Snipers

1. USMC Snipers By Mason Beemer

2. The USMC has always used snipers or sharpshooters since the formation of the Corps.

3. Believe it or not, until after the Vietnam war, the sniper position was never kept after a war and would have to start from scratch for each war.

4. This soldier is using the new 50 cal. sniper rifle. It has a range of about 1 ½ miles. USMC_50_Cal_Sniper.wmv

5. The military grade ballistic bullet can go through a 2 ½ inch of steel and still have the power to take out its target.

6. Snipers will train every day to keep up their skill even in time of peace.

7. Every sniper, while in training will have to make his own ghillie suit.

8. Just incase you didn’t see them before.

9. Snipers always have a spotter with them. Spotters help snipers find and target their marks by giving them the range and the wind speed so they can make a precise shot.

10. This is Carlos Hathcock, he is the most successful sniper in the history of snipers. His nickname was White Feather, because of the white feather he always had in his hat.

11. He had 93 confirmed kills. His actual total is believed to be well over 400.

12. One of Hathcock's most famous accomplishments was shooting an enemy sniper through his scope, hitting him in the eye and killing him Hathcock and John Burke, his spotter, were stalking the enemy sniper in the jungle near Hill 55, the firebase where Hathcock was operating from. The sniper had already killed several Marines, and was believed to have been sent specifically to kill Hathcock. When Hathcock saw a flash of light (light reflecting off the enemy sniper's scope) in the bushes, he fired at it, shooting through the scope and killing the sniper. Surveying the situation, Hathcock concluded that the only feasible way he could have put the bullet straight…

13. down the enemy's scope and through his eye would have been if both snipers were zeroing in on each other at the same time, and Hathcock fired first, which gave him only a few seconds to act. In theory, the two snipers could have killed each other simultaneously. The enemy rifle was recovered and the incident is documented by a photograph.

14. Hathcock only once removed the white feather from his bush hat while deployed in Vietnam. During a volunteer mission on his first deployment, he crawled over a thousand meters of field to shoot a commanding NVA general. He wasn't informed of the details of the mission until he was en route to his insertion point aboard a helicopter. This effort took four days and three nights, without sleep, of constant inch-by-inch crawling.

15. As the general was stretching in the morning, Carlos fired a single shot which struck him in the chest and killed him. He had to crawl back instead of run when soldiers started searching. After the arduous mission of killing the general, Hathcock returned to the United States in 1967. However, he missed being away from the Marine Corps and returned to Vietnam in 1969, where he took command of a platoon of snipers.

16. In Carlos's words, one enemy soldier (or "hamburger" as Carlos called them), "shortly after sunset", almost stepped on him as he lay camouflaged with grass and vegetation in a meadow ("Marine Sniper" by Charles Henderson) . At one point he was nearly bitten by a bamboo viper but had the presence of mind to not move and give up his position.

17. Hathcock generally used the standard sniper rifle: The Winchester Model 70.30-06 caliber rifle with the standard Unertl scope. On some occasions, however, he used a different weapon: the .50-caliber M2 Browning Machine Gun, on which he mounted the Unertl scope, using a bracket of his own design. This weapon was accurate to 2500 yards when fired one round at a time. At one point, he took careful aim at a courier carrying a load of assault rifles and ammunition on a bicycle.

18. He had second thoughts when he saw a 12-year-old boy in his sights, but after considering the intended use of those weapons, he fired, hitting the bicycle frame. The boy tumbled over the handlebars and grabbed a gun, so Hathcock killed him.