is a topic full of controversy and mystery, conjuring up a range of attitudes and images.
Hollywood has done its share to contribute to this fascination. An entire generation has
grown up playing hyperrealistic video games that simulate combat sniper operations. Ask a
middle-aged mother from New England and you might get a recap of an old Cheers episode
where Sam Malone and his friends lure Dr. Crane out to the woods for an old-fashioned
“snipe hunt,” an old-school practical joke that leaves the mark deep in the woods with a sack,
making clucking noises and hoping the elusive snipe will come jumping into the bag.
Darker connections to the term may remind some of the so-called Beltway Snipers, John
Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, who terrorized the D.C. area in 2002, shooting
innocent victims, and were eventually caught after one of the largest manhunts in modern
history. Veterans of the armed forces may remember quiet men who kept mostly to
themselves, carried scoped weapons, and often disappeared into the night, sometimes not
returning for days on end.
The term sniper has a long history. In this chapter we will trace its roots back to the early
days of marksmen, riflemen, sharpshooters, and hunters who well understood the power and
potential that one well-aimed shot can have.
The projectile—an object propelled with great force—has played an important role in
warfare since the beginning of time. Slings, spears, bows and arrows, crossbows, then later muskets and rifles, are all tools with specific applications, relevant for their particular time
periods.
The bow begat the crossbow, which dominated the battlefield during the Middle Ages and
was so effective that Pope Innocent II decreed the weapon “unfit for combat amongst
Christians.” This edict did not apply to combat with Muslims, however, so when King Richard
the Lionheart took his army toward Jerusalem during the Third Crusade, he was well
equipped with crossbowmen. His smaller force held off many attacks from Saladin’s larger
forces, thanks to their ability to maintain an accurate and rapid rate of fire.
Ironically, it was as King Richard was returning home from his failed crusade in 1199 that
he was struck down by the very weapon his pope had sought to ban: Hit by a crossbow bolt
from the ramparts of a castle he had under siege in Limousin, France, he later died of the
wound. King Richard’s death was the result of a medieval sniper conducting what would later
become common practice on the battlefield: directly targeting leadership to affect command
and control and demoralize those still alive.
The Chinese began using gunpowder in the ninth century, but it didn’t become important to
European superpowers until much later, entering Europe in the thirteenth century, most likely
through Arab trading routes. At first it was employed mostly in large cannons and siege
engines, monstrous machines that hurled massive balls designed to knock down walls.
Over the next several hundred years technological improvements were made both to the
powder and to the weapons in which it was used, developed from knowledge gained in the
field by those who fought around the continent and throughout the world.
The flintlock musket eventually became a mainstay of the British and European armies,
followed by the matchlock and then the wheel-lock mechanism, a development some believe
was invented by Leonardo da Vinci.
The difference between a rifle and a musket is that a musket has a smooth bore, whereas in
a rifle, spiral grooves or “rifling” are cut into the inside of the barrel, imparting a spinning
motion to the projectile, stabilizing its flight and allowing it to fly farther and with much
greater accuracy. This gyroscopic stability of a spinning projectile had been known since the
time of the bow and arrow; fins or vanes made of feathers or other materials, called fletching,
were added onto arrows and crossbow bolts on a cant to impart spin and improve accuracy
and range. It didn’t take long for gunsmiths to apply this same knowledge to modern weapons
In their early stages, the musket and rifle had separate and specific applications. The
smoothbore musket remained the primary weapon for infantry because of its capacity to
provide a trained soldier with a faster rate of fire. The ammunition for a musket was made to
be slightly smaller than the diameter of the barrel, so the accurate range was most likely less
than ninety meters. In a rifle, the ball had to be large enough to span the entire diameter of the
barrel in order to engage the barrel’s rifled grooves; because of this, the rifle took longer to
load than the musket. In addition, the rifled grooves were prone to fouling from the
gunpowder, so the barrel would often have to be cleaned between shots.
Fortunately for military tacticians of the time, the shooting style of the day was volley fire,
that is, engaging large numbers of massed troops in a line shooting into other massed troops,one line firing while the other was reloading. In other words, it wasn’t necessary to aim at any
specific individual but simply at a mass of soldiers who would remain visible at close range
even through all the smoke. After several rounds of volley fire, a bayonet charge could be
expected.
Put yourself there for a moment:
You’re shoulder to shoulder, wearing a wool jacket and hat, sweating like a pig under the
hot sun. Your heavy musket is loaded, your hands are sweaty from nerves and the heat, and
your mouth is dry. Cannons fire from your front and rear, and as you march forward, lines to
your left and right are decimated by artillery fire. Smoke hovers over the field, fires burn in
the distance, and men can be heard screaming in pain in all directions. Your ears are ringing,
yet you maintain your cadence as you have been trained to do, taking direction from the
officer to your flank.
Soon a blur of color appears through the haze, and a halt is called. You hear the command
to “make ready!” and you cock your weapon and stand at the high port (weapon held aloft
with both hands) as you hear a similar call shouted across the field.
At “Take aim!” you point your weapon toward the mass of troops.
“Fire!”
Loud claps of thunder seem to engulf the entire area as flashes from the gunpowder ignite
in the muskets’ pans, barrels erupt, and smoke fills the air. Men drop to your right and your
left. Blood is everywhere, covering you as you seek to remember the natural rhythm of the
reload. You measure the powder down the barrel, a different amount to the flash pan, place
your ball and wadding in, ram it home, recock, and ready again.
To a modern soldier, especially a well-trained sniper, these tactics seem insane. How could
anyone stand at such close range, receiving round after round of fire from the enemy, without
seeking some sort of cover, or at the very least lowering his profile by getting down in the
prone position?
The discipline of these troops, their dedication to duty and their fellow soldiers, and their
pride and love of country truly must have been incredible. It is hard to imagine, if not
impossible. A modern military expression comes to mind: “If you’re going to be stupid,
you’d better be tough.” Sounds about right.
While rifles were also common at the time, they were usually more expensive and were
typically used in the countryside for hunting and by marksmen for sport and competition.
With the discovery of the New World and the rapid colonization of new land by the European
superpowers, the rifle soon proved invaluable for settling new and inhospitable country and
forced old-world military tacticians to reevaluate their methods.
Fortunately for military tacticians of the time, the shooting style of the day was volley fire,
that is, engaging large numbers of massed troops in a line shooting into other massed troops,one line firing while the other was reloading. In other words, it wasn’t necessary to aim at any
specific individual but simply at a mass of soldiers who would remain visible at close range
even through all the smoke. After several rounds of volley fire, a bayonet charge could be
expected.
Put yourself there for a moment:
You’re shoulder to shoulder, wearing a wool jacket and hat, sweating like a pig under the
hot sun. Your heavy musket is loaded, your hands are sweaty from nerves and the heat, and
your mouth is dry. Cannons fire from your front and rear, and as you march forward, lines to
your left and right are decimated by artillery fire. Smoke hovers over the field, fires burn in
the distance, and men can be heard screaming in pain in all directions. Your ears are ringing,
yet you maintain your cadence as you have been trained to do, taking direction from the
officer to your flank.
Soon a blur of color appears through the haze, and a halt is called. You hear the command
to “make ready!” and you cock your weapon and stand at the high port (weapon held aloft
with both hands) as you hear a similar call shouted across the field.
At “Take aim!” you point your weapon toward the mass of troops.
“Fire!”
Loud claps of thunder seem to engulf the entire area as flashes from the gunpowder ignite
in the muskets’ pans, barrels erupt, and smoke fills the air. Men drop to your right and your
left. Blood is everywhere, covering you as you seek to remember the natural rhythm of the
reload. You measure the powder down the barrel, a different amount to the flash pan, place
your ball and wadding in, ram it home, recock, and ready again.
To a modern soldier, especially a well-trained sniper, these tactics seem insane. How could
anyone stand at such close range, receiving round after round of fire from the enemy, without
seeking some sort of cover, or at the very least lowering his profile by getting down in the
prone position?
The discipline of these troops, their dedication to duty and their fellow soldiers, and their
pride and love of country truly must have been incredible. It is hard to imagine, if not
impossible. A modern military expression comes to mind: “If you’re going to be stupid,
you’d better be tough.” Sounds about right.
While rifles were also common at the time, they were usually more expensive and were
typically used in the countryside for hunting and by marksmen for sport and competition.
With the discovery of the New World and the rapid colonization of new land by the European
superpowers, the rifle soon proved invaluable for settling new and inhospitable country and
forced old-world military tacticians to reevaluate their methods.
The Germans developed the leading rifle of the day, commonly called the Jaeger (hunter)
rifle. Its short barrel fired a .50-caliber round or larger and was quite accurate for its day.
Many of these weapons found their way to the colonies with German settlers, and in the
heavily German area of Pennsylvania the Jaeger rifle evolved into what is now called the
Pennsylvania long rifle, later called the Kentucky rifle when they were used by Kentucky
sharpshooters against the British at the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812.
Life in the New World was hard. There was more land and more open space, which meant it
took longer and more accurate shots to put meat on the table. The hunters and woodsmen of
the day also had to adapt to and blend in with their environment, learn the art of camouflage,
and develop stalking skills, patience, and the ability to make a successful kill with a single
shot. All these skills would come into play in the wars to come and are still used today by the
modern military sniper.
Prior to the American Revolution, several conflicts in the New World gave rise to evolving
tactics and weapons as well as a new type of soldier—the ranger.
Rangers were woodsmen and hunters who operated in small units outside the safe confines
of villages and forts. They engaged both hostile Native Americans and European forces that
encroached on the new colonies. These men traveled light and fast, shedding weight and
excess gear wherever possible, and adopted the fighting and raiding tactics of the Indians theyfought against—guerrilla warfare in its earliest forms.
The skills inherent to the success of these units were passed on to the next generation, prior
to the onset of the American Revolution. One early student who received the skills of these
early Indian hunters was a man named Robert Rogers, who later became Major Rogers andled the famous Rogers’ Rangers, formed in 1756 during the French and Indian War. His 1757
Rogers’ Rules of Ranging is an illuminating read that vividly reveals the tactics of the
conventional troops of the day. A fictionalized version of Rogers’ Rules appeared in Kenneth
Roberts’s 1937 novel Northwest Passage, as explained to the narrator by Sergeant McNott,
one of Rogers’s men:
All you need to know, I can tell you in ten minutes. I aint going to tell you twice, so
listen to what I say, and remember it! Don’t forget nothing! …
Have your musket clean as a whistle, hatchet scoured, sixty rounds powder and ball,
and be ready to march at a minute’s warning.
When you’re on the march, act the way you would if you was sneaking up on a deer.
Just remember the deer you’re hunting now ain’t going to run away if … he sees you
first. You’ll feel better afterwards if you see them first.
You got to tell the truth about what you see and what you do. You can lie all you
please when you tell other folks about the Rangers, but don’t never lie to a Ranger or
officer. There’s an army depending on us for correct information.
Always be careful! Don’t never take a chance you don’t have to.
When we’re on the march we march single file, far enough apart so one shot can’t go
through two men. If we strike swamps, or soft ground, we spread out abreast, so it’s
hard to track us. When we march, we keep moving till dark, so to give the enemy the
least possible chance at us. When we camp, half the party stays awake while the other
half sleeps. If we take prisoners, we keep ’em separate till we’ve had time to examine
’em, so they can’t cook up a story between ’em.
Don’t never march home the same way. Take a different route so you won’t be
ambushed.
No matter whether we travel in big parties or little ones, each party has to keep a
scout twenty meters ahead, twenty meters on each flank, and twenty meters in the rear,
so the main body can’t be surprised and wiped out.
Every night, when you’re on the march, you’ll be told where to meet in case we’re
surrounded [and] we have to scatter.
Don’t sit down to eat without posting sentries. Don’t sleep beyond dawn. Dawn’s when
French and Indians attack. Don’t cross a river by a regular ford, because if anybody’s
laying out for you, that’s where he’ll lay. If you find out somebody’s trailing you, make
a circle, come back onto your own tracks, and ambush the folks that aim to ambush you.
Don’t stand up when the enemy’s coming against you. Kneel down. Lie down. Hide
behind a tree. Let him come till he’s almost close enough to touch. Then let him have it,
and jump out and finish him up with your hatchet.
That’s simple enough, ain’t it?
Many of the principles above are still
During the American Revolution, British regulars were armed with what was called the
Brown Bess, a smoothbore flintlock rifle, while the Hessian mercenaries carried shortbarreled Jaeger rifles. The colonists used an assortment of weapons, including the Brown
Bess and the very accurate Pennsylvania, or Kentucky, rifle. It was the first conflict in which
sharpshooters were widely used, and it marked the beginning of the deliberate, systematic
targeting of officers and other high-value targets.
Two parallel stories embody the outcome of the war and the role of snipers during that war
—the famous “shot that was never taken” and a shot that was.
In the first, an inventor and marksman from Britain named Patrick Ferguson, then the
captain of a unit of sharpshooters, was armed with his namesake, the breech-loading
Ferguson rifle. Compared to the smoothbore musket, this rifle could maintain the same or
greater rate of fire but without the common problems with fouling and reloading (it could be
reloaded while on the move) that had plagued earlier attempts, and with amazing accuracy.
Prior to the Battle of Brandywine in September 1777, while in a hide site by a river,
Ferguson and several of his soldiers witnessed an American officer and his French hussar
cavalry companion ride within ninety meters, stop, and take into account the surrounding
area.
Ferguson ordered his men to dispatch the two—easy shots with the Ferguson rifle—but
then rescinded the order, considering it ungentlemanly to deliberately target fellow officers
who were not directly bearing arms against them. In the pitched battle that followed, Ferguson
was injured, and while recovering he learned that the target he had so chivalrously allowed to
pass was none other than General George Washington.
In direct counterpoint to Ferguson, the Colonials had Daniel Morgan, a talented tactician
and marksman (rumored to be a distant cousin of Daniel Boone, the famous frontiersman and
Indian fighter), who led specialized groups of shooters.
During the initial stages of the war, Morgan’s Sharpshooters made a 950-kilometer forced
march from Pennsylvania to Boston to engage the British.
Armed with Pennsylvania long rifles, Morgan’s Eleventh Virginia Regiment of four
hundred engaged in fierce fighting in October 1777 at the second battle of Saratoga. A British
flanking unit led by General Simon Fraser was under heavy fire from Morgan’s rifle corps,
suffering devastating casualties and the disintegration of order and discipline.
As General Fraser galloped along in front of his lines to bolster his troops’ morale and
direct a counteroffensive, the American general Benedict Arnold gave Colonel Morgan the
command to target Fraser and bring him down immediately.
No doubt several shooters were tracking and firing at Fraser as soon as the order was
given, but it was a young sharpshooter named Timothy Murphy, perched in a tree and
shooting at a range of approximately three hundred meters, who was credited with the kill.
With their leadership gone, the British and Hessian troops folded and the Colonials won the
day. It was a huge victory for the Americans, one that was celebrated even across the pond in
Paris, France, at the time Britain’s enemy.
Both Ferguson and Morgan found their way back into pivotal battles later on in the
Revolutionary War. Ferguson met his end at the Battle of Kings Mountain—another hugevictory for the Continental army—and Morgan, later promoted to general, won a resounding
victory at the Battle of Cowpens against Colonel Tarleton, where legend has it he told his
men, “Aim for the epaulettes.”
Morgan continued promoting the use of sharpshooters throughout the remainder of his
career and was instrumental in modifying long rifles to be fitted for bayonets, the lack of
which had been one major weakness the British had exploited during the War of
Independence.
In 1929 FDR dedicated a statue in New York State to Timothy Murphy and during the
ceremony he said the following which should resonate with soldiers everywhere:
This country has been made by Timothy Murphys, the men in the ranks. Conditions here
called for the qualities of the heart and head that Tim Murphy had in abundance. Our
histories should tell us more of the men in the ranks, for it was to them, more than to the
generals, that we were indebted for our military victories
The turn of the nineteenth century saw the rise of a military leader who brought with him a
tactic that had not been used on a grand scale until his daring push across the European
continent. Napoleon Bonaparte firmly believed in what would later be called blitzkrieg
warfare: fast-moving, independent units rendering death and destruction, maneuvering
quickly, operating independently, and wielding accurate rifle fire to its utmost potential.
To counter Napoleon, the British sent in the newly formed Ninety-fifth Rifles and the
Sixtieth Regiment of Foot (later named the Rifle Brigade and the Kings Royal Rifle Corps), a
brigade of the finest shots the crown could muster.
Using the new Baker rifle, these units went head-to-head with Napoleon. It’s been said that
the modern sniper expression “one shot, one kill” can be attributed to these marksmen.
These units had forsworn the old chivalrous code of battle and now specifically targeted
officers, bugle man, drummers, and artillerymen. Many battles fought by these new units
produced casualty ratios as high as one officer for every five infantrymen killed, an
astounding number considering the structure and tactics of standard military units. Once again
the effectiveness of quality shooters proved their worth in the field.
A small victory for the French, despite Napoleon’s eventual defeat, came at the hands of a
sniper posted in the rigging of the French ship Redoubtable.
In October 1805 Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson was in command of H.M.S. Victory and
engaged in a battle at close quarters with the French. It was a common tactic for the French,
Spanish, and Portuguese during that era to send snipers aloft into the rigging to kill officers
and take out gun crews. The British, allegedly due to Admiral Nelson’s strategies, had not
opted for those tactics and really hadn’t needed to because Nelson had successfully crushed
any naval opposition up until that point.
From a range of less than one hundred meters, Nelson was brought down by a French
sniper, and despite the British winning the day, they lost their most seasoned naval
commander.
Leading up to the Civil War, there were several technological advances that changed the
way battles could be fought, along with vast improvements in the reliability and range of the
modern rifle.
One of the first of these significant innovations was the development and implementation of
the percussion cap, as opposed to the old flintlock system.
The expressions “flash in the pan” and “hang fire” both come from the antiquated and
unreliable flintlock firing systems, where the flint ignited powder in the flash pan, sending a
flame through the touchhole into the barrel. A “flash in the pan” occurred when a clogged
touchhole caused only the primer charge to ignite: flash, but no bang. A “hang fire” resulted
when the main charge at first failed to ignite but left a spark smoldering in the touchhole,
which after a completely unpredictable number of seconds might suddenly explode, sending
its bullet out the barrel. Not good.
In addition to solving these problems, the percussion cap also did away with the long
follow-through required after a shot, that is, having to keep one’s sight picture and alignment
perfect for several seconds as successive charges finally sent the ball out of the barrel—easier
said than done when holding a long, heavy weapon and taking effective fire from the enemy.
With the percussion cap, misfires became extremely uncommon and wet weather became
almost irrelevant to loading and firing.
The percussion system used a small cap about the size of an eraser head, placed on top of a
nipple with a pinhole that led directly into the barrel. When the hammer hit the cap, the flame
was directed through the hole of the nipple straight into the barrel, where it ignited the main
charge. Many of the flintlock rifles of the day were converted so that they could be used with
this new ignition system.
The next major breakthrough changed ballistics forever. In 1847, Captain Claude Minié
redesigned a round that had been originated in Britain but not adopted there. The minié ball isa conical-cylindrical self-expanding lead bullet that looks like a modern round. The original
design had an expanding iron cup in its base that would be driven up into the lead and force it
to engage the rifling grooves. Too often the iron cup would punch right through the lead,
sending a mess of shrapnel out the end of the barrel.
An American named Burton perfected the design, although he never got name recognition,
and the round that would forever be known as the minié ball would soon play a pivotal role in
the bloodiest conflict the United States has ever seen.
The results of this new round were phenomenal. Now the average soldier was capable of
accurate fire out past 270 meters and volley fire past 900. Unfortunately, the tacticians leading
troops during Europe’s Crimean War and America’s Civil War still employed the old tactic of
massing troops shoulder to shoulder and exchanging fire at close range.
When I try to picture a modern SEAL platoon being ordered to form a line and shoot
offhand (i.e., standing) at another platoon a few hundred meters away, I can imagine whoever
delivered that order being the first one shot … and not necessarily by someone on the other
side.
