In action
After the defeat at Stalingrad in January 1943, it was mainly retreat for the Germans. Soviet snipers, who had been so effective amongst the ruins of Stalingrad, continued to harass the Germans as they retreated. Nowhere seemed safe and the Soviets would pick off green conscripts as well as more experienced NCOs and officers. It was almost impossible to track down the Red Army snipers and, once their locality was known, it required huge resources of mortars and machine guns to clear the area.
Raw recruit
The Germans realized that the best way of dealing with the Soviet sniper threat was to send out snipers of their own. An apprentice joiner from Bavaria, Josef “Sepp” Allerberger was conscripted into the Gebirgsjäger Regiment 144 of 3rd Mountain Division in February 1943, initially qualifying as a machine-gunner. In September 1943 he was posted to the Ukraine just as the Red Army was in midst of a massive offensive in the southern sector of the Eastern Front.
The intensity and ferocity of the frontline soon changed the callow youth into a determined fighter whose only philosophy was either to kill or be killed. As a machine-gunner, Allerberger realized very quickly that he was a number one target for the Russian snipers.
Almost inevitably, he was wounded and sent behind the lines to recuperate. During this period he came upon a captured Mosin-Nagant 91/30 sniper rifle and, intrigued, he asked for permission to practice with it. Allerberger both surprised and impressed not only himself but the armorer who was watching him, and it was soon arranged for him to change roles and become a sniper. He underwent formal sniper training at Seetaleralpe and was given a Kar 98K rifle with a 6x magnification scope.
Counter sniper action
When he returned to his unit, Sepp was greeted with considerable acclaim. Although snipers were frowned upon by some German commanders, Sepp’s commander and fellow soldiers recognized their worth. Soon Sepp was being urged to deal with a Soviet sniper nearby who had been pestering the unit for days. Sepp duly got himself in position and tested the situation by raising a field cap above the parapet. The Soviet sniper showed his inexperience by putting a hole straight through it. It was a fatal mistake. Sepp was able to spot the gun flash and a slight reflection from a telescopic sight. He composed himself and carefully pushed his rifle barrel though a gap between some logs. Using the fixed iron sights, his task made even more difficult by a group of expectant fellow soldiers around him, he shot the Russian sniper. The euphoria created by his success spread through his company and soon an attack was launched, which cleared the Russians out of their forward trench positions.
A Red Army sniper armed with a Mosin-Nagant rifle stands guard wrapped in a captured German camouflage tent, summer 1942.
Soon Sepp was notching up kills and every time he achieved ten confirmed kills he was given a silver stripe to put on his sleeve. The area in front of Sepp’s company soon became clear of enemy snipers as they went off to seek easier pickings in safer areas where the enemy did not shoot back so effectively.
Fighting retreat
Soviet reinforcements built up inexorably and soon the Germans were on the retreat. It was now that Sepp Allerberger showed his mettle as well as the ruthlessness he had acquired over months of hard fighting. Often hugely outnumbered, the German units were fighting for their very existence and Sepp ensured that each shot caused maximum disruption. This meant not quietly killing selected targets as the sniper usually did but deliberately aiming to wound and cause maximum pain, thus creating confusion and loss of morale amongst the enemy. Sepp was a sniper with the precision of a surgeon: choosing whichever body part to wound in order to create a particular effect.
Sepp did not confine himself to infantry. On one occasion a Soviet T-34 tank hove into view as the lead point for an attack. A hatch on the tank was lifted briefly as a commander carried out a personal reconnaissance. Such was the potential power of the sniper that an accurate shot by Sepp at this point could disrupt an entire enemy attack plan. As ever, Sepp’s shot was on target and the Soviets were thrown into confusion. Headless and rudderless, the Soviet attack faltered and then collapsed, giving the Germans time to consolidate their defense.
Working in tandem, a German sniper armed with a Kar 98K rifle and his observer, looking through binoculars, scan the horizon for targets, somewhere on the Eastern Front.
MATTHIAS HETZENAUER (1924–2004)
Impressed by the effectiveness of Soviet snipers, the Germans did their best to train their own sniper squads. One of the pre-eminent German snipers was Matthias Hetzenauer, who would be credited with 345 kills. Hetzenauer used a K98 rifle with a 6x magnification scope or a Gewehr 43 rifle (below) with a 4x magnification scope.
He was deployed on a number of dangerous missions and was often sent behind enemy lines when the Germans were about to launch an attack. Here he would maximize the disruption caused by the initial artillery barrage by picking off gunners, commanders and other key personnel. The German snipers mostly operated in pairs and Hetzenauer sometimes worked with Josef Allerberger, another famous German sniper. In May 1945, Hetzenauer was captured and spent five years in a Soviet prison camp.
On another occasion, an event occurred that bears close similarity to other sniper accounts from different eras and wars. A young Soviet lieutenant led a patrol in the open on a clear autumn day. He knew there were no enemy positions in the immediate area, otherwise he would have been more cautious, but, like so many before and after him, he had forgotten about potential snipers. These were green soldiers, not yet hardened by war.
For Sepp Allerberger, it was like being served up a three-course meal and not knowing where to start. The inexperienced officer was soon looking in surprise at a hole that had suddenly appeared in his chest. The remainder of the patrol scattered, except for two who lost their lives thinking they could save their officer. Sepp then withdrew from his lair.
Fieldcraft
This kind of quiet operation against relatively easy pickings was not typical for Sepp. It was more usual for him to be in the thick of the battle, creating maximum disruption with his precise shooting. Also, Sepp was fully acquainted with infantry movements and he knew how to operate with his company as well as how to get himself out of trouble.
Too many snipers lost their lives because their field craft and infantry experience did not match their marksmanship. Sepp knew there was a price on his head and he knew how to get out of a tricky situation quickly.
Near miss
Despite his experience and expertise, it was almost inevitable that even Sepp would make a mistake. A burnt-out tank in No Man’s Land provided an excellent hide but it was also a fairly obvious one. Perhaps due to fatigue, Sepp forgot to consider things from the enemy’s perspective and he returned to the location once too often. He took an observer with him. By this time the Soviets had organized their own sniper to watch the tank.
Unfortunately for Sepp’s observer, just as he spotted a movement in the enemy trenches it was the Soviet sniper firing at the glint of his binoculars. The bullet destroyed the observer’s face. Sepp had no choice but to wait and escape under the cover of night if he was to avoid a similar fate.
The Soviet Army deployed a considerable number of highly effective women snipers. This is Maria Lalkova, who was of Czech origin, armed with the Tokarev SVT40 semi-automatic sniper rifle.
Sniper company
Sepp did not make the same mistake again. On another occasion he not only found himself up against an enemy sniper but a full Soviet sniper company. Sepp knew this would require careful planning. He set out a number of false targets consisting of helmets with faces painted on them, which he asked fellow soldiers to raise when he gave them a signal.
He then went off and hid himself out of the immediate line of fire, using an old umbrella frame with foliage on it for camouflage. Apart from the soldiers behind the targets, he also arranged for machine-gunners to fire at the Soviets to disguise his own shots so they would not detect him.
Sure enough,
when the helmet was raised, one of the snipers located in trees opposite fired upon it. Sepp identified the movement but waited for his team to open up with machine guns. Then he fired and hit the Soviet sniper. It did not end there. Sepp was in for a busy day: he and his team repeated the process, and it was not long before he had scored eighteen hits and the German commander decided to storm the woods. There, they discovered the bodies of the enemy snipers, all of whom were women.
Sepp and his comrades had plenty of time to marvel at the efficiency of Soviet sniper organization. They realized the devastating effect that the Soviet snipers had across the Eastern Front and were amazed at how the German Army had allowed their mastery of the art of sniping, developed before World War I, to lapse. Allerberger survived the war and returned to his native Austria to work as a carpenter until his death in 2010.
WAR IN THE WEST
In 1941 a revised British training manual was produced entitled Notes on the Training of Snipers. The full range of sniper training was introduced and careful selection procedures ensured that suitable snipers were chosen not just for their marksmanship skills but for their grasp of the full range of sniping techniques, which covered a wide range of fieldcraft.
The Lovat Scouts remained at the forefront of sniper training, as Captain C. Shore testifies:
“I was trained by NCOs of the Lovat Scouts. These men in their distinctive bonnets bearing the large silver badge with the stag’s head and simple inscription “Je suis prest” (“I am ready”) and their almost uncanny prowess in observation, stalking and shooting, earned my greatest admiration. They were quiet and restrained, not so eloquent maybe as the average Army instructor, but easily forceful. In their eyes lurked the quiet shadows of hillside forests; they were not loquacious, but in later months when we hunted together in German forests, the contents of my flask and the leaping flames of our camp-fires unloosened tongues and I was content to sit drowsily before the fire and listen to stories of Highland stalks, of great kills, and of their regard for the chief of the Fraser clan, Lord Lovat, Commando Brigadier, who was badly wounded in the early Normandy campaign.“
GEWEHR 43 SNIPER RIFLE
German experiments with self-loading rifles began with the Gewehr 41(W), first trialed in 1940. This 7.92x57mm Walther design used a gas system of operation. However, the rifle’s frontline reliability proved to be poor and in 1943 it was superceded by the Gewehr 43. The Gewehr 43 was heavily influenced by the gas-operated system and design of the Tokarev SVT40, used by many Soviet snipers. The simpler mechanism of the Gewehr 43 made it lighter, easier to mass produce and far more reliable. The addition of a ten-round detachable box magazine also solved the slow reloading problem of the bolt action sniper rifles.
The Gewehr 43 soon emerged as a successful battlefield weapon–more than fifty thousand Gewehr 41 and 43 sniper rifles were produced during the war. It was one of the most accurate sniper weapons of World War II, especially when fitted with the Zielfernrohr 43 (ZF 4) telescopic sight with 4x magnification.
Country of Origin Germany
Caliber 7.92mm (0.312in)
Overall length 1124mm (44.25in)
Barrel length 546mm (21.5in)
Weight 5.03kg (11.09lbs)
ALFRED HULME (1911–82)
Alfred Clive Hulme VC was a New Zealand recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest medal for gallantry awarded to British and Commonwealth forces. He is credited with stalking and killing thirty-three enemy soldiers in the Battle of Crete in just ten days.
On May 20, 1941, German Fallschirmjäger (paratroops) landed on the island of Crete, which was then held by Commonwealth forces commanded by Major-General Bernard Freyberg. The Allied forces included the New Zealand 2nd Division and some elements of the Greek Army. Although the large German paratroop force initially failed to take the island, they eventually captured Maleme airfield, which allowed them to fly in supplies and achieve victory.
Alfred Hulme, a sergeant in the 23rd Battalion, the Canterbury Regiment, was involved in a number of actions throughout the battle, and he took the initiative of disguising himself in a German Fallschirmjäger combat jacket in order to operate behind enemy lines. At Maleme airfield, Hulme led attacks against enemy forward positions. At Galatos he carried out a daring attack with grenades, destroying a planned enemy counter-attack. Near Suda Bay, Hulme, armed with an SMLE Mk III rifle, set out to stalk a number of enemy snipers, killing each one in turn. His meteoric sniper career was covered by the London Gazette:
“Sergeant Hulme exhibited most outstanding and inspiring qualities of leadership, initiative, skill, endurance, and most conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty from the commencement of the heavy fighting in Crete on 20 May 1941, until he was wounded in action 28 May 1941. On ground overlooking Maleme Aerodrome on 20 and 21 May he personally led parties of his men from the area held by the forward position and destroyed enemy organised parties who had established themselves out in front of our position, from which they brought heavy rifle, machine-gun and mortar fire to bear on our defensive posts. Numerous snipers in the area were dealt with by Sergeant Hulme personally; 130 dead were counted here. On 22, 23 and 24 May, Sergeant Hulme was continuously going out alone or with one or two men and destroying enemy snipers….
Commonwealth troops are taken prisoner by German paratroopers after the fall of Crete. Over seventeen thousand Allied soldiers were captured during the two-week campaign.
On Tuesday, 27 May, when our troops were holding a defensive line in Suda Bay during the final retirement, five enemy snipers had worked into position on the hillside overlooking the flank of the battalion line. Sergeant Hulme volunteered to deal with the situation and stalked and killed the snipers in turn. He continued similar work successfully through the day.
On 28 May at Stylos, when an enemy heavy mortar was bombing a very important ridge held by the battalion rearguard troops, inflicting severe casualties, Sergeant Hulme, on his own initiative, penetrated the enemy lines, killed the mortar crew of four, put the mortar out of action, and thus very materially assisted the withdrawal of the main body through Stylos. From the enemy mortar position he then worked onto the left flank and killed three snipers who were causing concern to the rearguard. This made his score of enemy snipers 33 stalked and shot. Shortly afterwards Sergeant Hulme was severely wounded in the shoulder while stalking another sniper. When ordered to the rear, in spite of his wound, he … organised stragglers of various units into section groups.”
However, the British remained conservative in their allocation of equipment to snipers, as opposed to the Germans. Official camouflage uniforms for snipers were only issued in 1944, though the ghillie suit had been known about and worn since World War I.
The Enfield No.4 Mk1 (T) rifle fitted with the No.32 Mk 1 telescopic sight was distinguished not just by the scope but by the cheek rest on the butt-stock. Mostly due to the design of the telescopic sight, this rifle proved to be more accurate at longer ranges than shorter ones but, nevertheless, it gained a reputation as one of the most reliable sniper rifles of its generation.
Canadian forces were sometimes issued with a limited number of home-grown variants of this weapon. Research Enterprises Limited (REL) provided a 3.5x magnification telescopic sight and the rifle received an improved cheek guard and shoulder shock-absorber.
In the early stages of the war, the British had no formal sniper training, though there would have been marksmen scattered in various regiments doing their best with standard-issue rifles with iron sights. Some training took place for snipers in France before Dunkirk, which may have enhanced the ability of the British sharpshooters to keep the Germans at bay when retreating to the beaches.
21 Army Group Sniper School
It was not until 1944 and the Normandy landings in June of that year that the British developed an effective sniping school, that was near the frontline and that could therefore provide the training and support that was required on operations. This was the 21 Army Group Sniping School, w
hich started first in Courselles in Normandy and then moved with the advancing Allied armies to near Nijmegen, in the Netherlands.
As part of his training, the sniper’s equipment was formalized. This included the Enfield No.4 rifle, two No. 36 grenades; 50 rounds of 7.7mm (0.303in) ball ammunition slung in a bandolier over the shoulder; five rounds of tracer ammunition (which was rarely if ever used as it was likely to give the sniper’s position away); five rounds of armor-piercing ammunition (used for destroying machine guns and any other hard targets); binoculars (usually carried by the sniper himself around the neck); a prismatic compass (used for finding the sniping position and for additional observation reports); a watch that was used for sighting reports in addition to the compass (the watch was carried in a top pocket and not on the wrist as there was danger that the watch face would reflect light); British paratroop camouflage Denison smock; at least one camouflage face veil, sometimes two (which could be dropped over the face or used in other ways to disguise the sniper’s position); camouflage cream; and emergency rations.
At the school the budding snipers were taught the usual range of sniping skills, which included zeroing the rifle and making adjustments for both wind and movement. Fieldcraft training included the usual mix of movement, positioning and camouflage that would help the sniper to conceal himself in whatever area he found himself.
Sniper in Action Page 6