![]() Marine Corps snipers struck fear in the hearts of their enemies in the jungles of Vietnam. Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.These three snipers had nearly 300 confirmed kills, but what makes them examples for Marines today is more than their skills in battle.Among those who serve as examples are Charles Mawhinney, Eric England, and Carlos Hathcock, three of the deadliest Marine Corps snipers of the Vietnam War.Modern Marine Corps scout snipers are required to study their history, to learn from the outstanding snipers that came before them.If you have any thoughts or comments on this article, we’d love to hear them.Carlos Hathcock, one of the most famous Marine Corps snipers in history. Using a M21 rifle and ART scope Staff Sergeant Adelbert Waldron showed what a skilled marksman and hunter could do becoming the highest-scoring and most decorated sniper of the war in Vietnam. It proved to be a very fast and simple system to use under actual battlefield conditions. So all the sniper had to do was bracket his target (which automatically adjusted the elevation), adjust for wind/lead and fire. Simultaneously the magnification ring cammed the scope up or down, automatically adjusting the range. ![]() Leatherwood and manufactured by Redfield, this optic allowed a sniper to easily range a man by zooming the magnification in or out until he fit between two marks on the reticle. Mounted to the side of the receiver was a unique sniper scope, the ART. Waldron with wife, Betty, and her two children look over Bert’s second Distinguished Service Cross presented at Fort McPherson, September 1970. Selected rifles received match-grade barrels, unitized gas systems, trimmed handguards, reamed flash suppressors, triggers were adjusted to slightly over 4.5 pounds, National Match sights were fitted and actions glass bedded. An offshoot of a straight competition rifle, the US Army sniper program benefited directly from technology developed by the ‘yellow glasses’. The M21 sniper rifle itself though was little more than an M14 built to National Match specifications topped with a scope. The M21 was developed during Vietnam and remained the standard US Army sniper rifle until replaced by the bolt-action M24 in 1988. This combination would be designated the M21 in 1972. The XM21 sniper rifle he carried was basically a M14 National Match topped with a 3-9x Adjustable Ranging Telescope (ART). His feats included nine kills in one night using an AN/PVS-2 Starlight scope and a 900 meter shot from a moving naval vessel. As a member of Company B, 3d Battalion, 60th Infantry Regiment of the 9th Infantry Division he found himself hunting with the ‘Brown Water’ Navy in the Mekong Delta. Credited with 109 kills Staff Sergeant Adelbert Waldron proved an M14 based sniper rifle could run with the USMC’s Model 70 Winchester target rifles and newer Remington M40 sniper rifles in actual combat. Not only was a relatively unknown US Army Staff Sergeant the highest-scoring sniper in Vietnam, but he did it with a semi-automatic XM21. Fortier, Senior Field Editorĭue to the USMC’s impressive PR campaign, I’m sure many readers would just assume the top sniper during our war in Vietnam was a Marine wielding an M40.
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