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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: haqihana who wrote (109600)	4/16/2005 8:48:39 AM
From: Hoa Hao	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793717

Interesting what's on the 'net... findarticles.com Audie Murphy was also a sniper. His positional awareness made it possible for him to survive battle after battle in a division that had more casualties than any other division in WWII. Murphy earned his Congressional Medal of Honor in a battle where he used a .50-caliber machine gun as a sniping weapon. No discussion of sniping is complete without mentioning the fabulous sniping done by Marine Sergeant Carlos Hathcock during Vietnam. In one instance, Sergeant Hathcock used a .50-caliber machine gun (in the single shot mode) to obtain one-shot kills at a range of more than 2,000 yards. Men who are not skilled shooters tend to lack positional awareness. They tend to be fearful about situations that are not dangerous, and at the same time, they fail to discern other situations that are very hazardous. During WWI, the 37mm gun was developed for the specific purpose of sniping at enemy machine gun nests. At other times during WWI, a "French 75" field artillery piece was manhandled (pushed by a crew of soldiers) into a front line position and used as a sniping rifle. During WWII, LTC Benjamin Thurston, commanding officer of the Third Battalion, 376th Infantry, 94th Infantry Division, Third Army, was such a good marksman that he picked up a German (K-98 7.92mm) bolt-action rifle and did some sniping at a distance of 1,000 yards. On another occasion, he set up and very effectively used a 57mm antitank gun as a sniping rifle. (The 57mm gun was the standard antitank gun for infantry units in WWII.) The Germans used the 88mm gun as a sniping weapon. WWII newspaper reporters found our apprehension of being shot at by an 88 very hilarious, but in German hands, the 88-mm gun was a very effective sniping weapon. Using the definition of sniping as long-range, pinpoint accuracy in direct fire, an example could be presented that an 8-inch howitzer was used as a sniping weapon in WWII. (It was used to remove an enemy observer from a church steeple when no other available gun would effectively do so. And, yes, I know that howitzers are not guns). The WWII 105mm and 155mm howitzers were "area" weapons and were sloppily inaccurate; whereas, the towed 8-inch howitzer was capable of deadly, long-range accuracy in the direct fire mode. In Korea, according to one report that I read many years ago, the 90mm tank gun was used as a sniping rifle (probably printed in Infantry). ROBERT P. KINGSBURY LTC, INF and FA, U.S. Army, Retired Rifleman for General Patton COPYRIGHT 2003 U.S. Army Armor Center COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group