Scania Snipers

Hi all,
Been watching the History Channel program on snipers.

I don't know if I've told you guys this story, but we had two Army Snipers assigned to Scania when I was there. I avoided talking about them because they are part of the security of the base. By now they must have been rotated home, so this is fairly safe to discuss. Either way, no dates are attached to this note.

When they showed up, they were the **** of the walk. They had the fancy suits with all that fake shrubbery on. They had the fancy rifles. They were cool and every body paid them deference. As things turned out, they were so hip they couldn't see past their pelvis.

Anyhow after about a week, a story started to circulate about them. Seems one night they went out hunting. Fired 96 rounds and missed each one.

The problem was they didn't know who they were shooting at. Seems they were shooting at our allies, in this case the Salvadoran Special Forces.

Let's give the Salvadorans some credit. They knew the weapon that had shot at them, and didn't kill our snipers.

Secfor's management was not happy about this screw up. Those guys got reamed.

Anyhow after that night our snipers drew some less than fun duties.
Like watching the trash truck make it's pick ups.
Watching the cesspool truck drain the holding tanks and 'brown rooms'.
Watching the vehicle assembly yard in the dust and heat.

They were no longer allowed outside the base. Yet they still had to hump around their rifles and portable cover.

Please, be sure of your targets.

War stories, got to love them.

Later guys

Jack Crow in the first world.

Excellent war story!

LN,
Scania Iraq was not all bugs, death, and misery. There were some truly funney moments.

Like the rumor that the mayor had become pregnant. That ended rather abruptly when she came back from R and R.

I used to play 'mixes' for various units on the base. Some had intros and some were private jokes for friends and myself. For our CO I used to play "The Bird is the Word" (by the Trashmen) for Col J who was incharge at the time.

One of my mixes I called 'the bar mix' because we were not allowed alchol. Another was the 'drug mix', a collection of drug songs.

Life was interesting.
Later dude and thanks for the coment.
Jack Crow in the first world

They shot 96 rounds and didn't get one hit??
What the hell kind of snipers are those?
I mean... I'm no professional sniper or anything like that. Closest thing I came to it was shooting squirrells and rabbits with an SVD rifle, and I got about half my shots on target...

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S,
Be glad they failed to kill one of our allies. Imagine the stink in the papers if that situation did come to pass.

The real question that nobody has asked is simply this. How come the Slavadoran SF are so good? To avoid being killed by trained shooters. To ID the weapon type.

How are they keeping busy at home. The school of Live Fire is a tough one.

Kind of makes you wonder.

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/jpshakehead.gif

Maybe those guys were SINOs? (Sniper In Name Only). I think it is unheard of to shoot that many shots out of a precission rifle in a day...

And if shooting at humans and missing that many times (allies notwithstanding)... the sniper cread is "One Shot - One Kill". These guys smucked that up pretty badly.

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/jpshakehead.gif

Missed 95 out of 96 rounds that sucks! But again mabye they were like 2miles away from the target!!!

At least only their egos were injured. Even 2 miles away, they should have the training to calculate windage and elevation drop.

Jack,

I understand that it is a good thing that they missed. I am glad they did.
But the fact that they missed so much must say something, the Salvadorian SF must have been REALLY good and the snipers REALLY bad.

Shifty
Your on target. Part of me wants to know how the Salvadorans got so good, and part of me may not want to know about the evil little things that happen in S.A.

Keep it safe

Heck, even I've shot woodchucks at 700 yards with a 22-250 and 40x scope. Give me one of those fancy deals the snipers use and a bit of practice and even I could hit more that one of 96.

I've had the pleasure of firing an Iron Brigade Armory .308 - they are .308s built to exact Marine specs by guys who used to build them for the Marines. Nice rifles. You can get them with some minor improvements, but all are field tested

Darned if those rifles aren't nice, and in some probably the ultimate hunting rifle. The Marine Corps feels that the Army system is too much like target rifles. It seems there is a different philosophy in sniping between the Army and Marine Corps. The Marine Corps tends to have more emphasis on stalking and scouting, hence they want the rifle to me more of a hunting style rifle that is easier to carry in the field (hence the intense dislike of bipods in the Corps)

I've meat 1 or 2 form each service, but NEVER saw one shoot. BTW The Chandler Brothers (owners of Iron Brigade Armory) have written what are probably the definitive set of books on sniping in the US, called "Death from Afar" - they also wrote a really good authorized book on Carlos Hathcock, and gave the profits to Carlos and his wife (now widow). I was lucky enough to get a copy of this last book signed by both the authors and Carlos. For worldwide sniping history, you probably want to get the Gilbert books. Unfortualtely "tactical shooting" became "the Accurate rifle" - not bad, and even more unfortunate is that I threw out most of my complete set of issues (sniff - I was moving and had no space). Believe it or not, reading and UNDERSTANDING those books made me a MUCH better deer hunter. Not that you want the same gear (in fact, you DON'T) but if you understand, you can adapt the techniques of how to MOVE and HIDE to deer hunting. If you just copy the techniques, you'll probably get seen by the deer

Like I said... no said slightly different...

A rifle meant for shooting accurately at distance most likely never gets shot 96 times a WEEK!

The usual drill for accurate shooting is 1 shot, wait 5-10 minutes for the barrel to cool, 1 shot and repeat.

Divide 96 by two you get 48. That's STILL more shots than I take with anything bigger than .22LR. And if I were shooting to KILL, 1 shot and bye-bye (get the HE77 out of Dodge!) 'cause some serious payback is probably coming!

This sounds like a clusterfluke of the HIGHEST order!

yeah, the 1st shot from a location is "risky", a second is DANGERIOUS, and a 3rd is likely to be fatal. Sounds like these guys are some of the guys they have been giving OK rifles, and setting loose from inside bases - The MC was calling this program the "designated marksman" program - a BIG step below their sniper program

5 minutes between shots is a BIT leasurely, but NOT by much for accurate shooting on the range - for instance Light Varmint BR is 5 shots in 10 minutes, heavy is 10 in 10 minutes, so... But then again, their barrels are a BIT heavier than I'd want to lug in the field

And yeah, out to 400yds (which is darned TOO close for snipers) I'm sure I'd hit more than 1:96. I've never had the chance to fire at more than 400yds, and in fact, it's rare for me to get the chance for over 200yds, which is why I won't talk about how accurate I am beyond that - it gets harder to make hits

BTW for those of you who know shooting, the guy who's IBA rifle I got to fire bought it for himself as a present after he went Distingushed (aka "Legged out")

For those of you who DON'T know shooting well, going Distinguished, for a civilian is VERY VERY hard to do - it requires you to have a certain number of wins and other high placements in military style shooting competitions. How hard? LESS civilians have gone distingushed than people have played on winning superbowl teams. To do it, you have to live, eat and breathe competition shooting, often for years. They will practice HOURS every night. At one point, when I was shooting regularly, I knew 3 distingushed shooters - I was NOT even close to being that good - my BEST days were about as good as their worst

KC2IXE,

The former Marines who build those rifles must be from the older school than what is being used now. The latest version of the M40 is a very heavy rifle. For some reason I want to say 19 pounds, but it might be just 14 or 15.

I didn't say they are NOT heavy - it's just that the barrels are actually LIGHTER than a benchrest barrel - which are kinda "odd" - they are usually short (like 18 1/2") and FAT

With scope and gear, if I remember right the M40 is right about 14 lbs. So is my hunting rifle, which is a hart barreled Ruger M77 - nowhere near as good as a M40 or even a PSS, but back when I bought the action, the M700 was was only being offered in 2 flavors - the ADL which had a blind floor plate, and the BDL which had a large cheek piece, and a HIGH gloss finish - hated both. BTW people laugh at my deer rifle, until I swap off the 1.75-5x scope, put on the 36x, and clean their clocks with my "hunting rifle" (well, at least when I was practicing)

Benchrest rifles are "odd" beasts - "Light" rifles are less than 11 lbs, heavy are 14 if I remember right. The shooters will do lots of things to trim ounces from things like the stocks, trigger guards and the like, so that they can put it into the action and barrel. For instance, back when I was interested, one mfg came out with a new 36x scope. A bit more rugged than the Leuopold 36x which is know to be more fragile. Never caught on, because it weighed about 3 oz more

One day, I'll find a M700 to work on, or maybe build something out of a Stole action. I have the machine shop to do it

The M40A3 utilizes a bipod.

Just for the record, these were ARMY "snipers" Jack is talking about, not MARINEs. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

The Designated Marksman program was initially at the platoon and squad level. Not for detached sniper duty.

El Salvadoran sniper training goes back to the days of the "Double Nickel" training program in the early to mid 1980s. They've proved themselves very efficacious in Iraq.

Britt

All,
These guys were Army. Not USMC. The Marines tend to know who to kill.

Thanks for the replys and the education.

Perhaps in a few weeks I will dredge up another story.

Later guys