The Deadliest Female Sniper in Recorded History
By: Peter Preskar
Tags: War, Women, Russia, History, Military

The Deadliest Female Sniper in Recorded History

Lyudmila Pavlichenko a.k.a Lady Death

Lyudmila Pavlichenko in a trench, posing with a sniper rifle (Image: Devianart/@bakka)

In June 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Lyudmila Pavlichenko (1916–1974) immediately joined the Soviet army. Soon, her deadly sniper skills earned her a new nickname, the ‘Lady Death’.

After a combat injury in 1942, she traveled across the United States (US) to convince Americans to enter World War II. During her tour, she uttered one of the most badass lines in history:

I am 25 years old and I have killed 309 fascist occupants by now. Don’t you think, gentlemen, that you have been hiding behind my back for too long? — Lyudmila Pavlichenko

A beauty who refused to be a field nurse during the war

Lyudmila Pavlichenko (Image:thesun.co.uk)

As a teenager, Lyudmila heard a neighbor boy boasting about his shooting skills. Being fiercely competitive, she joined a local shooting club and became a certified sharpshooter.

Lyudmila was studying history at Kyiv University when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.

She rushed to join the army and fight against the Germans. Recruiters looked in amazement at the twenty-four-year-old girl that looked like a model, wearing fashionable clothes and hairstyle. They tried to convince her to become a field nurse.

Nevertheless, Lyudmila insisted on joining the infantry. After displaying a marksmanship certificate, the recruiters relented, and she joined the army.

In the beginning, she didn’t even have her own rifle. Instead, they gave her one grenade and tasked her with digging trenches. After one of the fellow soldiers was seriously injured, he gave her his Mosin–Nagant sniper rifle. Soon afterward, she killed two Romanian soldiers. Now, she officially had become a real sniper.

Lyudmila achieved 309 confirmed kills, including 36 enemy snipers

Lyudmila Pavlichenko with her weapon of choice — the sniper rifle (Image: thesun.co.uk)

Lyudmila was one of the 2000 Soviet female snipers during World War II. She recorded 309 confirmed kills, including one hundred officers and thirty-six enemy snipers.

For the kill to be confirmed, an independent third party had to witness it, and this was not always possible. So, her real total is most likely around 500 kills.

She achieved all these kills in just one year of service, during the Siege of Odesa and the Siege of Sevastopol.

After she was injured, the Soviet government evacuated her from Sevastopol via a submarine. She was already a celebrity and the government wanted to keep her alive. The rest of her division died within a month at Sevastopol. Among the perished soldiers was Lyudmila’s husband, a fellow sniper Alexei Kitsenko.

Afterward, she trained other snipers and served as a public spokesperson. In 1942, she traveled to the US, Canada, and Britain to convince the allies to join the war.

Lyudmila became the first Soviet citizen to be received by a US President

Lyudmila (center) with the US First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (right), and Justice Robert Jackson (left) (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

In 1942, Lyudmila traveled to the US to convince Americans to open a second front against the Germans. During her visit to the White House, she was received by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt invited Lyudmila on a tour across the US to share her war experiences.

Interestingly, Lyudmila and Eleanor became friends. In 1957, during her visit to the Soviet Union, Eleanor visited Lyudmila in Moscow.

Conclusion

After the war, Lyudmila worked as a historian. She also wrote an autobiography about her wartime experience.

She suffered from depression, PSTD (post-traumatic stress disorder), and alcoholism. The war and the loss of her husband during the Siege of Sevastopol had left deep wounds on her soul. She died of a stroke at the age of fifty-eight in 1974.

Lyudmila never regretted killing the enemy soldiers since she saw the atrocities committed by the Germans. However, she strongly objected to sport hunting because the animals don’t have rifles.