Inside the Crosshairs (20 page)
Read Inside the Crosshairs Online
Authors: Col. Michael Lee Lanning
Based on those calculations, no more than 2,200 soldiers and Marines served as snipers in Vietnam. A more realistic figure is about 1,250. And even that number may be 10 to 25 percent too high.
What it took to become a successful sniper in Vietnam differed little from the characteristics necessary in previous wars. In their 1942 study, “Equipment for the American Sniper,” George O. Van Orden and Calvin A. Lloyd included a chapter titled “What Is a Sniper,” but the authors admitted that they paraphrased a definition provided by Stephen Trask in his 1917 writings about World War I marksmen.
According to Van Orden and Lloyd, “While the modern theories deal with fast-moving columns of masses instead of companies of men, there survives one lone wolf of the battlefields.… Wherever he chooses his hiding, he is there on the fringes of the fight, waiting, waiting, waiting, through perhaps all of a dreary day and a night. Little knots of the enemy may cross his vision. Still he holds the fire of his telescopically sighted rifle. His game is not to send a hail of rapid fire into a squad or a company; it is to pick off with one well-directed, rapidly delivered shot a single enemy, to send him beyond recall by skilled surgery in the brief flitting moment.
“He must harass the foe,” the authors continue, “taking an officer here, a man there. He must hammer relentlessly upon the nerves of the rank and file of the opposing forces, until his rifle crack, joining with others of his kind, becomes a menace more to be feared than the shrieking shells from cannon, or the explosive hail from the mortars. His bullet must come from nowhere. It must find a mark sometimes as small as a two-inch loophole at two hundred yards, or a man standing against a hazy background.”
In conclusion, Van Orden and Lloyd note, “The sniper is an institution that should and does naturally appeal to American fighting men, and before our army is complete, we will undoubtedly have thousands of his breed.”
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Some of the American public’s lack of acceptance of and disdain for Vietnam veterans might have been a result of the warriors’ youth. The idea that teenagers, who had been unable to avoid the draft because they were from the “wrong side of the tracks,” were returning to their streets as experienced killers frightened many Americans.
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The exceptions to those sources were Marines who attended the sniper school at Camp Pendleton, California, before going to Vietnam and previously sniper-trained Marines and soldiers returning to the war zone for subsequent tours of duty.
‡
Many men facing the draft and the possible assignment to the infantry volunteered for service in the relatively safer jobs in army rear echelon specialties or joined the air force or the navy. The Marine Corps did not accept draftees until late in the war, when the numbers of volunteers became insufficient to fill vacancies.
§
While the military did not record racial composition figures for subordinate units in Vietnam, it does today. Department of Defense figures for 1997 show that 4 percent of Marine and army snipers are African Americans and 5 percent are Hispanic.
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Redesignated Ranger companies and detachments on February 1, 1969.
a
Like everything else about Vietnam, the exception often ruled. The best sniper serving with the author in the 199th Light Infantry Brigade in 1969–1970 was an African American from Washington, D.C.
b
The Distinguished Service Cross is the army’s second-highest decoration for valor in combat, ranking behind only the Medal of Honor.
Tools of the Trade: Arms and EquipmentT
HE
success of the sniper program in Vietnam depended upon the man behind the crosshairs, but Marine Corps and army leaders also recognized that their marksmen had to be properly armed and equipped in order to accomplish their missions. In “Equipment for the American Sniper,” Van Orden and Lloyd noted, “It is safe to say that the American sniper could be regarded as the greatest all-around rifleman the world has ever known, and his equipment should include the best aids to his dangerous calling that the inventive genius of the United States can produce.”
Despite recognition of the importance of equipment, particularly rifles, the Marine Corps and the army entered the Vietnam War with antiquated sniper weapons, including M1Ds from World War II and Korea and a small number of ’03 Springfields that dated to World War I.
Both services recognized that technology had improved durability and accuracy since World War II and looked for newer, better rifles with which to equip their special marksmen. In their search the two services took a variety of measures to determine which weapons systems to procure and ended up adopting different rifles.
With a maximum effective range of 600 meters and reasonable accuracy at 400 to 500 meters, World War II–vintage M1Ds were available in ample numbers for Captain Bob Russell and his sniper instructor team to secure them for their school and graduates. Or they could have adopted the more modern M14 as the sniper weapon of choice since at that time
every Marine arrived in-country carrying one as his basic weapon.
Russell and his fellow instructors, however, concurred with the general consensus that the M1D lacked range and that the M14, having no scope to enhance its accuracy beyond the range of its “iron” or standard sights, was adequate only for the sniper team observer and not for the principal shooter.
Russell faced the same quandary the corps had encountered in 1942 and again in 1951, when the Marine Corps had conducted studies to determine the best sniper rifle. In both tests the investigators favored the Model 70 sporting rifle introduced by Winchester in 1937 for target shooting and hunting. This bolt-action rifle, having a five-round integral magazine and interchangeable twenty-four- and twenty-eight-inch barrels, delivered the long-range accuracy the Marines sought. However, officials had decided against its adoption because of the complications of injecting another rifle into the supply system—especially one that required 30.06-caliber (7.62 × 63-mm) ammunition rather than the standard military 7.62 × 51-mm cartridges. For that reason, the Marine Corps resisted adopting the Model 70 as its official sniper rifle for more than a quarter of a century.
However, when Russell and his staff sought a sniper weapon in 1965, they chose the Model 70 by default because it was the only rifle available that met the long-range accuracy requirement of the Vietnam battlefield.
The selection of the scopes for the Model 70s occurred in similar manner. Sufficient numbers of Unertl 8-power telescopes had remained in the Marine logistics system since their procurement as early as 1943 for use with the Model 70 and the M1903 sniper rifles in World War II.
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While far from perfect, the distinctive twenty-four-inch-long Unertl 8-power scope would become one of the most recognizable pieces of equipment used by Marine snipers in Vietnam.
Russell and his team were satisfied with their selection, in part because for years they had practiced and competed with
Winchester Model 70 sporting rifles equipped with Unertl 8 power telescopic sights rather than standard military-issue weapons. Because they were so confident in the long-range accuracy of the Winchester Model 70, they adapted it as the “unofficial-official” sniper rifle for their students.
The first dozen Model 70s to arrive in Vietnam were the very rifles that the 3rd Marine Division—including Russell and many of his staff—had used for years in national and international competition shooting matches. Now those same sharpshooters were using the same weapons to hunt the Vietcong and to train sniper volunteers. Despite their age, the rifles had been well cared for and were in excellent condition.
Russell’s request for additional Model 70s produced rifles from a variety of sources. The Marksmanship Training Unit at Quantico gathered several from its stocks and procured others from the Marine Corps Supply Center at Albany, Georgia, for transfer to the 3rd Division. Several of the Winchesters dated back to the Korean War and at least one had been used in the national rifle championship matches at Camp Perry, Ohio, in 1953. Many of the rifles were older than the Marines who would carry them into combat.
With the Marine Corps’s commandant’s approval of sniper units in late 1965, the headquarters staff calculated the need for 550 additional weapons for Vietnam and the U.S. training base. Searches to fill that requirement reached the entire corps, bringing Model 70s from Marine bases around the world. Some arrived with markings on their stocks showing that they previously had been assigned to Special Services facilities, which loaned them to Marines and their families for use in target shooting and hunting. The condition of the rifles varied, but most could be rebuilt or refurbished to meet sniper requirements.
While Russell and his staff began training their volunteers with the best rifle and scope available, the Marine Corps activated efforts to replace the equipment with a more sophisticated weapon system. In December 1965, the Marine Corps Headquarters instructed the Quantico Marine Schools Weapons
Training Battalion to issue verbal orders to the Marksmanship Training Unit (MTU) to procure a rifle, telescopic sight, and mount suitable for use by snipers in Vietnam. The orders came with no deadline for a recommendation, but all parties involved were aware of the immediate need in the combat zone.
Major Willis L. Powell (top), founder of the army’s 9th Infantry Division Sniper School, briefs Assistant Division Commander Brigadier General James S. Timothy on the XM21 sniper rifle in October 1968. (U.S. Army)
Graduation photo of the 9th Infantry Division’s first sniper class in November 1968. (U.S. Army)
A 9th Infantry Division sniper prepares to aim (top) and fire (bottom) his XM21 during a daylight sweep in the Mekong Delta. (U.S. Army)
