Longest confirmed kill....
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  1. #1

    Longest confirmed kill....

    I heard that a Marine scout/sniper team took out an insurgent mortar team at an unbelievable distance with a Barrett .50 cal. What's the scoop?


  2. #2
    You Marines love to keep me busy

    Marine Sniper Credited with Longest Confirmed Kill in Iraq

    Story by Cpl. Paul W. Leicht

    AR RAMADI, Iraq -- Seen through a twenty-power spot scope, terrorists scrambled to deliver another mortar round into the tube. Across the Euphrates River from a concealed rooftop, the Marine sniper breathed gently and then squeezed a few pounds of pressure to the delicate trigger of the M40A3 sniper rifle in his grasp.

    The rifle's crack froze the booming Fallujah battle like a photograph. As he moved the bolt back to load another round of 7.62mm ammunition, the sniper's spotter confirmed the terrorist went down from the shot mere seconds before the next crack of the rifle dropped another.

    It wasn't the sniper's first kill in Iraq, but it was one for the history books.

    On Nov. 11, 2004, while coalition forces fought to wrest control of Fallujah from a terrorist insurgency, Marine scout snipers with Company B, 1st Battalion, 23rd Marine Regiment, applied their basic infantry skills and took them to a higher level.

    "From the information we have, our chief scout sniper has the longest confirmed kill in Iraq so far," said Capt. Shayne McGinty, weapons platoon commander for "Bravo" Co. "In Fallujah there were some bad guys firing mortars at us and he took them out from more than 1,000 yards."

    During the battle for the war-torn city, 1/23 Marine scout snipers demonstrated with patience, fearless initiative and wits that well-trained Marines could be some of the deadliest weapons in the world.

    "You really don't have a threat here until it presents itself," said Sgt. Herbert B. Hancock, chief scout sniper, 1/23, and a 35-year-old police officer from Bryan, Texas, whose specialized training and skill helped save the lives of his fellow Marines during the battle. "In Fallujah we really didn't have that problem because it seemed like everybody was shooting at us. If they fired at us we just dropped them."

    Stepping off on day one of the offensive from the northern edge of the Fallujah peninsula, the Marine Reserves of 1/23, with their scout snipers, moved to secure a little island, but intense enemy fire near the bridgeheads limited their advance. Insurgents littered the city, filtering in behind their positions with indirect mortar and sniper fire.

    "The insurgents started figuring out what was going on and started hitting us from behind, hitting our supply lines," said Hancock in his syrupy Texas drawl. "Originally we set up near a bridge and the next day we got a call on our radio that our company command post was receiving sniper fire. We worked our way back down the peninsula trying to find the sniper, but on the way down we encountered machinegun fire and what sounded like grenade launchers or mortars from across the river."

    With a fire team of grunts pinned down nearby, Hancock and his spotter, Cpl. Geoffrey L. Flowers, a May 2004 graduate of Scout Sniper School, helped them out by locating the source of the enemy fire.

    "After locating the gun position we called in indirect fire to immediate suppress that position and reduced it enough so we could also punch forward and get into a house," explained Hancock. "We got in the house and started to observe the area from which the insurgents were firing at us. They hit us good for about twenty minutes and were really hammering us. Our indirect fire (landed on) them and must have been effective because they didn't shoot anymore after that."

    Continuing south down the peninsula to link up with the Bravo Co. command post, Hancock and Flowers next set up on a big building, taking a couple shots across the river at some suspected enemy spotters in vehicles.

    "The insurgents in the vehicles were spotting for the mortar rounds coming from across the river so we were trying to locate their positions to reduce them as well as engage the vehicles," said Hancock. "There were certain vehicles in areas where the mortars would hit. They would show up and then stop and then the mortars would start hitting us and then the vehicles would leave so we figured out that they were spotters. We took out seven of those guys in one day."



    Later, back at the company command post, enemy mortar rounds once again began to impact.

    "There were several incoming rockets and mortars to our compound that day and there was no way the enemy could have seen it directly, so they probably had some spotters out there," said 22-year-old Flowers who is a college student from Pearland, Texas.



    " Our (company commander) told us to go find where the mortars were coming from and take them out so we went back out," remembered Hancock. "We moved south some more and linked up with the rear elements of our first platoon. Then we got up on a building and scanned across the river. We looked out of the spot scope and saw about three to five insurgents manning a 120mm mortar tube. We got the coordinates for their position and set up a fire mission. We decided that when the rounds came in that I would engage them with the sniper rifle. We got the splash and there were two standing up looking right at us. One had a black (outfit) on. I shot and he dropped. Right in front of him another got up on his knees looking to try and find out where we were so I dropped him too. After that our mortars just hammered the position, so we moved around in on them."

    The subsequent fire for effect landed right on the insurgent mortar position.

    "We adjusted right about fifty yards where there were two other insurgents in a small house on the other side of the position," said Flowers. "There was some brush between them and the next nearest building about 400 yards south of where they were at and we were about 1,000 yards from them so I guess they thought we could not spot them. Some grunts were nearby with binoculars but they could not see them, plus they are not trained in detailed observation the way we are. We know what to look for such as target indicators and things that are not easy to see."

    Hancock and Flowers then scanned several areas that they expected fire from, but the enemy mortars had silenced.

    "After we had called in indirect fire and after all the adjustments from our mortars, I got the final 8-digit grid coordinates for the enemy mortar position, looked at our own position using GPS and figured out the distance to the targets we dropped to be 1,050 yards," said Flowers with a grin. "This time we were killing terrorism from more than 1,000 yards."

    http://www.mfr.usmc.mil/Archive/2005.01/sniperkill.html

    Ellie


  3. #3
    Ellie, that is great!

    Thanks


  4. #4
    ooooooooooooooorahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Outstanding..


  5. #5
    "One Shot...One Kill."
    SEMPER FI
    drumcorpssnare


  6. #6
    The Telegraph reports:

    Gazing through the telescopic sight of his M24 rifle, Staff Sgt Jim Gilliland, leader of Shadow sniper team, fixed his eye on the Iraqi insurgent who had just killed an American soldier.

    His quarry stood nonchalantly in the fourth-floor bay window of a hospital in battle-torn Ramadi, still clasping a long-barrelled Kalashnikov. Instinctively allowing for wind speed and bullet drop, Shadow’s commander aimed 12 feet high.

    A single shot hit the Iraqi in the chest and killed him instantly. It had been fired from a range of 1,250 meters (1367 yards), well beyond the capacity of the powerful Leupold sight, accurate to 1,000 metres.

    “I believe it is the longest confirmed kill in Iraq with a 7.62mm rifle,” said Staff Sgt Gilliland, 28, who hunted squirrels in Double Springs, Alabama from the age of five before progressing to deer - and then people.

    “He was visible only from the waist up. It was a one in a million shot. I could probably shoot a whole box of ammunition and never hit him again.”

    Later that day, Staff Sgt Gilliland found out that the dead soldier was Staff Sgt Jason Benford, 30, a good friend.

    The insurgent was one of between 55 and 65 he estimates that he has shot dead in less than five months, putting him within striking distance of sniper legends such as Carlos Hathcock, who recorded 93 confirmed kills in Vietnam.

    M24 Rifle manufactured by Remington.

    Leupold scopes.

    Carlos Hathcock.


  7. #7
    Unf**king believable! That just makes me proud to be Marine.


  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by The1stSgt
    Unf**king believable! That just makes me proud to be Marine.
    Too bad Staff Sgt Jim Gilliland is an Army dude...
    Oh well.



  9. #9
    Well, I bet SSG Gilliland has a secret desire in his heart to be a Marine.

    As a matter of fact, when he made that shot he probably was asking himself, "what would a Marine sniper do here".

    Just joking........ still a great shot, even if a GI Joe made it.


  10. #10
    Going back a few years...in my many years of Civil War research, I once read about a long-range kill by an officer from the 147th NY Vol. Inf.
    Seems this guy was a mathemetician of sorts, whose hobby was ballistics. He had purchased a custom rifle in Oswego, NY with a 23lb. octaganal barrel.
    Anyway, his Regt. was camped across a river from the enemy. This officer loaded and set up one morning, in hopes of picking off a Confederate. He sees a rebel officer come out of his tent. With his 'brass-scoped' 'bull-barrel'
    'sniper-rifle'...he squeezes off a round.
    Then, the Confederate officer steps back into his tent, grabs his shaving gear, and steps back out of the tent.

    "THWACK!"

    DEAD!
    drumcorpssnare


  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by The1stSgt
    Well, I bet SSG Gilliland has a secret desire in his heart to be a Marine.

    As a matter of fact, when he made that shot he probably was asking himself, "what would a Marine sniper do here".

    Just joking........ still a great shot, even if a GI Joe made it.
    LOL.


  12. #12
    drum===----= Almost sounds like he was using a 30-40 krag. On long range shots you could eat your lunch waiting for the strike of the bullit. But when it hit the animal it was dead.


  13. #13
    Marine Free Member FistFu68's Avatar
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    WHAT'S THIS ESTIMATE ON NUMBER OF ENEMY KILL'S? DURING MY 'ERA THEY WERE CONFIRMED,OR GETTING REALLY PERSONAL(STEP-ON'S)!!!


  14. #14
    Marine Free Member 10thzodiac's Avatar
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    You guys are taking the fun out of it, what ever happened to the .22 behind the ear ?


  15. #15
    Marine Free Member FistFu68's Avatar
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    THAT STILL HAPPEN'S,#10;EVERY SATURDAY NIGHT!IN THE ALLEY'S OFF OF RUSH STREET!!! MERRY~CHRISTMAS~MARINE!


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