by Gary Yee
One famous Russian sniper was Vassili Zaitsev. Hailing from the Ural Mountains, Zaitsev was taught hunting and field craft by his grandfather who was so skilled that he once killed a wolf with a mallet, thereby perfectly preserving the pelt. Drafted into the Soviet Pacific Fleet, Zaitsev was an accountant and payroll clerk before volunteering for the infantry and being sent to Stalingrad. At Stalingrad 1047th Rifle Regiment, 284 Rifle Division came under fire from a German machine gun that was 600 meters away. After glancing at them with a periscope, he took a snap shot and killed the machine gunner with one shot. When two other men attempted to man the gun, he killed them in quick succession. Unknown to Zaitsev, his shots were witnessed by Colonel Batyuk, who ordered that Zaitsev be given a sniper rifle.
As Zaitsev’s fame grew, a political commissar ordered Zaitsev to start a sniping school. Having learned of a spring the Germans used for water, Zaitsev’s small band pinned the Germans for four days. They shot up the jerrycans and denied them water until they were relieved. However, one of Zaitsev’s comrades was shot, so Zaitsev went hunting for the enemy sniper. He noticed that among a pile of artillery shells, one shell had its bottom removed and was being used as a loophole. He ducked before the German fired and narrowly avoided being killed. The next day the shell was missing and Zaitsev used his periscope to scan. Finding it, Zaitsev had his spotter raise a helmet slowly. Falling for the bait, the German fired and, satisfied that he had slain a Russian, moved his head slightly. At that moment Zaitsev fired and evened the score.
Patience was also a necessary skill, and Zaitsev would sometimes wait for more important targets. One morning he and another sniper noticed a German soldier emerge from a thicket with a bucket in hand. He disappeared and then five minutes later, reappeared with two more soldiers who also bore buckets. Rather than firing, they let them collect water and return uphill. Later they spotted the German pouring water over the backs of three officers. While they were tempting targets, Zaitsev insisted on waiting. The officers were all company grade and he wanted bigger fish. The next day, Zaitsev decided not to allow the Germans to bathe. He deployed two other sniper teams within talking distance. A redheaded officer appeared from the pillbox. The snipers waited as the hat moved along the rim of a trench. Zaitsev figured there was an enemy sniper seeking to avenge the machine gunner they had killed the previous day. Even as midday passed, they waited. Then they noticed one single German appear with a bucket. He was unarmed; they permitted him to pass unmolested but stayed alert. Time passed and a thick heavyset colonel appeared. Following him was a soldier with a scoped rifle—their sniper! Next in line was a major who wore a Knight’s Cross and then a colonel smoking a cigarette in a cigarette holder. This was the prize they had patiently waited for. Three two-shot volleys rang out and all four Germans died. The Germans retaliated with an artillery bombardment followed with an ineffective Luftwaffe strike.
Zaitsev once hunted a German sniper who had been preying upon the defenders of Stalingrad’s Mamayez Hill. In anticipation of their duel, he set up three shooting positions. Afterward he left a helmet atop of one to see if the German would take the bait. It worked. Using a periscope, Zaitsev studied the terrain for hours before finally locating the sniper’s post. He spotted at 600 yards distance an upright Maxim gun shield that was camouflaged with branches and dried grass. The aperture for the gun barrel was open and allowed the sniper to fire with some degree of safety. Sending a bullet through the hole might accomplish nothing so Zaitsev waited until he could see a helmet. Suddenly a helmet appeared but it was soon followed by another. Which one? A flash of light indicated a cup had been raised. If one German had delivered lunch, then the other was the sniper partaking of it. Zaitsev saw the cup raise again as the sniper threw his head back to empty its contents. At that moment Zaitsev fired and eliminated the sniper who had bothered Mamayez Hill.
The most famous duel involving Zaitsev was against a Major Konig or Thorvald from the Berlin sniper school. The story was originally told in Walter Craig’s Enemy At the Gates and later fictionalized in the War of the Rats. Martin Pegler contacted Russian archivists who could not locate any accounts or record of the duel. Nor could any records be found on any Major Konig or Thorvald. Truth or fiction? You decide.
Twenty-five-year-old Lyudmila Pavlichenko was studying for her history thesis when Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Having taken up sport shooting at the Kiev Osoaviakhim, she was accepted into the army as a sniper. She received her baptism of fire at Odessa and when that city was evacuated, at Sevastopol:
I was often hit by shrapnel from shells that exploded some way off, but miraculously, I was spared any serious injuries. Sometimes, Fritzes would put on such “concerts” for a sniper! As soon as they found a sniper they would let fly. It would sometimes last three or four hours straight. So, there was only one thing I could do: stay down, shut up and not move. I learned a lot from German snipers, and occasionally they found me out. They would put me in their crosshairs, shoot and keep me on the ground, in a hole. Bullets would just whistle over me and hit all around; it was impossible to clear out of where I was. Then my gunners would give me cover and send a hail of bullets so that I would be able to get myself out of there.
The most important thing I learned from the Germans was how to set up dummies! Sometimes I would shoot and it would surveying an area and I would come across a Fritz and say to myself, “You’re mine.” I would shoot and it would be just a helmet set up on a piece of wood. Other times, they would make dummies so lifelike you thought they were real, to the point where I’d fire off several rounds, giving away my position and then the “concert” would begin. We always had a spotter who used binoculars and gave us the layout of the land, kept an eye out, and counted kills. To stay in the same spot for hours on end is extremely difficult and we couldn’t move. There are some very critical moments, and you have to have incredible patience. For ambushes, we would take ration packs, water, sometimes lemonade and chocolate, even though chocolate was not part of sniper provisions. My first rifle was destroyed close to Odessa, the second defending Sevastopol. Actually I always had two rifles on me, one for show and another for work. I also had a nice pair of binoculars. The day generally started around four o’clock in the morning, if we had to get behind enemy lines. Occasionally, you stay in position all day and no opportunity presents itself. But if you stay like that for three days and aren’t able to get at least one target in your sights, upon arriving back at camp you are so filled with anger, in such a bad mood, that no one dares talking to you. Luckily I was well-prepared physically and could hold out for many hours in an ambush. But sometimes, especially in the beginning you can’t sit still, you give your position away, especially in the beginning, you say to yourself, “When your head is not in it, you need your legs.” Lucky for me, gunners often came to my rescue.
Lyudmila Pavlichenko with Eleanor Roosevelt in 1942.
Pavlichenko was credited with 309 kills when, in 1942, she joined a Russian delegation visiting Canada and the United States. During her tour, she gave talks encouraging the fight against Germany. After returning home, she was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union and as a sniping instructor, passed her experiences onto new snipers.
Pavlichenko was only one of many Soviet women who fought as snipers, other notable female snipers included Nina Petrova with 122 kills, Nina Obkovskaya with 89, and Maria Ivushkina with 75. Altogether six women snipers were made Hero of the Soviet Union, all graduates of the Central Women’s School of Sniper Training.
British sniper Captain Clifford Shore saw some Russians shoot and concluded that for a more accurate accounting, the Soviet claims should be divided by 100. Shore believed that Soviet snipers with a hunting background were skilled snipers but the propagandistic claims of 304 men killed with only 304 bullets fired were incredible.
Germany
During 1939 the Germans revisited the turret-mounting system originally used in World War I. A limited number of turret-mounted Zielferrohrkara
biner 98K were fitted with 4× Zeiss or Zielvier scopes. The scope bases were soft-soldered and screwed onto the receiver. These were high mounts that permitted the iron sights to be used. Also developed in 1939 was the ZF-41 1.5× long eye relief scope. A marksman scope, its low magnification and its small lens, which limited light-gathering ability, made it unsuitable for sniping but with the demand for optically equipped rifles, the ZF-41 was issued to snipers until better optics could be provided. Easily the worst optical device fielded by any army, ironically it was also the Wehrmacht’s most issued scope.
Impetus for scoped rifles came from the soldiers. As the Wehrmacht invaded Norway, small bands of Norwegian soldiers used their limited number of diopter-sighted rifles to ambush Germans whenever and wherever the terrain favored it. The wily Norwegians would afterward escape to the next ambush position. Since the German soldiers’ pleas (initially) fell on deaf ears, their own regimental gunsmiths began modifying the rifles for scopes. In response to the demand, surviving scoped rifles from the Reichswehr were retrieved from storage and pressed into service. Perhaps the most fielded sniping system was the claw-mount system: two steel blocks were soldered on the left side of the receiver. Each block had a cavity into which the claw of the scope ring fitted. A button in the rear base was pushed to secure the claw into place. Over 10,000 were produced during the war. New mounting systems were also being issued and in 1944 a side-mounted, detachable system was introduced. The various scope-mounting systems and optical devices used meant the German sniping rifles was anything but uniform. Besides the Mauser 98K, later in the war some semiautomatic Gew.-41, Gew-43 and the FG-42 were adopted for optical devices.
In 1942 the German army began formalizing sniping and attempted to standardize the equipment in use. Guidelines for snipers were issued and sniping instruction began in May 1943. Thirty schools were established, including institutions in Döberitz, Döllersheim, Hammelburg, Hohenfels, Müsingen, Wandern, Seetaleralpe, Oksbøl, and Kienschlag, with a capacity of training 200 soldiers per month. Training included distance estimation, observation and reporting, map reading, instruction on the sniper rifle and the scope, camouflage and field craft, use of dummies, night shooting only guided by sound, moving targets working in pairs, spotting, and marksmanship out to 800 meters. Depending on the stage of the war and the location of the school, German sniping schools varied in duration. H. Jung’s training was ten days, W. Rohde’s two weeks, Sepp Allerberger’s twenty-seven days and Bruno Sutkus’ the longest at five months.
H. Jung was seventeen when he completed training and found himself in the 7th Panzer Division in Russia. Attached to a pioneer unit, he volunteered for sniper school to escape from the front; even if it were only momentarily. Upon completion Jung and his comrade were transferred from their platoon to the regiment. From there they were given assignments and if there were none, allowed to operate independently. Jung didn’t have to wait long before being called up to where a soldier was being killed everyday by a Russian sniper. They played a cat and mouse game for two days and Jung was taxed by it:
Views of Mauser 98K with ZF-41 scope. (Michael Tahirak)
The following day was almost my last day on Earth. It began just like the day before, teasing and spotting for shots from the Russians. The hours were passing very slowly and there is no way for me to describe the tension that kept every nerve in my body as tight as wire. I was looking with my field glasses every chance I got. That meant peeking over the edge of the trench and then dropping back before the Russian could send a bullet after me. There was one spot I hadn’t paid a great deal of attention to, a big broad-leaf tree. I took one more look at that tree and when I did, a bullet sapped in the air as it went within an inch of my ear, I felt the wind.
A close miss will usually scare the hell out of you. There were other times when I was missed by just a little bit and it would almost unnerve me. That’s not what happened this time although I should have been very scared. This time I was simply mad, I felt almost raging but not to the point where I lost control. That close miss was one of the closest misses I can recall but there was more to it, now I knew where he was, I had seen him move.
The Russian sharpshooter was in that tree. Then I began to play a real guessing game with myself. The Russian had seen me too, that was obvious, and if I was going to try to shoot him I should move to a new position in the trench. I thought, “Wouldn’t the Russian expect me to move, wouldn’t he be looking for me somewhere else?” I decided, very quickly to shoot from where I was, without re-positioning myself. I would get only one chance and this was it.
Hans had watched all this time and when I started to get up so I could train my rifle over the trench he began to yell at me. He told me to get down, the Russian had me spotted. I heard those words but I was already in motion. I found the Russian in my scope. He saw a movement later but he had been looking for me at another point along the trench. I could watch him move, he was swinging his rifle around to aim at me. This picture in my mind is vivid and it seems like slow motion. The Russian was leaning his eye to his scope when I fired. Immediately after my shot, I fell back to the floor of that trench.
Hans was watching the Russian’s position when I fired. He couldn’t actually see the shooter from where he was but he did see the man fall. I had hit him. That was not my longest shot but it was the most difficult, about 500 meters.
Josef “Sepp” Allerberger, 3rd Gebirgsjäger Division, didn’t like being a machine gunner. Machine guns always attracted the attention of enemy machine guns, mortars, and snipers. Injured by a splinter, Allerberger was granted two weeks’ medical convalescence and sent to the regimental reserve where, under the supervision of the regimental armorer, he applied his carpentry skills to repairing stocks. While rummaging through some captured Russian weapons, he found a Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle. With permission, he borrowed it and after practice, was able to consistently hit matchboxes at 100 yards. The armorer was impressed and when Allerberger was released to full duty, gave Allerberger the rifle with the instruction, “Show Ivan what you can do!”
Welcomed back, his company commander had no objection to Allerberger serving as a sharpshooter, as he felt there were not enough of them to counter the Russian snipers. Familiarizing himself with the situation, Allerberger began inspecting the trenches and talking with the soldiers when he was pulled aside by the machine-gun platoon commander who complained about a hidden Russian sniper who shot everything in front of him.
Borrowing a pair of binoculars, Allerberger studied the terrain through a gap between the logs of the trench’s parapet. Rolling up a blanket and putting a cap on it, he slowly raised it over the parapet. The Russian fired and Allerberger saw the faint smoke rise as well as a glint off the scope. Setting aside the blanket roll, he placed his gun between the logs to aim. He was unable to use his scope since the log obstructed the view, but as the Russian was only 90 yards away, it was an easy shot with iron sights. The eyes of the company were riveted on Allerberger. He fired and another soldier joyously yelled out that he had got him. Allerberger had his first confirmed kill.
During a retreat, Allerberger’s regiment was attempting to withdraw when its reserve battalion suddenly came under sniper fire. Eleven jägers had already fallen and when two company commanders rose to get a better look, they were killed by headshots. Allerberger recalled:
The number of hits led to only one conclusion: the battalion was facing a sniper company! We had heard rumors of such a thing, but so far had only ever come up against marksmen operating singly. Lacking artillery or mortars the battalion was helpless. Fire was coming from the impenetrable vegetation of a small forest of conifers. Bursts of MG-fire had no apparent effect and the devastating response it evoked was usually fatal for the machine gunner who tried it.
Pleas for artillery went unanswered and Allerberger was sent instead. After being briefed, Allerberger made five dummies which he distributed. He then pulled out his half umbrella frame and placed grass around it to mat
ch the terrain. The soldiers with the dummies were shown hand signals to raise the dummies on cue. Using this deception, Allerberger crawled out to where he could study the trees 300 yards away. He returned and conferred with the sergeant who was now commanding the two companies. They deployed their machine guns with a good field of fire and some protection:
To the side some distance away a rifleman waited to operate a lure. While I observed the woodland through binoculars, on my instructions he raised it from cover slowly. If it attracted a shot, I would identify the location from where it had originated. The MG would then fire a burst in the general direction of the trees, masking my aimed round. It was important to conceal from the Soviets the fact that they had a sniper working against them.
The tactical battle began. The lure rose and received three rounds as if to order. I saw the movement in the trees, took aim, waited for the machine gun to fire, then pulled the trigger. One by one the Russian snipers dropped from the trees, dead. After a quick change of position, a new round of the duel began. Within an hour I had reckoned on eighteen kills but still the lures drew fire. It was at about five in the afternoon, and an hour since the last shot had been loosed off from the woods, that the sergeant decided on storming the woods under the cover of the two mgs and myself. They reached the woods unopposed, looked with astonishment at the corpses and gesticulated wildly for us to join them. Cautiously, unhappy with the deceptive lull, we crossed the open land to the trees. … It was the first time we had come up against female front-line warriors. As we stood over their dead bodies, some were shattered, bloody masks of flesh and bone instead of faces and features, we all felt a sense of revulsion and shame even though we knew that there had been no alternative.
Britain
When the British Expeditionary Force sailed for France in September 1939, it carried WWI-vintage scope-equipped P-14 No. 3(T) rifles drawn from storage. Most were lost during the Battle of France and evacuation of Dunkirk. A new rifle was needed and the SMLE Mk IV would have to do. As no optics were developed for sniping, the 3× No 32 scope developed for the BREN gun was adopted. Rifles capable of 2-inch Minute of Angle (MOA) at 100 yards were selected as a basis for the Enfield No 4(T). Modification began by attaching two pads that served as bases to the receiver. These were both pinned and screwed into the receiver. Each pad accepted a knob that screwed the scope mount to the bases. The actions were bedded to ensure a good fit and a wood cheekpiece added that raised the comb for a better cheek weld.