{"id":11278,"date":"2012-06-02T00:58:05","date_gmt":"2012-06-02T07:58:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=11278"},"modified":"2012-12-02T21:08:43","modified_gmt":"2012-12-03T05:08:43","slug":"during-wwii-lyudmila-pavlichenko-sniped-a-confirmed-309-axis-soldiers-including-36-german-snipers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2012\/06\/during-wwii-lyudmila-pavlichenko-sniped-a-confirmed-309-axis-soldiers-including-36-german-snipers\/","title":{"rendered":"During WWII, Lyudmila Pavlichenko Sniped a Confirmed 309 Axis Soldiers, Including 36 German Snipers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Today I found out<\/a> Lyudmila Pavlichenko sniped a confirmed 309 Axis soldiers, including 36 German snipers, during WWII.<\/p>\n

While most of the world shied away from putting women on the front line, the Soviet Union did not, including recruiting about 2000 women as snipers during WWII, one of which turned out to be one of the most successful snipers in history, Lyudmila Pavlichenko.\u00a0 She still holds the record for the highest confirmed kill total of any female sniper in history and is not that far off\u00a0Simo H\u00e4yh\u00e4’s all-time mark of 542 confirmed kills (more on “White Death” Simo H\u00e4yh\u00e4, here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

In June of 1941, 24 year old Ukrainian Lyudmila Pavlichenko was attending Kiev University, studying history, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union.\u00a0 When this happened, she went down to the local recruiting office to sign up for the infantry.\u00a0 The recruiter she spoke with suggested she was better suited for a role as a nurse or in a clerical position.\u00a0 Not to be dissuaded, she pulled out her Voroshilov Sharpshooter badge and a marksman certificate, both of which she’d earned while a teenager as a member of the OSOAVIAKhIM, which was a society that trained non-military people as young as 14 years old in military tactics and other such things in case they would someday be called into service to “defend the Motherland”.<\/p>\n

After seeing this, the recruiter allowed her to sign up for combat duty and she was subsequently given the rank of private and assigned to a subsection of the 25th Chapayev Rifle Division, the 54th “Stephan Razin” Rifles Regiment, in the Red Army.\u00a0 With her regiment, thanks to her prodigious skill as a marksman, she was immediately assigned to the 2nd company sniper platoon.<\/p>\n

Over the course of the next year, she recorded 309 confirmed kills, including 187 in her first 75 days on the job during the fierce fighting at Odessa, before the Soviets were forced to withdraw.\u00a0 Among her total confirmed kills, she knocked off 100 officers and 36 German snipers, including supposedly one who himself was one of the more decorated snipers in history, recording over 500 confirmed kills according to a log found on his person. (I was not able to ascertain the name of that German sniper though and only a few reputable sources that cite him, so take that latter fact with a grain of salt.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>It should also be noted that\u00a0 Pavlichenko’s actual total number of kills was probably significantly more than 309 because in order for a kill to count towards her total, an independent party had to witness it.\u00a0 Her real total is thought to be closer to around 500.<\/p>\n

Sniping being an extremely hazardous job, often with the sniper positioned in no-man’s land between the lines of friendly troops and the enemy (Pavlichenko often camped around 600-1000 ft. in front of her unit), Pavlichenko didn’t always come away unscathed.\u00a0 In June of 1942 during the siege of Sevastopol, she was seriously injured for the fourth time, this time by a mortar shell that had exploded near where she was hiding. Because at this point she’d become something of a celebrity and a public symbol, officials within the Red Army were unwilling to risk her being killed, so they put her on a submarine and got her out of Sevastopol and assigned her a new job as a sniping instructor and a public spokesman, with the rank of Major.<\/p>\n

This probably saved her life as most of the rest of her division were killed within a month at Sevastopol, including her husband. (Again, I’ll just interject for a minute to point out that despite my sincerest efforts in researching this one, I couldn’t find anything about her husband, not even his name, and only a few reputable sources mention him dying at Sevastopol, so… you know, grain of salt).\u00a0 The few members of her division that survived Sevastopol were re-assigned in July of 1942 to other Red Army units and the 25th Rifle Division was officially disbanded.<\/p>\n

While functioning as a public spokesman, Pavlichenko traveled to the United States and Canada, becoming the first citizen of the Soviet Union to be received at the White House by a U.S. President, in this case Franklin Roosevelt.\u00a0 She was not impressed by the U.S. media who were more concerned with her outfit than the war and her experiences in it.<\/p>\n

I am amazed at the kind of questions put to me by the women press correspondents in Washington. Don\u2019t they know there is a war? They asked me silly questions such as do I use powder and rouge and nail polish and do I curl my hair? One reporter even criticized the length of the skirt of my uniform, saying that in America women wear shorter skirts and besides my uniform made me look fat\u2026This made me angry. I wear my uniform with honor. It has the Order of Lenin on it. It has been covered with blood in battle. It is plain to see that with American women what is important is whether they wear silk underwear under their uniforms. What the uniform stands for, they have yet to learn.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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