American snipers also used the M1C and M1D models of the .30-caliber M1 Garand that became the basic U.S. infantry rifle of the war. Between 1937 and 1945, the Springfield and Winchester arms companies produced more than 4.5 million of the gas-operated. clip-fed, air-cooled, semiautomatic weapons. The M1 proved to be a highly durable, accurate rifle that significantly contributed to the U.S. military victory. However, although ordinary World War II infantrymen coveted their M1s, many snipers continued to use the extremely accurate ’03 Springfields even after the C- and D-model M1s with sight-mounting adaptations became readily available.
Americans deploying to the Pacific also faced formidable snipers. Japan, particularly after losing the offensive momentum and beginning a defensive war, used snipers throughout the Pacific Theater. Japanese snipers initially carried the 6.5-mm Type 38 rifle that had been in use since 1905. As the war progressed, many of those were replaced by Arisaka Type 97 rifles with a 2.5 power scope. The relatively small-caliber rifle and low-power scope limited the accuracy and range of Japanese snipers to about 300 yards. However, the long-barreled, small-projectile weapon produced little smoke or muzzle flash, making Japanese sniper fire extremely difficult for opponents to pinpoint.
Disciplined Japanese snipers combined shooting skills with excellent concealment and camouflage techniques. More important, the marksmen, like all Japanese soldiers, swore to fight to the death for their emperor. As a result, to gain better fields of fire Japanese snipers, not worrying about escape or surrender, willingly established their “hides” in the tops of trees.
Individual Japanese infantrymen with open-sighted, nonscoped rifles also frequently engaged the Americans with sporadic fire, causing U.S. soldiers and Marines to refer to almost any low-volume shooting as “sniper fire.” Colonel James A. Donovan, USMC (Retired), served from 1940 to 1945 with the 2nd Marine Division, including time as the executive officer of a battalion of the 6th Marines during the battles for the Mariana Islands. In an interview more than fifty years after World War II, Donovan explained, “In the Pacific all Jap riflemen were dubbed ‘snipers’ by Marines. Of course, they were only riflemen—but were all good at cover, concealment, and patience. They were fair shots and caused many delays in our advances. They were more effective than they deserved to be.”
One of the most common countersniper measures employed by the army and the Marine Corps in the Pacific was the same as that used in Europe. A training note for the 1st Battalion, 163rd Infantry Regiment, provides an excellent summary of countersniper measures. According to the report, when the 163rd replaced an Australian unit during the Battle of Sananada in New Guinea on January 2, 1943, the American infantrymen immediately came under Japanese sniper fire that killed and wounded several.
Initially, the 163rd used observers to locate the snipers and then raked the treetops and ground level with automatic rifle and machine gun fire. That neutralized some of the sniper fire but casualties continued. After several days, the 163rd brought their 37-mm antitank gun section forward and in response to sniper fire blasted nearby treetops with the cannons. Even though the sniping significantly decreased, the 163rd never completely ended it until the offensives overran and destroyed the last Japanese units.
Other army units in the Pacific employed similar antisniper techniques, but like their comrades in Europe, they never had support from an army- or theater-level sniper-training program. In the Pacific, sniper training within the army remained an individual decision of unit commanders down to battalion level.
Marines in the Pacific also practiced the mass-firepower tactic, but senior corps leaders recognized even before the war began that trained individual marksmen themselves were the most efficient countersnipers. The Marine Corps had no formal sniper program prior to U.S. entry into World War II, but it did encourage improvements in civilian manufacture of telescopic sights and assigned officers and enlisted men to study the possible uses of advanced marksmanship.
Two years before the war began, Captain George O. Van Orden and Chief Marine Gunner Calvin A. Lloyd of the Marine Barracks, Quantico, Virginia, Rifle Range Detachment studied the history of sniping and drew conclusions about the future need for such marksmen. Early in 1941 the two men published their findings in a seventy-two-page, single-spaced report titled “Equipment for the American Sniper.”‡ The Marine Corps reproduced the report and forwarded 1,000 copies to units around the world.
The first twenty pages of the document extensively quote World War I personal memoirs on sniping. The last section discusses the merits of various rifles and scopes. Despite its brevity, the study stands alone as the best summary of sniping prior to World War II and the best predictor of future U.S. sniper developments.
The theme throughout the writing of Van Orden and Lloyd is that snipers are a necessary part of any ground combat force and that these special marksmen required and deserved weapons, scopes, and ammunition specially manufactured for their difficult missions. At the conclusion of Chapter 2, the two Marines emphasized, “The sniper has not survived merely because of the romantic, adventurous glamour which surrounds his campaign of individual extermination—the private war he wages. He is present on the battlefields because there is a real and vital need for him. 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.”
Yet, in the first months of World War II, Marine commanders selected marksmen from their units and procured what weapons and scopes they could to arm their snipers. The weapon of choice of these Marine marksmen was the same as that recommended in the study by Van Orden and Lloyd—the .30-caliber Winchester Model 70 with an 8-power telescope manufactured by the John Unertl Optical Company.
The Winchester Repeating Arms Company shipped 373 Model 70s to the Marine Corps on May 29, 1942, and filled smaller orders over the next months. Many of the rifles found their way to the Pacific, but the Marine Corps did not officially adopt the M70 as its sniper weapon, citing the logistical difficulties in supplying and maintaining an additional rifle type.
As a result, when the Marine Corps opened its formal sniper schools (at New River, near Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, in December 1942; and at Green’s Farm, north of San Diego, California, in January 1943) the M1C and M1D Garands and the ’03 Springfield became the official Marine sniper weapons. Nevertheless, many Winchester Model 70s showed up at training camps and in actual field use during the Pacific campaign.
Both New River and Green’s Farm conducted training under the name of Scout and Sniper School. The first half of the five-week training period focused on fieldcraft, including map reading, movement techniques, and the use of cover and concealment; the second half was dedicated to actual shooting.
Typical of the training staff was First Lieutenant Claude N. Harris, commanding officer of the Green’s Farm site. Harris, fifteen years in the corps and a combat veteran of the Pacific Theater and brief campaigns in Haiti and Nicaragua, had won the national rifle championship in 1935. He passionately believed in the importance of marksmanship and reminded his classes about the influence of snipers at Stalingrad: “Snipers can save a country, sometimes. Look what they’ve done for Russia.”
Captain Walter R. Walsh, a former FBI agent and winner of international shooting competitions, conducted similar training at New River. Although Walsh and Harris had great latitude in running their schools, their sniper-training courses were remarkably similar. Both took volunteers who had qualified as expert riflemen, coming either from pistol and rifle marksmanship teams or straight from boot camp.
Upon completion of their training, scout snipers were assigned in three-man teams to Marine infantry companies, where commanders retained discretion in their use. Most deployed scout snipers to counter enemy snipers and to neutralize crew-served weapons. Although assigned in threes, the scout snipers worked in pairs, holding the thi
rd member in reserve to replace a casualty or to rotate on missions to ensure an alert shooter. Usually the primary shooter carried the ’03 Springfield while his spotter sported a C- or D-Model M1. Battle conditions and personnel shortages, of course, often altered that arrangement.
Studies and reports in army and Marine World War II files more accurately reflect the tests on various scopes, rifles, and associated equipment than they do the actual field performance of the pieces. Some investigators considered the Winchester Model 70 and the Unertl 8 and 10 power scopes too fragile for sustained combat use. Other reports found faults in the accuracy and durability of the ‘03 Springfield and the C- and D-Model M1s. The services and the shooters never came to any consensus, but their debate did lead to improvements and advances that influenced future sniper operations.
One innovation that would produce long-term benefits to precision marksmanship was the introduction late in the war of an electronic device known as the “Sniperscope.” Capable of being mounted on either M1 model, the scope used infrared rays, a converter, and a 4-power telescope to permit the acquisition of targets during darkness. Although the scopes cost $1,200 each, required an auxiliary six-volt storage battery powerpack, and produced a fuzzy, reddish-green image, they gave snipers the capability to fire at night without the benefit of artificial light from flares or spotlights.
Marine and army snipers performed well during World War II, but their efforts made little lasting impression on their services’ senior commanders. Improved individual weapons, machine guns, artillery, close air support, and naval gunfire—combined with an advanced logistic system for resupply—convinced most military leaders that massed, concentrated firepower could replace the marksmanship skills of individual riflemen.
An anonymous article in the January–February 1946 issue of Army Ordnance aptly summarized how volume rather than accuracy had won World War II. The article, “Sniping—a Neglected Art,” stated, “The riflemen, automatic riflemen, and machine gunners which we sent forth to war from training camps in the United States were essentially machine operators who got results by shooting a greater tonnage of ammunition than the enemy.”
By the time Germany surrendered in Europe and the atomic bombs had brought a quick end to the Japanese empire, few military leaders supported the continuation of snipers or sniper training. Snipers, never fully accepted by senior military commanders during the war itself, had few champions outside their own ranks to promote the skill as a peacetime specialty. A study conducted by the Headquarters, U.S. Army Ground Forces, Pacific Ocean Areas, verified this. The study, “Training and Use of Snipers” (Report Number 183 of January 5, 1945), noted that the 8th Army Headquarters found no use for sniper training and recommended that expert marksmen at company level be issued scoped rifles only under special circumstances. The report also included statements from I Corps Headquarters that said it had conducted no sniper training for more than a year and did not see the employment of special marksmen as necessary or practical.
Report Number 183, summarizing the army’s use of snipers during World War II and the service’s philosophy on future employment of such marksmen, concluded, “Specific training of snipers is not at present being carried on by units assigned to this theater. The individual selection for sniper missions of expert riflemen within small units has been found sufficient and is the method currently employed.”
Despite having established sniper schools during the war, the Marine Corps’s leadership also did not support the post-conflict retention of snipers. In a letter dated April 20, 1945, the quartermaster general of the Marine Corps referred to the commandant’s lack of enthusiasm for maintaining snipers and noted that current tables of allowances “do not include any reference to a sniper rifle.” The letter recommended disposal of excess sniper rifles, scopes, and associated equipment.§ Three days later the Marine Corps Operations and Plans Section approved the disposal of excess ‘03 Springfield rifles and their scopes.
Many soldiers and Marines disagreed with their superiors’ conclusions. The same 1946 Army Ordnance article that recounted the tonnage of ammunition fired by “machine operators” for victory in World War II concluded, “The cheapest and most effective way to kill the enemy is by the skillful use of snipers.”
Yet no one in authority paid any attention. Snipers and the tools of their trade virtually disappeared from the Marine Corps and the army. The only military marksmanship training and competition shooting instruction came mostly from former snipers. Over the next five years, few efforts were made to improve existing sniper weapons or to invent new ones.
Peace, however, did not last long. On June 25, 1950, Communist North Korea invaded South Korea, pulling the United States and its United Nations allies into the escalating conflict. The initial rapid advances and retreats resembled World War II combat; the following two years of static, trenchlike standoff resembled World War I fighting. Once again the need for specially trained and equipped marksmen surfaced.
Both the army and the Marine Corps immediately updated manuals and training programs for sniper training and printed doctrine on how to use the marksmen. They had adequate quantities of weapons and scopes, albeit mostly the outdated World War I ’03 Springfields and the C- and D-Model M1s in storage. Yet there were no formal sniper-training schools.
North Korea was not at all reluctant to use snipers, employing them from the outbreak of the war. With rifles and scopes from the Soviet Union, Communist China, and even the United States, a small number of North Korean marksmen inflicted a large number of casualties. The United States responded with massed fire against the enemy snipers. However, many commanders were aware that snipers themselves were the best countersnipers, and just as they had in World War II, field commanders in Korea developed their own sniper training and employment techniques in the midst of battle. Many company commanders simply designated one or more of their best shots as snipers and procured whatever rifles and scopes were available through the supply system.
A typical scenario of a field commander’s prerogative against enemy snipers was chronicled in an article, “Team Shots Can Kill,” in the December 1963 issue of the Marine Corps Gazette. According to the article, shortly after the new commander of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines assumed command on a shell-scarred Korean hillside in the summer of 1952, an enemy sniper bullet smashed into the binoculars with which he had been observing the battlefield. The battalion commander selected a gunnery sergeant who had fired on several marksmanship teams and gave him the task of recruiting and training snipers. The sergeant found men who had scored expert with their basic rifles and who had exhibited excellent field skills and patience since arrival in Korea. Just to the rear of the battalion lines, the gunnery sergeant established a firing range and soon had his future snipers training with ’03 Springfields and C- and D-Model M1s. After three weeks of training, the former riflemen returned to their units in two-man sniper teams. According to the article, the battalion commander reported, “In nothing flat there was no more sniping on our positions. Nothing moved out there but what we hit it.”
Army commanders likewise designated their best marksmen as snipers and provided them with scoped rifles. Some units conducted limited training at makeshift ranges just behind the lines while others merely issued the sniper equipment to riflemen and pointed them toward the enemy.
Few records about Korean War army snipers exist. Once again the best summary of their performance comes not from the official files but from periodicals of the period. An article‖ in the October 1951 Infantry School Quarterly, “A Warning,” notes the equipment and training manuals available for sniper instruction but concludes, “There is no army training program that allots time for this training nor any policy that makes it compulsory. The result is that we have produced few if any, qualified snipers.
“Having no official record of the use of snipers in Korea,” the article continued, “we must seek the opinion of the men who have served there.” The authors then explain
that in interviews with officers and enlisted veterans of Korea they found that 95 percent of those they questioned responded that the enemy used snipers against them and 74 percent felt that the North Korean marksmen were effective. Only 35 percent were aware of U.S. Army snipers in the conflict, but 88 percent thought that they would be useful if available. Those who did recall snipers in their units reported that each company usually had one sniper rifle and its operator had received no special training.
Most field commanders in the Korean War recognized the need for snipers to limit enemy movement and to provide a countersniper capability. Weapons, scopes, and mounts, while not perfect for their mission, existed, as did basic literature on sniper training and employment. However, the U.S.military concluded the Korean conflict in regard to snipers much as it had entered the war—no official school existed in the army or the Marine Corps to train special marksmen. When the cease-fire finally went into effect along the DMZ separating North and South Korea on July 17, 1953, the status of snipers in the army and Marine Corps remained much as it had been at the close of World War II.
*Regardless of the degree of truth about Dixon’s shot, the fact that the story exists provides an indication of the accuracy attributed to the buffalo guns and the hunters who used them.
†Neither of these stories can be confirmed. It is interesting to note that the article shared space in the newspaper with an advertisement for Reichert telescopic sights, to which both snipers credited their success. Confirming sniper kills, whether during World War I or in subsequent conflicts, proved to be extremely difficult, and any claim of an exact sniper count should be looked upon with some skepticism.
‡The document itself is undated and few copies have survived. According to the “Date Received” stamp on the front of the copy on file in the Marine Corps Museum in Washington. D.C., it arrived there on November 12, 1942.
Inside the Crosshairs Page 7