From:	Paul J. Adam Paul@********.demon.co.uk
Subject:	I'm Back...and I have questions...
Date:	Thu, 11 Mar 1999 23:59:24 +0000

In article <199903112019.PAA01510@****.vtc.vsc.edu>, Kevin Dole
<kdole@***.vsc.edu> writes
>"Paul J. Adam" <Paul@********.demon.co.uk>
>> >Well, no. Carlos Hathcock, arguably the greatest sniper ever, and
>> Scoped Browning M2HB heavy machine gun. The use of the M2 in single
>
> And what so many people fail to mention (or realiase, becuase
>thier source doesn't mention it) is that it took two or three shots to
>hit the kid, who had sufficent time to remove a rifle and magazine
>from a cargo bundle on bike, get the magazine in, and IIRC get off
>a couple shots.

The version I heard was that he'd been sighting the weapon in at long
range (maybe just trying to see how tight it would group, and the man he
killed wandered past the aiming mark he was using... known range, wind
hadn't changed, and Hathcock took the shot. Either way, it certainly
wasn't a first-round kill.

>Still, a mile is damn impressive
>shooting. Hitting a smallish human at that range, after three
>rounds over a couple seconds, is nothing to sneeze at.

Again, it should say something that it's so rare. A good example of this
in fiction is David Mason's novel "Shadow Over Bablylon", which is about
getting a sniper into position to kill a certain Middle Eastern
dictator: it has to be a first-round kill, at a range of 1,250 metres.

The shooter is one of the best around, the rifle is a Accuracy
International PM in .338 Lapua, and still the task is extremely hard,
demanding a rangefinder, several remote anemometers to give accurate
wind, and a laptop loaded with ballistics data.

It's an excellent book, but Mason does get across just how hard it is to
hit a man at a thousand yards, particularly with one shot.

> Sick of hearing people talk about thier thousand yard shots,
>without bothering to tell us how many times they missed and thier
>time between shots--

Competition shooters are excellent marksmen, but they've got flags for
wind, exact range, fixed targets... sniping's a whole different ball of
chalk.
>

--
Paul J. Adam