and went on to serve four tours in Iraq as part of SEAL Team 3.
He served in many major battles that took place during the Iraq War where he became
notorious for his marksmanship skills.
His first confirmed long-range kill was a woman approaching a group of Marines while
carrying a hand grenade.
Kyle called his longest successful shot a “straight-up luck shot” from his McMillan
Tac-338 sniper rifle when he killed an insurgent sniper aiming at other US military personnel
at 1,920 meters away.
His effectiveness led to a bounty of up to $80,000 placed on him by insurgents who called
him ‘The Devil of Ramadi’, while the Marines he was tasked to protect began to call him
“The Legend”.
Like many other snipers, that exact number of sniper kills is unknown since they have
to have been witnessed.
The Navy confirmed 160 people, which would have beaten Adelbert Waldron’s US record
of 109.
Kyle was killed in 2013 along with a friend at a shooting range in Texas by 25-year-old
Eddie Ray Routh (Rowth) who was suffering from PTSD and schizophrenia.
4.
Craig Harrison (British Army)
Craig Harrison is believed to hold the record for the highest number of confirmed sniper
kills for someone who is still alive today, as well as the record for the longest confirmed
kill in combat.
Having joined the British army when he was 16, Harrison was a Corporal of Horse in the
Blues and Royals cavalry regiment of the British Army, and served in Afghanistan, Iraq and
Bosnia.
In November 2009, Harrison was in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan.
He was in a three-vehicle convoy when the soldiers ahead of his vehicle were ambushed.
They were stuck in a gulley fighting for their lives.
Harrison spotted an enemy machine gun that was spraying bullets in their direction.
He realized that it would take 6 seconds for the bullet to reach the target, and began
calculating how he would attempt to pull off such an impossible shot.
He fired, and the first one missed.
6 seconds later the gunner dropped dead from Harrison’s second attempt.
Later, an Apache helicopter measured the distance of the miracle shots, 2,475 meters, over 900
meters beyond his rifle’s effective range.
He had over 170 confirmed kills.
In 2009, he was sent home after a bullet went through his helmet and his vehicle was blown
up by a mine.
When Harrison returned home, the Ministry of Defence released details of the record-breaking
shot, but accidentally revealed his identity to the public.
Al-Qaeda published his personal information and that of his wife and daughter on the internet
and the government warned he was now in danger of being kidnapped by Al-Qaeda sympathizers.
This led to the end of his career.
He was awarded £100,000 in compensation by the MoD for this mistake and for the damage
it had caused him and his family.
3.
Adelbert Waldron (US Army)
Another sniper from the Vietnam War is Adelbert Waldron.
Until 2011, Waldron held the record for most confirmed kills by any American sniper at
109.
Waldron deployed in Vietnam in 1969 as part of the 9th Infantry and set his kill record
in only 8 months of service.
At the time the 9th Infantry was based in the Mekong Delta, which was one of the most
hostile territories in the war.
This brought out his superior marksmanship skills- at one point scoring a confirmed kill
after firing from a moving boat 900 meters away.
Another time he managed to take out a group of 8 Vietnamese soldiers from 500 meters away
by using only 8 shots.
One shot, one low.
Waldron became one of the most feared and wanted by the Viet Cong and became known as
Daniel Boone.
The Vietnamese had a $50,000 bounty on his head.
He was sent home in 1969 became a sniper shooting instructor for the army, and left the military
a year later.
By the end of his service he had earned many military honors including a Silver Star, many
Bronze Stars, and a Presidential Unit Citation.
2.
Fyodor Okhlopkov (Soviet Red Army)
Fyodor Okhlpkov is famous for his extraordinary count of 429 confirmed kills on behalf of
the Soviets in the second world war.
He started life as a farmer, hunter and gold miner but, in 1941 when war broke out against
Germany, Okhlopkov joined the Soviet Red Army as a machine gunner.
By October 1942 after his brother had been killed, he became a sniper.
He was soon one of the most effective snipers in the Army and in the world.
The army newspaper called the ‘Defender of the Fatherland’ spoke about him saying,
“he has the keen eye of a hunter, the hard hand of a miner, and a big, warm heart.”
He taught many young snipers and was injured 12 times during the war until finally being
released after a serious chest wound.
He was from the Yakut region and was at first denied honors due to his ethnicity.
In 1965 he finally received the Order Of Lenin and the title of Hero of the Soviet Union
in recognition of his efforts during the war.
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1.
Simo Häyhä (hey-ha) (Finnish Army)
Simo Häyhä holds the record for the most confirmed kills and is widely seen as the
most skilled and successful marksman that there has ever been.
Häyhä fought for the Finnish army in the Winter war that took place between Finland
and the Soviet Union between 1939 and 1940.
The Finnish snipers would traverse the snowy terrain on the border of the countries wearing
white camouflage, taking advantage of mistakes made by the Soviet leadership that left their
troops without the necessary clothing, and easy to spot.
Using a M/28-30 rifle, Häyhä was only there for 100 days, but with a confirmed kill count
of 505 in total, that meant he was taking out at least 5 enemy soldiers per day.
Some reports even claim he killed up to 800 combatants, but this figure is unverifiable.
He earned the name, ‘The White Death’ for his skills, and became a prime target
for the Soviets, who finally caught up with him in March of 1940 when he was hit in his
jaw by an explosive bullet.
He was found by soldiers who said he had half of his face missing, and was taken to the
hospital where he survived.
He regained consciousness on the day that peace was declared, and after recovering from
his injury he went on to become a moose hunter and dog breeder in the wake of the second
world war.
He lived a long life, far beyond the typical expectancy of a sniper, only dying recently
in 2002 at the age of 96.
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