Extract: Out of Nowhere
Germany and the war in Russia. 1941-1945
Driven back into Germany from both the east and the west, the German armed forces had eventually been forced to surrender in May 1945. In the Far East, the war against the Japanese lingered on, with the Allies facing the pressing problem of how to invade the Japanese mainland without incurring wholly unacceptable losses. It was fully appreciated that the Japanese would, quite literally, fight to the death rather than surrender their
homeland and estimates of probable Allied casualties simply to gain a foothold on Japanese soil were around one million men. The problem was effectively solved by the dropping of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Japanese quickly sued for peace. The greatest conflict in human history ended on 14 August 1945. For the snipers of the combatant countries this was none too soon, for most were war–weary, but they found themselves suddenly both unemployed and unemployable, their highly evolved skills now of no use to occupation armies geared to helping the shattered economies and peoples of Europe and Asia.
Some few British snipers in occupied Germany found new, if somewhat unofficial, employment as their battalion gamekeepers. This was strictly against orders, for the Army believed any form of hunting would antagonise the local populace, so soldiers were not permitted to take rifles into the open country. Nevertheless, Arthur Hare regularly used his Enfield to pot game for the company’s cooks and on his return from foraging one day, was charged by his regimental sergeant major for ‘improper use’ of his rifle. To the fury of the RSM he insisted on seeing the colonel, whose affection for his sniper section was well known. Hare explained he had just been reprimanded for shooting rabbits:
‘The colonel’s face began to harden … he turned to the R.S.M.
“Did you prefer a charge against this man?”
“Sah” the man roared.
“Then you ought to be bloody well ashamed of yourself. If this man can’t be trusted with a gun, I don’t know who can.”
The sentence was cancelled and the documents torn up.’
Understandably, both the civilian population and the soldiers were sick of war, and only too pleased to hand their rifles in to stores and return to civilian life. Commonwealth soldiers, Americans, Russians and others simply handed over their rifles and were quietly shipped home, their fighting finished, although for many the war did not end there. While some slipped seamlessly back into civilian life, others suffered from what is now termed post–traumatic stress, suffering illness, nightmares and paranoid behaviour. One told the author that he was fine for 30 years, then broke down totally one Christmas after witnessing two small boys playing soldiers in his street. Some stayed in the Army but few were able to use their hard–earned skills. Based as a weapons instructor with the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) Harry Furness was a rare exception and he entered for, and won for his regiment, the ‘All Comers Snipers Competition’ in August 1946. This was to the huge delight of his battalion, most of whom had bet heavily (and illegally) on his winning. Many of the thousands of returned rifles were quickly offered as surplus. In England in 1947 a complete Enfield No. 4 (T) rifle with its chest and all accessories could be had for £20 ($36) but there were few takers.
Korea, the forgotten war
If the rifles were no longer needed, the same can also be said of the skills of the snipers. Post–war, sniping had once again become a taboo subject, as a wave of anti–war feeling swept across Europe, and few snipers of any country were still gainfully employed in their respective armed forces. It was not surprising, therefore, that when a little–known country called North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950, the multinational force assembled under the aegis of the United Nations contained soldiers from all over the world, including the United States, Britain, Australia and Canada, armed with the weapons they had carried through the Second World War, but lacking almost any snipers. Never more
accurately could the saying ‘those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’ be applied to the abandoned skills of sniping. As the war turned into the inevitable stalemate of trenches and bitter winter weather, the UN troops found themselves under disturbingly accurate aimed fire from the communist lines. The commanding officer of the 1st US Marines had the binoculars shot from his hand as he
surveyed the enemy trenches. When he enquired where the battalion snipers were he was informed that there were none and immediately called for his ‘gunnies’, (senior gunnery sergeants) to select and train a sniping squad as soon as it could possibly be organised.
Men of the Royal Australian Regiment took frequent casualties from shots fired from the high ground in front of them known as ‘614’, which was some 600 yards (553 metres) away. Exactly who was shooting at them was a matter of some conjecture, but the rumour abounded that several Soviet snipers were at work. This was not as improbable as it sounds, for Russian ‘advisers’ were assisting the Chinese–communist forces (Chicom) and most of the weapons captured by the UN were of Soviet manufacture, including a small number of Mosin–Nagant rifles with PU scopes. Whilst there is no proof that imported Russian marksmen were at work, there is ample evidence of Chinese soldiers being trained for sniping and sharpshooting duties, some of whom were certainly very good. Their sniping appeared to be mostly done with iron sights, and while scoped rifles existed they appear to have been used in very small numbers. Zhang Taofang was a sniper situated near Hill 614 and publicity photographs of him tell of his bag of 214 hits in 32 days. As with many such claims, high figures must be treated with extreme caution, but there is no doubt that soldiers such as Zhang were certainly competent enough to seriously worry the Allied forces in front of them.
The response of the Americans and the Commonwealth line officers was to form scratch sniping squads using men who had previous sniping experience or were marksmen. Typically, the Marines were the first US forces to be organised and their main requirement was the most basic of all, to procure scoped rifles capable of accurate shooting. Many old Springfield 1903–A4s equipped with a mix of scopes were hurriedly sent to Korea and some precious 1903–A1s with Unertl scopes were taken out of retirement despite the Springfield no longer being in service, and the practicality of their outdated scopes under close scrutiny after the experience of the Second World War, but anything was better than nothing. The existing combinations were already old technology, with scopes that were too prone to ingress of moisture, adjustment drums that were small and fiddly, and scope positioning that provided poor eye relief when the shooter was wearing a steel helmet. There were certainly stocks of new Garand M1–C sniping rifles held in store, for the bulk of them had been produced too late for issue during the Second World War, and their production had continued throughout the last months of the war. As Ordnance Sergeant Roy Dunlap said, ‘they were beautiful outfits and I would have given anything to have one during the war, but they arrived in the Philippines just before the Japanese surrendered. The rifles were selected, the best finished and tightest M1s I ever saw.’ Oddly, in order to procure the numbers of service rifles required for the infantry, a number of M1–C rifles were taken from stores, had their scopes removed and mounting holes plugged, before being reissued as ordinary service rifles. Between 1,500 and 4,000 such rifles were modified and they can be recognised by the marking ‘SA-52’ on the receiver.
In fact, the Marine Corps didn’t even finish its evaluation of the M1–C until August 1945 and although approved for Army issue, the M1–C was not accepted by the Marines until February 1951. Their rifles had similar Griffin and Howe quick release mounts as on the Army M1–C, but the mounts were slightly longer, more heavily constructed and designed for the 4x Stith–Kollmorgen scope which was not itself actually adopted until early 1954. Meanwhile a new scope, the M84, had been authorised for issue with the M1–C. It was a 2.2x straight tube design with vertical post and horizontal cross–hair graticule and lenses sealed inside rubber gaskets that protected them from moisture. Manufactured by Libby–Owens–Ford, the M84 was distinctive, with its forward placed adjuster drums covered by rectangular rubber weather covers, but it was, like the M81 and M82, still woefully under–powered. At the outbreak of the Korean conflict, the US Army Infantry Board were still engaged in the testing of more commercial scopes to find, in its words ‘a more suitable sniper rifle scope’. The improved Garand M1–D rifle also began to appear; it was cheaper and faster to mass–produce than the C, and it utilised mostly standard parts but with the addition of a special heavyweight barrel. It also had an improved scope base using a tapped hole on the left of the receiver, and a mount with a large threaded thumbscrew. This could be retrofitted to earlier models and from December 1951 the Springfield Armory was instructed to convert some 14,325 standard M1 rifles to M1–D specification as well as taking a further 3,087 for conversion to M1–C specification. This order was against all previous procedure and these rather bewildering conversions of sniping rifles to ordinary specification, and vice versa, gives some idea of the haze of confusion that surrounded the supply and issue of these weapons.
There were also a number of Winchester M70 target rifles, with both standard and heavyweight barrels and commercial Unertl and Lyman scopes with their useful 8x magnification. The ability to extend their effective range was an important consideration for the US snipers, for the mountains and open terrain of the front along the 38th Parallel gave ample opportunity for some very long–range sniping. One exponent of this form of shooting, using a specially converted target rifle, was Ordnance Captain William S. Brophy, himself a fine target shot. He would visit field units and demonstrate the effectiveness of using his own Model 70, with its 28 inch Bull barrel and 10x, 2 inch objective lens Unertl scope, by inflicting casualties on Chinese troops at ranges in excess of 1,000 yards. Despite this, he failed to persuade the Ordnance Board that a purpose built bolt–action sniping rifle was a necessary requirement. In fact the Marines reiterated their reluctance to move away from a modified service rifle in a report published in 1951, in which they had said the same as they did in the Second World War, namely that:
‘there is no Marine Corps requirement for a special rifle for use by snipers … it is undesirable to inject a new rifle into the system, and if another rifle [were adopted] it is necessary to inject non–standard ammunition into the supply system … in order to exploit fully any gain in accuracy. The US Rifle Caliber .30 M1–C is sufficiently accurate for use by snipers in the Marine Corps.’
However, Brophy had sown the seeds of a change in military thinking that would have important repercussions for sniping that reverberate to this day.
The first long–range rifles
Not only did the men shoot with their .30 calibre rifles, but a number of .50 calibre Browning heavy machine–guns on ground tripods were set up, and mounted with Unertl or Lyman Targetspot scopes of 8,10, or 20 power. These guns are particularly significant for they were the first large calibre service weapons specifically modified for long–range shooting. Some years earlier, Major F. Conway, supporting the Ordnance Board at Aberdeen Proving Ground, had modified a German PzB39 anti–tank rifle in late 1946 by fitting a Browning barrel to it and a telescopic sight from a German PaK anti–tank gun. It weighed 46 pounds and Conway commented that ‘recoil was never a problem, but with that muzzle brake, ear protection was highly recommended’. During the Second World War, Russian troops had used 14.5 mm PTRD and PTRS anti–tank rifles as impromptu sniping rifles to deal with lightly armoured vehicles, emplacements, well dug–in German snipers and for occasional long–range shooting. The Americans had long been interested in their efficiency, and a few Soviet anti–tank rifles had found their way to Korea where unit armourers had mounted a number of different scopes to them. How effective they were is sadly unrecorded, but the fact that the Marines were prepared to field some Brownings gives a clue as to their potential usefulness. Major N. W. Hicks wrote of the training of the 1st Marines’ snipers:
‘each student trained not only with the .30 calibre M1 rifle (or the ’03 depending on his preference) but with the .50 cal. Machine–gun, fired single shot. Scopes were mounted … and they proved to be effective for ranges up to and beyond 1,200 yards. At the time the snipers finished their special training … enemy snipers seemed to be in control. The whole area of the 1st Marines was a hot spot of sniping. Then, the Marine sniper teams were sent out to the various outposts. All hands turned to helping the rifle experts in spotting the enemy snipers. The change in the situation was fantastic.
“In nothing flat there was no more sniping on our positions”, recalled the Battalion’s Colonel, “and nothing moved out there but we hit it.”’
Experience with the PzB led to a dozen British and Canadian
manufactured .55 inch Boys anti–tank rifles being converted to shoot .50 Browning ammunition. This work was undertaken in Korea by the military adviser to the Nationalist Chinese Ordnance Corps, R. T. Walker, who had been a gunsmith in civilian life:
‘After severe proof firing with loads made by pulling .50 bullets and packing the cases with powder, we concentrated on smoothing out the action somewhat. Finding it necessary to load rounds singly, we installed a block of steel in the magazine well, which served to strengthen the action and function as a loading block.’
He made up external mounts to enable two–inch diameter, 20x spotting scopes for tank use to be fitted, and after hand loading .50 cal cartridges on site the rifle was tested:
‘Although the Boys had a bipod in front and monopod on the rear with a small built–in recoil system, it really rattled you to fire it. Three to five shots was about all a man could stand at one time even from a prone position.’
The Nationalist Chinese were impressed enough to put the Boys to use and they frequently used them to shoot at, and hit, communist troops bathing out of rifle range at ranges in excess of 1,100 yards. Although these experiments were along similar lines to the German use of scoped T–Gewehr rifles in 1918, at this period there was not any official interest being shown in the use of such novelty toys by the Military Ordnance Department. However, the pioneering work undertaken in Korea by men such as Conway and Walker was to be looked at much more closely before too long.
Although often quoted, the experiences of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines were typical of the situation that the Allied forces found themselves in. After their Colonel’s near miss when his binoculars were shot from his hands by a Chinese sniper, he instructed that six two man sniping teams be allocated per company and a training facility be built. A 600 yard range was constructed and a three week course devised that basically copied the training schedule used in the previous war, under the tutelage of experienced gunnies. Targets were man sized wooden boards salvaged from packing cases and painted white or 155 mm shell cases packed with earth and placed prominently at 100 yard intervals.
This impromptu training paid off and within a month the first snipers were working along the front in conjunction with rifle squads. Before long it was possible for the marines to walk unmolested along their front lines in view of the enemy. The Chicom soldiers became very wary of exposing any part of themselves to the Americans, and some US snipers became frustrated at the lack of target opportunities. The front lines became a trench world reminiscent of the Great War, to all intents devoid of human life, but the snipers were patient. Army Corporal Chet Hamilton had watched the enemy lines from his bunker for days without the slightest opportunity to shoot&58
‘The Chinese had been fortifying their positions for almost two years. Their trenches were a maze that presented few targets. One night I was looking through my rifle scope across the valley to the chink positions on the opposite hill, when something flashed in the wash of the Airforce searchlights. One of the Reds was doing a little home improvement,
digging in his trench and throwing the dirt up … he patted down each shovelful twice before going back for more. I couldn’t resist it. The next time the shovel came up and started to pat, I put a bullet through it. I heard the bullet strike the metal. The shovel vibrated and hummed in the Chicom’s hands, it must have shook his teeth loose. He didn’t do any more digging that night.’
The Commonwealth forces
British, Australian and Canadian forces had small numbers of snipers working with their rifle companies, and they were mostly armed with the same Enfield rifles as in 1945. Of the Commonwealth armies, it was the Canadians who had most usefully spent the brief post–war years examining their sniping rifles, for they had never been entirely convinced that the performance of the Enfield was all that it could
be, and despite the modifications Canada had made to the No. 32 scope and mounts, the Army was dissatisfied with it as a sniping weapon. Nevertheless, the Canadians were still using their modified ‘Rifle C No. 4 (T)’ with its No .67 scope, as well as some Enfield No. 4 (T)s.
The Australians had arrived expecting the conflict to become a sniper’s war, and all infantry companies had snipers allocated to them, equipped with their Lithgow manufactured SMLE No. 1 Mk. III* sniping rifles. For some of these men who had fought in the claustrophobic jungles of Borneo and New Guinea, where shooting distances were normally under 100 yards (92 metres), the terrain in Korea appeared almost perfect for sniping, with huge tracts of open land. This enabled Allied snipers to create hides from which they could dominate the surrounding country. Private Ian Robertson, 3rd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment was occupying a high point opposite an enemy–held ridge, which he estimated to be 600 yards (553 metres) away. Estimating ranges at higher altitudes and across valleys is always difficult and, trying to ascertain the point of impact of his bullets, he found that he had to set his scope to maximum elevation, 1,000 yards. Firing into a steady, light headwind, he discovered he could place his shots quite accurately and began to take an interest in the steady flow of Chicom soldiers moving up and down a steep path to the ridge, so he began shooting:
‘When I saw these blokes suddenly drop or fling themselves away or something like that I thought that most of the time it was a near miss — that they were flinging themselves out of the way to give the impression I had hit them … I was able to do it time after time, every time I fired, the figure would disappear. I nutted [worked] it out that when they passed a particular spot, if I fired then, they would run into the bullet. They had to come down at the same speed because of the rough terrain. I tried an experimental shot low down and saw blast of the bullet above the bloke … then I got the measure of them coming up the hill as well. I kept on doing this between other duties … all this went on for a week. They were mortaring a tangle of rocks not far from where I was … I could see through the scope that there were a number of important figures in control of all this, so I cheerfully waited and put another shot in amongst this group, and they’d all disappear. When we finally took the hill I thought “I’ve got to have a look at this thing”. It was only a [rifle] pit that would hold a few fellows but there was a steep drop in front of it. There were about 30 bodies down there in front of the pit. I went a bit like jelly for a minute and thought “oh shit, I’m in a grisly business here”.’
British units also found it necessary to form scratch sniping squads and, equipped with their venerable Enfield No. 4 (T) rifles they did sterling work. The Enfield had proved to be a robust and accurate rifle with few faults but there had been problems with the scope, so work on improving the sight continued post-1945. The Mk. I scope suffered from being able only to be corrected to within 2 minutes of angle (MOA), which equated to 2 inches at 100 yards, and this was a problem for fine adjustment at longer ranges. It required a special tool and three pairs of hands to reset the range drums when the rifle was re–zeroed and, when adjusted, either drum might well slip back to its lower setting. Snipers learned to over–correct by one click then drop the back one click to ensure it remained on the correct setting. By late 1943 to early 1944 testing proved that there were three major problems with the No 32:
‘1. Alterations in optical focus.
2. Chipping or cracking of the eye lenses.
3. Failure of the mechanism for adjustment of range and deflection.’
As a result, the method of assembly was modified. The eye lenses, which mounted directly into the tube body, were replaced by a screw–in assembly and the Mk. II scope was further redesigned so it was adjustable in 1 MoA increments. In October 1944 an improved Mk. III scope was introduced, remaining in service until the 1960s. Probably of greater importance was the recently adopted practice of using coated lenses, a process known as blooming. It was possibly pioneered within the German camera industry, although both the Russians and the Swiss have subsequently claimed the invention as their own. Whatever the truth of the matter, blooming was certainly being used by late 1944. Coating the lenses with magnesium fluoride to a thickness of one wave–length of light ( 5 millionths of an inch) gives it a distinctive blue–purple colour, which is invisible when viewed through the lenses. This cuts down the amount of flare (reflected light) from around 5% to 1%, which does not sound very impressive until translated into practical terms, for it increases the light gathering properties of a scope by about 15% over an untreated lens.
The harsh winters caused operational problems though. One Commando sniper commented that, while their rifles were adequate for the campaign, the scopes still gave trouble, with adjuster drums freezing up, and clothing to cope with the bitter winter was not adequate. One major problem, as the Germans had found in Russia, was the need to wear heavy clothes to protect against frostbite, but the small triggerguard on the Enfield made it impossible to use a gloved finger. One solution adopted was to wear mitts with a small flap cut into the area of the forefinger, allowing it to be used on the trigger with the minimum of exposure. It could truthfully be said that by the end of the war the technology of sniping had not moved forward one inch from that of 1940. The eventual uneasy cessation of hostilities in Korea in 1953 brought an end to the need for serving snipers.
Small wars
If global conflicts appeared to be becoming a thing of the past, there were more localised wars than ever. Indeed, it has been calculated that there has not been a single day’s peace since 1945. Most of these conflicts were very localised indeed: political and inter–tribal wars in Africa, power struggles in South America and simmering discontent in the Middle East. As with the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, many of these small wars were used by the major political players, such as Russia, China and the United States to promote their own brand of politics or simply as a testing ground for new weaponry.
After Korea a few snipers stayed on in the various Allied armed forces to become career soldiers and tried, with little success, to ensure some vestiges of sniper training were continued. While America became obsessed with the Cold War and the spread of communism, Britain and the Commonwealth were feeling the wind of change blowing around the world as colonies began to demand the rights to self–government. India, Egypt, Cyprus, Aden, Rhodesia and others had become more politically aware and less dependent on the benevolent dictatorship of the Europeans. While this did not sit well with many British politicians, it was a hard fact that post–war Britain was in no state financially or militarily to support and rule the large portions of the globe that it had traditionally done. Additionally the new left–wing Labour government was more concerned with the immediate welfare of a worn–out nation. Nevertheless, Britain was still to become embroiled in a number of limited–war conflicts. As with the United States Marine Corps, the British Royal Marine Commandos managed to continue with the tradition they had started in the Second World War of training their men to a high standard of marksmanship and maintaining sniping as a skill. When wars broke out in hot spots around the ailing empire, it was often the Marines who were able to field the only snipers, and they achieved some notable successes.
Malcolm Fox, in receipt of a letter in 1953 requesting him to join Her Majesties Armed Forces as a conscript, opted to join the Royal Marines, and as an enthusiastic shot in his school army cadet force, volunteered for a sniping course at Browndown in Hampshire. Issued with that old workhorse, the Enfield No. 4 (T), he successfully completed his training before being sent to Cyprus with 40 Commando where he spent his days in a hot camouflaged hide observing the activities of the Greek–Cypriot community, who were supplying EOKA rebels living in the hills.
In the Middle East, where Britain still retained considerable political and trading influence, the conditions were far harsher, with blistering daytime temperatures and freezing nights. The Special Air Service (SAS), had men dotted around on hilltop look–out posts, called sangars, watching for enemy movement. An ex–SAS trooper recalled of this period:
‘it was absolute hell, as we couldn’t move in daytime and temperatures were over 100 degrees. Issue kit was not much cop [use], so we adopted whatever we could scrounge that was useful. I wore a commercial brown cotton shirt, a lightweight hooded parka, which was German I think, US combat trousers and a mix of British webbing and pouches with some American and German pouches and stuff. We carried three water bottles each, which wasn’t enough and we had to fill up at nights. I often used to wear an Arab style turban which was very practical and provided good camo for the head. When it was cold we wore the old para Denison smock over it all.’
The irregular sniper
Into this arena of what was becoming known as Limited Warfare, came a combatant whose skills were as old as warfare itself, the mercenary. The ever increasing number of specialists who had been trained in the Second World War or after — demolition, logistics, AFV crews, snipers — meant that highly skilled men were available to any government that had the money and the desire to employ them. The Spanish Civil War had witnessed the use of multi–national forces in this role, and after the Second World War, there were huge numbers of men with no ties (and in the case of many Germans and Russians, literally no homes or families to return to) for whom warfare was a way of life. Not for them was the dullness of peacetime routine, and they travelled the world as guns for hire. While their stories are fascinating, they are somewhat outside the scope of this book, but there was another breed of sniper who also began to appear in the late 1960s who served in a more — or less — official role, the irregular sniper.
Some of these men were recruited without even the benefit of any military training, or even a definable army to fight for. At the height of the war in Angola in 1973 one talented young American competitive long–range shooter, having finished graduate school, had embarked on a shoestring African trip before settling down to the normal routines of work, mortgage, marriage and all of the other dubious benefits that maturity brings. While enjoying the rare treat of a cold beer on a 100+°F day in the port of Dakar, Senegal, he was approached by two Americans who began a friendly conversation, as expats do in foreign lands. The small talk drifted over a number of topics and eventually ended up on shooting; the new graduate had been a small bore shooter at one university and latterly a large bore 1,000 yard competitor. ‘The wording was very delicate and deliberately ambiguous, but they asked if I might want free transport and well remunerated short term employment in a nearby country.’ Approaching penury, he listened, and was startled to realise that they apparently knew more about him than strangers should. The offer was simple: in exchange for payment in any manner he desired (a numbered Swiss account was chosen), he would be briefed and more or less equipped by them and inserted in the bush with instructions to target the foreign ‘advisers’ working with the Angolan rebels. For a young man, the lure of sufficient money overcame common sense and rationality. Armed with little more than the optimism of youth and a limitless confidence in his own ability, he agreed. His instructions ‘make a nuisance of yourself and kill anyone white’ were succinct, and his only way home was to ensure he arrived at a pre–arranged rendezvous point to meet a helicopter. His training for bush warfare had been nil, he carried no identification and he had with him a standard Winchester Model 70 sporting rifle equipped with a commercial telescopic sight. Within a couple of weeks he was in the African bush, with food, water and a map and compass. His knowledge of sniping techniques was learned from manuals and his practical experience was nil, but he adopted the best possible approach to staying alive, which was extreme caution and detailed observation, and his rifle began to take a toll on the Soviet and Cuban military personnel; they were easy to identify both by their physical appearance, and by their habits. ‘I would watch their camps, sometimes for days, planning how to shoot, and then take cover until they became tired of looking for me.’ With nowhere to run to, he became expert in vanishing into the bush:
‘You had to hole up in a pre–prepared hide, with somewhere to use for a latrine without exposing yourself and maybe sit it out for two days or more. Sometimes there were centipedes sharing the hole with me, as well as snakes, spiders and things with no names. I’d get bitten half
to death; you couldn’t scratch or wiggle, or swear a long blue streak, especially in an exposed lay, and those long days baking in the tropical sun, feeding a wide variety of insect life, seemed eternal. Although most of my time there was spent alone, crucial skills, both military and survival, were acquired during the rare occasions I was in encampments. Although I loathed these degenerate gatherings, I had to deliver
intelligence, receive new orders, be re–supplied, or possibly head off for R&R in Senegal. Camps were a good opportunity to get news of the rest of the world, some idea of how the “war&rdquo was going in the wider theatre, and to trade or swap for luxuries such as a clean towel.’
He was very fortunate in finding a mentor:
‘A well educated Dutch man who had been active in the Congo
during the ’60s was very fatherly towards me just after I arrived, and over several days while awaiting equipment and orders, taught me crucial skills and thinking processes. I pray for him even now, for without him, I simply would not have survived.’
The young man had one useful skill, for having grown up on a farm had provided him with observational skills in the outdoors, such as quickly recognising a bush that didn’t fit in with the landscape, or slightly disturbed ground concealing a land mine. As each new scene came into view, he had only seconds to analyse it, from his feet to the horizon. ‘The Soviets owned the skies and although not frequent, any individual on the ground was on the short end of the stick if it came to duelling with a helicopter gunship.’ On at least two occasions he was forced to jettison every item of equipment, short of clothes and boots, to keep ahead of pursuing trackers, and tried to always carry small hand grenades, which he used to booby trap his rifle and other choice items he left behind. This form of lonely warfare was incredibly trying on the nerves and stamina:
‘Re–supply was the major problem — it took a long while, it was sometimes defective, or was not what you had asked for because some clerk knew better than I did what was needed! My second rifle for instance, a Winchester, had a scope that either was not mounted properly or the cross–hairs drifted. Ammunition might be decades old based on the head stamps and inconsistent from cartridge to cartridge, especially if they had been stored in the African heat for years. On the rare occasion where the target was solo, after searching for documents and maps, the next question was whether his weapons/ammunition might be suitable replacements for mine. I did not trust their food or water, but at least once, someone else’s canteen contents probably saved me from certain collapse from dehydration. The obvious supplies of surface water were full of parasites but you did not dare build enough of a fire to boil water in most circumstances. I might utilise any number of captured items such as compass, flashlights, matches, water treatment tablets, socks, skin lotion, soap, camo paint, etc. Equipment was precious. It would not matter if I was captured with enemy items — being captured with a scoped rifle was a death sentence anyway, and I carried a pistol on occasion. I always kept a round in a breast pocket, to be certain there was always one left, for it is not easy or fast to use a rifle on yourself.’
In general, the entire Angolan situation was degenerating and the unexpected was becoming too common as chaos reigned. He became increasingly uneasy about who exactly was employing him and why, and after slightly less than a year in–country, decided to leave while he still could. ‘My decision to take an early retirement was assisted considerably by the bomb blast that destroyed my ancient car in Dakar whilst there for R&R, which left me in no doubt as to my eventual fate.’ The entire experience left an indelible mark on him, and he admitted that ‘for years I never really slept properly, I would wake at the slightest sounds, and I was without doubt paranoid for a good part of my younger adult life’.
Weapons improvements
If there was little change in the issue of clothing and equipment for the snipers then some advances were at last being made with regards their weapons. In 1957 Britain had at last abandoned the Enfield rifle and adopted the Belgian designed FN–FAL self–loading rifle in the new NATO standard calibre of 7.62 mm. While it was a good infantry weapon, its design, with a sliding sheet steel top–cover over the receiver meant that it did not provide a stable platform for any optical devices, although many means of mounting were tested. As a result a redesigned sniping rifle had to be created that could chamber the new ammunition and was simpler and more accurate than its predecessors. The availability of rifles was limited, and there was great reluctance within the Board of Ordnance to adopt a brand new rifle, if for no other reason than the sheer cost and the time it would take to test, approve and then produce. As a result they took the basic Enfield No. 4 design and fitted it with a heavy grade target barrel, chambered for 7.62 mm ammunition, with redesigned magazine, a cut down fore–end that left the barrel completely open forward of the front sling–swivel, and a factory fitted wooden cheek–rest. This was then equipped with the No. 32 Mk. III scope, of which hundreds were still held in store. This interim rifle was called the L42A1. The equipment issued with these rifles remained virtually unchanged from the Second World War, with the same wooden transit chests, cleaning kit and steel telescope carry–case as issued with the No. 4 (T).
Canada too had undertaken a series of trials in late 1956 to find a replacement for their No. 4s and they too decided on the FN design. As with Britain, this decision also posed them with a problem regarding securely mounting a scope on the fragile top cover. Some commercial scopes had been acquired, for comparative testing, such as the American Stith/Kollmorgen, Canadian Leitz and Beaconing Optical Products (BOP) manufactured No. 67. It was the Leitz, mounted onto a reinforced top–cover that eventually won, after it proved superior in cold weather trials. The eventual weapon adopted, the Rifle 7.62 mm C1A1 Sniper was something of a compromise, for the basic FN design had never been to produce a rifle capable of being used in a sniping role and, as with most semi–automatic rifles, it did not have the capability for accurate long–range shooting. Despite the reinforced top cover, the design of the FN meant that the scope could be dislodged by rough handling, with consequent loss of zero. However, it did work and provided reasonable accuracy up to around 600 metres, although it often proved inconsistent. Not that this appeared to matter too much to the Canadian Army, for post–Korea they had deemed sniping to be an outmoded and irrelevant skill for modern warfare.
In the United States there were still a few serving officers whose passion for advancing the science of accurate shooting remained undimmed. If Captain William S. Brophy’s expertise in Korea had won him support from the ground troops, it had achieved little in persuading the armed forces that it seriously needed to reassess its position with regard to sniping. Neither was his voice the only one in the wilderness, for Brigadier–General George O. Van Orden, USMC (now retired), had long been unhappy about the limitations placed upon snipers by the military’s insistence on using nothing better than converted service rifles for sniping. As far back as 1942 he had recommended the adoption of the Winchester Model 70 sporting rifle for issue to snipers and he had written a summary entitled What is the most efficient Sniper’s Rifle Available in America Today? He had certainly not changed his mind by the end of the Korean war, and was years ahead in his recommendation that rifles be chambered for more powerful non–standard calibres, such as the potent .300 Winchester Magnum. There was sound reasoning behind this, for this specially designed hunting ammunition used heavier, more stable bullets, with greater range, penetration and a flatter trajectory that that of the normal .30 calibre military calibres, with only a small penalty to pay in terms of increased recoil. However, for reasons of logistics (and one suspects, inevitably, cost) the Marine Equipment Board at Quantico had rejected the idea, stating that if another rifle were introduced ‘it is necessary to inject non–standard ammunition for this rifle into the supply system in order to exploit fully any gain in accuracy’.
It is perhaps worthwhile noting that the underlying implication in this statement was that the Board were fully aware that both the service rifle and the issue .30-06 inch cartridge under–performed in a sniping role, they were not prepared to sanction any means of improving the situation. Meanwhile, the Army was looking at replacing the old M1 rifle but had opted to continue with the Garand system, in the guise of the 7.62 mm M-14, adopted in 1957. There were a number of internal design changes to improve reliability and aid production, but one of the most practical alterations was the simple adoption of a 20–round detachable box magazine, which alleviated the knotty problem of topping up the ammunition that had so plagued the M1. In terms of its use as the basis for a sniping weapon, the M-14 had been designed from the outset with a machined screw recess on the left side of the receiver that could accept a scope mount, although there was no actual system approved for use with the rifle. Some ad hoc commercial scopes and mounts were used, in particular by Captain R. Wentworth, who used with great
success a selected M-14 equipped with Weaver K-6 scope in the Running Deer World Shooting championships in Moscow in 1958. It proved to doubters that a carefully assembled semi–automatic could be used for very accurate shooting and for three or four years an assortment of tests were carried out with a varied range of scopes and mounting systems.
The United States Army was not the only army which regarded semi–automatic rifles as the way forward, for the Soviet Bloc had adopted the gas operated semi–automatic rifle as far back as 1940. In 1943 they had introduced the Simonov carbine, firing a short 7.62 cartridge inspired by the German 7.92 Kurz round used in the MP43/44 assault rifles. It soon led to the introduction of the Kalashnikov Model of 1947, or AK47 as it is now universally known. This was of no practical use to snipers, but it was to spawn what became the only front–line purpose–designed semi–automatic sniping rifle then in front line service, the Dragunov SVD.
The Dragunov was adopted earlier than many people suppose, between 1965 and 1967, and its 241/2 inch (622 mm) barrel is chambered for the old, rimmed 7.62 x 54 mm cartridge, that dated back to the 1890s. At a time when Britain was still relying on a bolt action designed in the late 19th century, and America was still musing over modifying its service rifle, the Russians did what they do best, developing a simple piece of equipment that was easy to manufacture, robust, powerful and equipped with an effective telescopic sight. The SVD is not, as is often quoted, simply a carefully built AK, for it does not use the same rotating bolt and gas piston system found on the Kalashnikov. It has a redesigned bolt to deal with the more powerful rimmed cartridge and utilises a short–stroke gas piston that strikes an operating rod to initiate the opening cycle of the breech, and is better suited to the pressures generated by the larger cartridge. The SVD’s short–stroke system also has less mass than the AK and creates less inertia on firing, thus affecting aim to a far lesser degree. The PSO-1 sight is a 4 x 24 scope with a field of view of 6°, simple adjusting turrets for windage and elevation out to 1,000 metres, and excellent optical qualities. However, one of the oddities of this rifle is the inclusion of a bayonet lug on the muzzle, which is generally of little use to a sniper. The first appearance of the SVD caused some puzzlement to western observers who were unsure as to its precise purpose, not believing Russia would adopt the wholesale arming of its snipers with such a rifle, but they soon found out that this was indeed the case.
The rise of the terrorist
After the Second World War, a new global threat was being witnessed, that of terrorism. The early terrorists were often disenchanted local groups who were demanding an end to foreign intervention in what was increasingly viewed as local, not colonial politics. These eventually led to the formation of hard–line groups who are, depending on one’s point of view, either freedom–fighters or terrorists. Although the large majority of these groups wage clandestine war using explosives, there has always been an element of face–to–face confrontation, particularly in urban environments. Normally, terrorist groups will recruit local men as irregular snipers which is seen not only as a propaganda coup but also a valuable means of harassing the foreign soldiers with little risk to the attacker. For regular army snipers, Fighting In Built–up Areas (FIBUA) has become another skill to be learned and as the 20th century has progressed it has become one that is being used with increasing frequency. The sniper in an urban environment will not necessarily be facing another rifleman as skilled as he is, but that doesn’t make his job any easier. Urban areas are particularly difficult to work in as the risk of injury to innocent civilians is high, the areas from which incoming shots may be coming are almost impossible to locate, because of echoes from surrounding buildings, and a rifleman has almost limitless deep cover in which to hide.
In Beirut during 1983, the US forces were subject to frequent hit and run attacks, and one Marine base was taking continual fire from a maze of damaged buildings, making any sort of routine task dangerous. A two man Marine sniper team was detailed to solve the problem, and settled down to watch. Two days of patient observing had brought them no nearer to finding the source of the shots and they were hampered by the fact that many buildings still had civilian inhabitants trying to scratch a living, so they had to be perfectly sure of their target. The snipers examined bullet strikes on the buildings and spoke to men who had had near misses, but could not pinpoint the shooter, despite his regular every–five–minute shots:
‘A bullet clanged against something metallic nearby and a voice cursed, before suggesting a battleship drop a few 16” shells on the already shattered building.
The observer said “Oh Oh … I think I got his muzzle flash.”
“No shit. Where?”
“Wait a minute till I work it out.”
“OK, find the building with the upper floor gone. Come down it and go off the left edge. A block deeper is a stucco ruin. You got that? See where it’s split open like an ax laid into it?”
“OK.”
“Focus in there and you’ll see a bunch of opened up walls. I think he’s shooting in there, maybe four or five rooms back in.”
“Man, what a maze, no wonder we couldn’t find him.”
The sniper got ready. He shoved a sandbag forward as a steady rest … and adjusted another bag under the M40A1s butt.
“Just like a bench rest. How far do you figure?”
“Eight hundred, maybe eight–fifty.”
The sniper nodded. “I’ll cam on 8 and raise one click.”
“We’d better be right. One shot will be all there is. We get him or he’ll be gone from there.”
The sniper practice sighted. “When he shoots this time I’ll get an exact aiming point.”
“Go an inch or two high. You don’t want to ricochet off his rifle or scope.”
They again saw the flash. The sniper said, “OK, next time. Just one more, buster.”
The observer studied his watch. “Any time now.” They waited.
Flash.
Crack!
The sniper slid down, ejected the empty and chambered a live round.
“How’d it feel?”
“He won’t shoot again.”
There was no further incoming fire from that area.’
This was typical of the type of engagement that occurs in urban fighting and illustrates not only the patience that snipers must show, but also the care that must be exercised in determining the exact place of the shooter, as there is a limited chance for retaliation. Yet there are times in terrorist warfare that the situation is totally opposite, with targets so openly visible that they clearly believe they are beyond the reach of any retribution. This happens rarely, but when it does, it is invariably because the range is so extreme that few believe there is any threat to them. This happened to a British sniper in Londonderry, Northern Ireland in 1972, as he and his observer watched an IRA ambush being sprung on a British armoured car on the edge of the city. A civilian car arrived close to the disabled vehicle, and a man began unloading weapons from it. More arrived to help and they began to arm themselves. The sniper knew he had to open fire to keep the ambush under control until foot patrols could reach the scene, but there was a problem. His 7.62 mm L42A1 rifle was considered effective out to 1,000 yards, but from their map, he and his partner calculated their nearest target was some 1,200 yards (1,100 metres) away. They did have one aid however, and that was black flags hung in the streets to mourn an IRA man who had recently died. These proved invaluable in judging the wind speed, as the distance was beyond that for which the sniper’s pocket book gave corrections. ‘We’d trained at 1,000 yards on the sniping course but this was different, the bullet would be in flight for about three seconds, and the targets were moving.’ In fact, his first shot would have missed, as he had misjudged the wind speed, but his target unexpectedly walked away from the car, and slap into the bullet:
‘The men assumed that they were being fired on from down the road, and took cover on along the side of the car. One dived into a cemetery and I got him eventually, and two more were taken out from the side of the car. One ran across the road and dived through a front door. My sergeant fired and the bullet smashed through it and killed him as he leaned against it. My sergeant and I were working beyond the limits of our equipment, and it was calculated that my furthest shot was over 1,470 yards [1,300 metres]. We fired 83 rounds between us, and I was credited with seven, he got three. The silly thing was that Brigade HQ was on the radio at the time demanding to know what weapons we were using!’
The Falklands War
Basking in the reflected glory of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s iron premiership, the last thing Britain expected was to find itself embroiled in a conflict concerning a small group of islands situated far out in the Atlantic Ocean. However, the British–administered Falklands had long been a thorn in the side of the Argentinian government, and under the leadership of its military Junta, they invaded the islands in 1982, claiming the Malvinas for themselves. Affronted by this challenge to Britain’s political authority, a task force was hurriedly raised and dispatched to the islands. It was not expected that the conflict would last long, as the conscript Argentinian Army was not thought to have the stomach for a war, but the level of resistance by all Argentinian forces proved to be much higher than expected, and British casualties mounted accordingly. One of the main problems for the invading British forces was the barren, windswept and wet landscape, covered with rocky outcrops, deep fissures and well sited Argentinian positions. The defenders had excellent fields of fire and it was a sniper’s paradise, one Argentinian held up an entire British company for four hours. This was a chilling experience for the Royal Marines and Parachute Regiment soldiers, many of whom had only ever experienced the close–range, and usually ineffective, urban sniping that occurred in Northern Ireland. Some Argentinian snipers were in a different category, and the British soldiers were powerless to deal with them:
‘I have some advice for you and it’s good advice, so try to take it in. If ever you are walking down your local high street and suddenly come under sniper fire, here’s what you do. Try not to panic, and dive for the ground. Then look for a phone box and crawl to it. On reaching the phone box pull down the Yellow Pages and look under ‘S’ for sniper. Then give one of them a quick call. In other words you set a thief to catch a thief. There were no phone boxes on Goose Green, but we did have radios. The call was made.’
They were certainly causing problems for the advancing British,
pinning down units and causing casualties. Sergeant Jerry Phillips, a sniper with the Parachute Regiment had worked his way up to a mountain strongpoint and was determined to silence the Argentinian snipers and machine–gunners:
‘I fired 100 rounds at targets over a two hour period. My shooting was accurate. If something moved and I fired it didn’t move again. I don’t know if I killed and I don’t want to know. But the shooting from those positions stopped. At the end of it there were two particular snipers I was after. They were diehards just like us.’
Some of the Argentine snipers were equipped with infra–red night sights, that gave off a tell–tale red beam, and Sergeant Phillips was quick to spot one:
‘One of them had an infra–red beam coming from his scope. We shot him and his beam suddenly pointed upwards towards the sky. That’s how it stayed; a small red beam pointing upwards and doing no more damage to us. The other one I never got.’
The identity of the snipers employed by the Argentine Army has always been somewhat shrouded in mystery, as there was virtually no training programme within their armed forces for snipers, and whilst some special forces did have limited access to military pattern scoped rifles, the few that surfaced after the battle were all of FN/FAL type, with low power scopes fitted, which classified them more as sharpshooters’ rifles than as dedicated sniping weapons. There were, however, certainly a number of Remington 700 rifles with optical sights of unspecified types examined after the war that appeared to have been purchased commercially. The men who used them were certainly competent and from conversation with British Falklands veterans, there seems little doubt that some, if not all, were employed as mercenaries by the Argentine forces. Certainly most appeared to have previous combat experience and may well have been of Spanish–American descent with experience in Vietnam:
‘We caught two at Goose Green, they had proper scoped rifles, and they had caused some heavy losses but neither spoke Spanish — they spoke English with American accents but didn’t say much. They knew we were pissed off with them. Some of the lads took them away and we never saw them again.’
The British snipers were using the Enfield L42 but it was an ageing design and the Army were already investigating its replacement. While it served throughout the Falklands it was not always with success:
‘I had no oil for mine and in the constant wet the bolt got stiffer and stiffer. It lost its zero, then the scope fogged up. I got so exasperated with it that I dumped it in a stream and carried a captured Argie FN for the rest of the battle, which worked just fine out to four or five hundred yards.’
Some British infantry marksmen carried their issue FN/SLR rifles equipped with AN/PVS night sights, which proved useful during the fierce night attacks, where they were used at comparatively close ranges, but for the huge open spaces there was only one solution for pinned down infantry, and that was to wait for the arrival of their own sniper. This brought about a heated exchange from those under fire:
‘To my rear I noticed a bush. Not that surprising, we were in a field, but this bush was different, it was moving. As the bush got nearer to our position it became apparent it was not a bush but a member of our Sniper Platoon. The bush reached our position and stopped. Another shot rang out.
“Where is he?” asked the bush.
“Where is he? Where the fuck is he? If I fucking knew that … I’d be trying to kill the bastard.”
The bush always had a reputation for being something of a madman and true to form he did not let his reputation down. He jumped up on to the top of the hedge. Two more rapid shots flew over. These were followed by more cringing and yelps on our part but the bush remained still. He obviously had not heard them.
“It’s a sniper” shouted the bush.
“Oh really! did you hear that boys, it’s a fucking sniper. What am I? Am I talking in Czechoslovakian or what? I know it’s a fuckin’ sniper.”
The bush remained on the wall and from under one of his branches pulled out a pair of binoculars … and slowly began to survey the landscape.
“I see him.” said the bush and with that he finally jumped down off the wall and crawled off to our right. After about twenty metres he stopped, aimed his rifle and fired a single shot.
“Think I got him” said the bush.
Again slowly one by one we started to look over the hedge. There were no more shots. We began to rejoice; a man had just died and we were happy.
I was later told that after the battle the British bush had gone in search of the Argentine bush. On finding his corpse he discovered that he had shot him clean through the head from a distance of 1,000 metres.’
After experience gained in the Falklands and Northern Ireland, it was clear to the British Army that the days of the old L42 were numbered, and that a new design of rifle would have to be adopted before very long. Exactly what type of rifle this should be was the subject of considerable debate, but there is some evidence that the eventual decision was influenced by events that had unfolded half–way across the world in Vietnam.