Inside the Crosshairs (11 page)

W
HEN
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 shorter 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.
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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.”

The summary added that, if the corps did authorize snipers, the U.S..30-caliber rifle M1C was “sufficiently accurate.” The study, declaring the ’03 Springfields and their Unertl 8X scopes obsolete, recommended the Stith 4X (Bear Cub) telescope with the standard Griffin and Howe fixed mount to go with the M1C. For all practical purposes, Project No. 757, in combination with the cease-fire in Korea, put an end to Marine Corps snipers.

Snipers in the army fared no better in the post-Korea years. An article in the April 1954
Infantry School Quarterly
. “The Case of the U.S. Sniper,” declared, “The U.S. Army has no trained snipers.” It went on to point out that, while FM 21-75 outlined an eighty-hour sniper-training program for squad snipers, commanders “generally ignored” the requirement. The author summed up the army’s policy on snipers by concluding, “It has not produced snipers in the past, and it will not produce them in the future.”

In February 1957, an article in
Army
magazine showed that little or no subsequent progress had been made by the army
in sniper development. According to the author of “Let’s Get the Most From Our Shooters,” snipers remained a rarity. The article stated, “In reality, most companies have none who are properly trained and qualified.”

The same periodical published a piece the following June that noted that, even if the army properly trained its shooters, snipers had no adequate rifle with which to practice their craft. In the aptly titled “Modernize the Sniper Rifle,” the author claimed, “Our snipers are equipped with makeshift weapons!” He then recommended that a new sniper weapon be acquired to produce “the most psychologically terrifying force of combat: the precisely placed bullet.”

What is now a faded, yellow report, dated April 19, 1960, resides on the shelves of the U.S. Army War College Library at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, apparently having made its way through several army commands without comment before coming to rest in the archives. The report’s condition and content are indicative of the army’s pre–Vietnam War outlook on snipers. The report, “Snipers, We Need Them Again,” by Colonel Henry E. Kelly, states, “Apparently the sniper is no longer considered essential in our infantry. The squad sniper, actually only a designated and specially armed infantryman, has been dropped from the rifle squad of the future. Likewise no provision is included for a sniper detachment in the battle group organization.”

No decision makers paid any attention to Kelly’s report or to the few other supporters of sniper training, because overall planning remained focused on the mechanized battlefield. The ramifications of this thinking were widespread. In the mid-1950s, for instance, the services began reorganizing marksmanship training and replacing the known distance (KD) ranges.

Since the Civil War, soldiers had fired their rifles at “bull’s-eye” targets at set distances of 100–500 meters. On the KD ranges, shooters learned to hit what they aimed at and to fear the waving of “maggie drawers”—a red flag raised from the protective trench by the target pullers when a round completely
missed. Each soldier’s score depended on where he hit the target—the bull’s-eye, of course, being worth the most points.
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The army now replaced the KD ranges with the Trainfire system, consisting of pop-up targets of various sizes that unpredictably appeared at different ranges and in random sequences. The targets remained exposed for only brief periods, forcing the shooter to find, aim, and fire quickly—and often to shoot low in order to kick up sufficient dirt and debris to knock down the pop-up target and thus get credit for the kill. Some aspects of the Trainfire system made sense, for the popups resembled enemy soldiers much more than did the KD bull’s-eyes. Unfortunately, however, the new quick-fire procedures further deteriorated the accurate shooting skills of soldiers.

Also extremely telling about the army’s post–Korean War lack of interest in snipers was the mass issue that began in 1957 of M14 rifles to replace the M1 Garands. Each new M14 had a groove and screw recess on the left side of the receiver for mounting a telescopic sight or a night vision scope. However, the services failed to adopt a mount that would fit the M14.

The first attempt to adapt the M14 for more accurate shooting came in 1958, when Captain Frank Conway of the U.S. Army Marksmanship Training Unit (USAMTU) at Fort Benning, Georgia, devised his own base to mount Weaver K-6 scopes on two M14s. Conway’s purpose was not to convert the M14 into a sniper weapon but to adapt it for international shooting competition.

By the late 1950s most senior military leaders perceived the uniformed shooting teams as luxuries that depleted units of much needed junior officers and sergeants and that diverted resources through worldwide travel to participate in shooting competitions. A few of the more perceptive members of the
shooting teams realized that those seeking to disband the marksmanship units put their positions and skills in jeopardy.

According to Charles Henderson, one of the first marksmen to come up with a rationale to preserve the shooting units and their long-range skills was Chief Warrant Officer Arthur Terry, a member of the Marine Shooting Team in Hawaii. In
Marine Sniper
, Henderson quotes Terry as saying to Officer-in-Charge Lieutenant Jim Land, “If we don’t provide a service as a rifle and pistol team, we’re going to wind up losing our happy home. They’re not going to pay for us to run around the country and shoot—we have to deliver something worth the money … we might give the team a new meaning by pushing the sniper angle.”

Over the next few weeks Land researched sniper history and developed a proposal recommending the initiation of sniper training. Land wrote “The Neglected Art of Sniping,” which began, “There is an extremely accurate, helicopter-transportable, self-supporting weapon available to the Marine Infantry Commander. This weapon, which is easily adapted to either the attack or defense, is the M1C sniper rifle with the M82 telescopic sight in the hands of a properly trained sniper.”

In presenting his case, Land related the success of snipers in previous conflicts, including quotes from the World War I books of Herbert W. McBride and Neville A. D. Armstrong, and noted the sniper equipment still available. Land received permission from his immediate senior headquarters, the 1st Marine Brigade, to begin sniper training for selected infantrymen assigned to Hawaii. Late in 1960, Land and the Hawaii Marine Rifle and Pistol Team began a two-week sniper course at the Puuloa Rifle Range, near Barber’s Point Naval Air Station, Hawaii. The first week focused on marksmanship, the second on fieldcraft and land navigation.

A year later Land’s sniper-training program provided regular classes to Marines assigned to Hawaii. For several years it remained the only formal sniper training in the Marine Corps—as well as in the entire U.S. armed forces. The training program received little publicity and few official records of it remain. The best summary of Land’s sniper classes comes
from a press release issued by the 1st Marine Brigade Informational Services Office on January 26, 1962, that states, “There is very little printed information presently available on snipers and their methods.”

The press release added that the school’s instructors used reference materials from other countries and their own experience as well as that of their students to teach sniping and scouting techniques. It concluded with an excellent perception of snipers at the time as well as a warning about the future. “In this age of push-button warfare,” the release stated, “little thought is given to the common infantryman who has nothing but a 10-pound rifle and a lot of courage. But beware of the sniper—he is deadly.”