Inside the Crosshairs Read online

  Yet, in the first months of World War II, Marine commanders selected marksmen from their units and procured what weapons and scopes they could to arm their snipers. The weapon of choice of these Marine marksmen was the same as that recommended in the study by Van Orden and Lloyd—the .30-caliber Winchester Model 70 with an 8-power telescope manufactured by the John Unertl Optical Company.

  The Winchester Repeating Arms Company shipped 373 Model 70s to the Marine Corps on May 29, 1942, and filled smaller orders over the next months. Many of the rifles found their way to the Pacific, but the Marine Corps did not officially adopt the M70 as its sniper weapon, citing the logistical difficulties in supplying and maintaining an additional rifle type.

  As a result, when the Marine Corps opened its formal sniper schools (at New River, near Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, in December 1942; and at Green’s Farm, north of San Diego, California, in January 1943) the M1C and M1D Garands and the ’03 Springfield became the official Marine sniper weapons. Nevertheless, many Winchester Model 70s showed up at training camps and in actual field use during the Pacific campaign.

  Both New River and Green’s Farm conducted training under the name of Scout and Sniper School. The first half of the five-week training period focused on fieldcraft, including map reading, movement techniques, and the use of cover and concealment; the second half was dedicated to actual shooting.

  Typical of the training staff was First Lieutenant Claude N. Harris, commanding officer of the Green’s Farm site. Harris, fifteen years in the corps and a combat veteran of the Pacific Theater and brief campaigns in Haiti and Nicaragua, had won the national rifle championship in 1935. He passionately believed in the importance of marksmanship and reminded his classes about the influence of snipers at Stalingrad: “Snipers can save a country, sometimes. Look what they’ve done for Russia.”

  Captain Walter R. Walsh, a former FBI agent and winner of international shooting competitions, conducted similar training at New River. Although Walsh and Harris had great latitude in running their schools, their sniper-training courses were remarkably similar. Both took volunteers who had qualified as expert riflemen, coming either from pistol and rifle marksmanship teams or straight from boot camp.

  Upon completion of their training, scout snipers were assigned in three-man teams to Marine infantry companies, where commanders retained discretion in their use. Most deployed scout snipers to counter enemy snipers and to neutralize crew-served weapons. Although assigned in threes, the scout snipers worked in pairs, holding the third member in reserve to replace a casualty or to rotate on missions to ensure an alert shooter. Usually the primary shooter carried the ’03 Springfield while his spotter sported a C- or D-Model M1. Battle conditions and personnel shortages, of course, often altered that arrangement.

  Studies and reports in army and Marine World War II files more accurately reflect the tests on various scopes, rifles, and associated equipment than they do the actual field performance of the pieces. Some investigators considered the Winchester Model 70 and the Unertl 8 and 10 power scopes too fragile for sustained combat use. Other reports found faults in the accuracy and durability of the ‘03 Springfield and the C- and D-Model M1s. The services and the shooters never came to any consensus, but their debate did lead to improvements and advances that influenced future sniper operations.

  One innovation that would produce long-term benefits to precision marksmanship was the introduction late in the war of an electronic device known as the “Sniperscope.” Capable of being mounted on either M1 model, the scope used infrared rays, a converter, and a 4-power telescope to permit the acquisition of targets during darkness. Although the scopes cost $1,200 each, required an auxiliary six-volt storage battery powerpack, and produced a fuzzy, reddish-green image, they gave snipers the capability to fire at night without the benefit of artificial light from flares or spotlights.

  Marine and army snipers performed well during World War II, but their efforts made little lasting impression on their services’ senior commanders. Improved individual weapons, machine guns, artillery, close air support, and naval gunfire—combined with an advanced logistic system for resupply—convinced most military leaders that massed, concentrated firepower could replace the marksmanship skills of individual riflemen.

  An anonymous article in the January–February 1946 issue of Army Ordnance aptly summarized how volume rather than accuracy had won World War II. The article, “Sniping—a Neglected Art,” stated, “The riflemen, automatic riflemen, and machine gunners which we sent forth to war from training camps in the United States were essentially machine operators who got results by shooting a greater tonnage of ammunition than the enemy.”

  By the time Germany surrendered in Europe and the atomic bombs had brought a quick end to the Japanese empire, few military leaders supported the continuation of snipers or sniper training. Snipers, never fully accepted by senior military commanders during the war itself, had few champions outside their own ranks to promote the skill as a peacetime specialty. A study conducted by the Headquarters, U.S. Army Ground Forces, Pacific Ocean Areas, verified this. The study, “Training and Use of Snipers” (Report Number 183 of January 5, 1945), noted that the 8th Army Headquarters found no use for sniper training and recommended that expert marksmen at company level be issued scoped rifles only under special circumstances. The report also included statements from I Corps Headquarters that said it had conducted no sniper training for more than a year and did not see the employment of special marksmen as necessary or practical.

  Report Number 183, summarizing the army’s use of snipers during World War II and the service’s philosophy on future employment of such marksmen, concluded, “Specific training of snipers is not at present being carried on by units assigned to this theater. The individual selection for sniper missions of expert riflemen within small units has been found sufficient and is the method currently employed.”

  Despite having established sniper schools during the war, the Marine Corps’s leadership also did not support the post-conflict retention of snipers. In a letter dated April 20, 1945, the quartermaster general of the Marine Corps referred to the commandant’s lack of enthusiasm for maintaining snipers and noted that current tables of allowances “do not include any reference to a sniper rifle.” The letter recommended disposal of excess sniper rifles, scopes, and associated equipment.[18] Three days later the Marine Corps Operations and Plans Section approved the disposal of excess ‘03 Springfield rifles and their scopes.

  Many soldiers and Marines disagreed with their superiors’ conclusions. The same 1946 Army Ordnance article that recounted the tonnage of ammunition fired by “machine operators” for victory in World War II concluded, “The cheapest and most effective way to kill the enemy is by the skillful use of snipers.”

  Yet no one in authority paid any attention. Snipers and the tools of their trade virtually disappeared from the Marine Corps and the army. The only military marksmanship training and competition shooting instruction came mostly from former snipers. Over the next five years, few efforts were made to improve existing sniper weapons or to invent new ones.

  Peace, however, did not last long. On June 25, 1950, Communist North Korea invaded South Korea, pulling the United States and its United Nations allies into the escalating conflict. The initial rapid advances and retreats resembled World War II combat; the following two years of static, trenchlike standoff resembled World War I fighting. Once again the need for specially trained and equipped marksmen surfaced.

  Both the army and the Marine Corps immediately updated manuals and training programs for sniper training and printed doctrine on how to use the marksmen. They had adequate quantities of weapons and scopes, albeit mostly the outdated World War I ’03 Springfields and the C- and D-Model M1s in storage. Yet there were no formal sniper-training schools.

  North Korea was not at all reluctant to use snipers, employing them from the outbreak of the war. With rifles and scopes from the Soviet Union, Communist Ch
ina, and even the United States, a small number of North Korean marksmen inflicted a large number of casualties. The United States responded with massed fire against the enemy snipers. However, many commanders were aware that snipers themselves were the best countersnipers, and just as they had in World War II, field commanders in Korea developed their own sniper training and employment techniques in the midst of battle. Many company commanders simply designated one or more of their best shots as snipers and procured whatever rifles and scopes were available through the supply system.

  A typical scenario of a field commander’s prerogative against enemy snipers was chronicled in an article, “Team Shots Can Kill,” in the December 1963 issue of the Marine Corps Gazette. According to the article, shortly after the new commander of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines assumed command on a shell-scarred Korean hillside in the summer of 1952, an enemy sniper bullet smashed into the binoculars with which he had been observing the battlefield. The battalion commander selected a gunnery sergeant who had fired on several marksmanship teams and gave him the task of recruiting and training snipers. The sergeant found men who had scored expert with their basic rifles and who had exhibited excellent field skills and patience since arrival in Korea. Just to the rear of the battalion lines, the gunnery sergeant established a firing range and soon had his future snipers training with ’03 Springfields and C- and D-Model M1s. After three weeks of training, the former riflemen returned to their units in two-man sniper teams. According to the article, the battalion commander reported, “In nothing flat there was no more sniping on our positions. Nothing moved out there but what we hit it.”

  Army commanders likewise designated their best marksmen as snipers and provided them with scoped rifles. Some units conducted limited training at makeshift ranges just behind the lines while others merely issued the sniper equipment to riflemen and pointed them toward the enemy.

  Few records about Korean War army snipers exist. Once again the best summary of their performance comes not from the official files but from periodicals of the period. An article[19] in the October 1951 Infantry School Quarterly, “A Warning,” notes the equipment and training manuals available for sniper instruction but concludes, “There is no army training program that allots time for this training nor any policy that makes it compulsory. The result is that we have produced few if any, qualified snipers.

  “Having no official record of the use of snipers in Korea,” the article continued, “we must seek the opinion of the men who have served there.” The authors then explain that in interviews with officers and enlisted veterans of Korea they found that 95 percent of those they questioned responded that the enemy used snipers against them and 74 percent felt that the North Korean marksmen were effective. Only 35 percent were aware of U.S. Army snipers in the conflict, but 88 percent thought that they would be useful if available. Those who did recall snipers in their units reported that each company usually had one sniper rifle and its operator had received no special training.

  Most field commanders in the Korean War recognized the need for snipers to limit enemy movement and to provide a countersniper capability. Weapons, scopes, and mounts, while not perfect for their mission, existed, as did basic literature on sniper training and employment. However, the U.S.military concluded the Korean conflict in regard to snipers much as it had entered the war—no official school existed in the army or the Marine Corps to train special marksmen. When the cease-fire finally went into effect along the DMZ separating North and South Korea on July 17, 1953, the status of snipers in the army and Marine Corps remained much as it had been at the close of World War II.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Battles of Peace: Snipers Between Wars

  WHEN the last echoes of gunfire sounded across the Korean DMZ, the army and Marine Corps placed their sniper weapons in storage and returned their few special marksmen to the ranks of regular infantrymen. Once again, snipers, so needed in time of war, had no place in the peacetime military, in part because of a lack of general acceptance of their role.

  American bombardiers released tons of bombs on enemy soldiers and innocent civilians alike from 20,000 feet. Artillerymen fired large-caliber guns with no warning at targets miles away. Anonymous killing at a distance was acceptable—unless it was by an individual marksman sighting his individual enemy through a telescopic sight and squeezing the trigger to fire a single deadly bullet.

  Some American leaders, especially those in protected rear areas who never heard a shot fired in anger or smelled the smoke and decay of the battlefield, professed an aversion to “bushwhacking” and compared sniping to murder. Peace resurfaced scruples and pangs of conscience that, by necessity, had been set aside in time of war. Once combat ceased, most American civilians and elected officials, as well as many of the military leaders they controlled, reverted to a prewar unwillingness to train young men to kill in such a personal manner.

  Even though authorization for snipers and sniper training quickly disappeared after the Korean cease-fire, many of the special marksmen and their instructors remained in uniform. Some did indeed revert to regular infantry positions, but many more ended up in unit and installation marksmanship schools and on competition shooting teams.

  Such assignments frequently provoked resentments and jealousies within the services. While respecting the skills of marksmen, many soldiers and Marines in regular line units believed that men in marksmanship units had easy assignments. They resented the fact that the shooters were exempted from such duties as guard, kitchen police, and other after-hours jobs. Many of the line troops viewed the shooting instructors as “prima donnas” who went to work late, left early, and fired a few rounds downrange in between. Many soldiers and Marines viewed the skilled marksmen as shooters of paper targets, not as one-shot killers.

  The reasonably good publicity for the services that came via victories at national and international shooting competitions only fueled bad feelings within the ranks. Most infantrymen thought the specially manufactured, precision competition rifles were a waste of money because they were not adaptable to the rigors of prolonged battlefield service.

  In addition to the personal objections and jealousies against the few Marines and soldiers who maintained the special skills of marksmen essential to snipers, the overall advances in weaponry and the beginning of the Cold War also discouraged any renewal of formal sniper training. Since the United States and the Soviet Union each had an arsenal of atomic and nuclear weapons capable of mutual destruction, the armed forces trained for a new type of combat. U.S. military leaders pictured the next war as taking place between massive armored forces supported by tactical nuclear weapons on the vast European plain. Riflemen would ride to war in armored personnel carriers and unload only to mop up objectives before remounting their track vehicles and continuing the attack.

  Advances in individual weapons mirrored that focus. In 1957, the 7.62-mm M14 rifle with its twenty-round magazine replaced the M1 as the basic infantry weapon of the U.S. armed forces. Most M14s came fitted with a selector switch locked in the semiautomatic mode (one shot fired for each pull of the trigger), but each rifle contained all the components to make it fully automatic by replacing the lock with a fire selector switch and spring. Telling, however, of the prevailing ideas about infantrymen on future battlefields was the fact that the M14 had barely been delivered to units before designs for a lighter, smaller, full-automatic rifle were on the boards. The USSR also began to convert from longer-barreled, more accurate rifles to shorter weapons with increased firepower. Less than fifteen years after the Korean War, the Soviets adopted the 7.62-mm AK-47 as its basic infantry weapon. Different models and copies of the AK-47 soon became the standard weapon of Communist forces and revolutionaries around the world.

  In the mid-1960s the United States and many of its allies adopted the M16 as their basic rifle. Each rifle came with a simple selector switch that changed it from semi- to full-automatic and back again. Almost two pounds lighter and five inches short
er than the M14, the M16 used 5.56-mm cartridges, significantly lighter than the former standard 7.62-mm ammo.

  With the advent of the M16, every soldier and Marine could easily carry twice the ammunition and deliver a tremendous amount of automatic, if not particularly accurate, firepower. The smaller M16 also adapted well to use by soldiers in the close confines of mechanized vehicles. After modifications to decrease jamming, the M16 proved as adequate as its design promised. Unfortunately, its full-automatic capability reinforced the decreasing emphasis on individual marksmanship. Mass fire, rather than accurate fire, dominated the rules of individual shooting.

  While the military services focused on increasing firepower and adapting tactics for a Cold War gone hot, sniper potential received little attention. During the decade that followed the Korean War, the army and Marines did conduct a few official marksmanship studies, and various unofficial periodicals published articles touting the need for snipers and modern sniper weapons.

  The most detailed document about the future of snipers in the Marine Corps appeared before the cease-fire in Korea even went into effect. On February 9, 1951, the commandant of the Marine Corps directed that a study be conducted on available sniper weapons and equipment to determine what sniper materials should be procured for the future.

  On August 31, 1951, the Experimental Branch of the Marine Corps Equipment Board at Quantico, Virginia, responded with a lengthy paper, “Project No. 757: Sniper Rifles, Telescopes, and Mounts, Study Of,” which concluded—following a painful amount of history, data presentation, and interview accounts—that since the corps trained no snipers, it required no sniper equipment.[20] The report’s summary stated, “It is believed that unless personnel are extensively training in the use or employment of sniper material, these items may be placed in the luxury item, or ‘be nice to have’ category.”