Crimson Red Sports

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQRpAxGVg4M

Ted Gundy (former WW II), Army sniper, was honored by the Army Marksmanship Unit with an honorary black hat (only 8 given previously to non-members of the unit).

Then he goes to the range and nails a target center mass at 300 yds using his WWII era rifle.

Then he does the incredible and places 3 head shots with about a 5 inch grouping on a target at 1000 yards.

Aside from the unbelievable video and performance, the emotion and appreciation he shows throughout the video  (60+ years after his service years) reaffirms so many positives about the honor that serving one's country truly is.  It truly is a one of a kind profession that instills a sense of pride that only grows stronger as the years pass.

Two thumbs up PVT Gundy, you're still making us proud.  If parts of this don't strike an emotion, you probably suck as an American.

Hello Che.  Glad to see you.  Just gave you a cred to pad your pocket, plus thank you for this interesting thread.

I have meant to get over here more, but have been tied up in the crootin board at the wooly.

I'm really glad we have the two boards which provide the best of both worlds that composed the former TS.

Thanks for the bump.

I had posted once before and loved the ed karma level so much I was really reluctant to lose it so soon, but I really like what they did for this old soldier. 

I saw a special on snipers on one of the military channels the other night.

They featured some kid who killed 19 insurgents in one day as they tried to cross an alley way.  He was hitting moving targets at 600 yards.  After the story they brought him in to the range, he was retired, but repeated the 600 yard moving target shot.

That's sick.

Wow.  Love that story.

(http://www.specialoperations.com/Schools/Army_Sniper/SNIPER08.jpg)

I always forget to calculate curvature of the earth.

Sounds to me like those guys had eyesight above and beyond 20/20. I would hate to be in their sights. RTR!

Dont forget about the Coriolis effect too.   :)

BTW, I just finished an excellent book about rifles and hunting in Africa (circa 1915): African Letters, by Bror Blixen.  Much about choices of rifles for hunting big game, and a well-written text.  Recommended for all safari gilmers.  :P

I dont think I could kill an animal unless I had to. 

We had a lion escape from an Exotic Pets place nearby. Hunting got pretty exciting for a few days. Never heard any more about the lion-- someone has a nice new rug.

This book is about Bror taking problem elephants mostly (those attacking farms) and safari stories.  It's not a slaughter account of his trophies.  He's quite modest.  We're talking early 20th century.

I am trying to find the story of the guy I mentioned above, but I stumbled across this about the longest kill shot on record.  It's from another message board and posted entirely and there is no link, so ...

"AR RAMADI, Iraq (Jan. 02, 2005) -- 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, 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, 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 reservists 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." "

US Marine Sniper records longes confirmed kill (http://www.fireblades.org/forums/off-topic/32955-marine-sniper-records-longest-confirmed-kill-iraq.html)

Here we go.   This mentions him.  He killed 32 in 13 days in fallujah.

"As an American military convoy rumbled along a dusty street in Habbaniyah, Iraq, 50 miles west of Baghdad, a silver van eased to the curb. Preoccupied with operating their heavy trucks, the U.S. Marine drivers didn’t notice the van and its civilian occupants.

Fortunately the convoy was overwatched by guardian angels: a Marine sniper and his spotter atop a nearby roof. Alerted by his spotter, the Marine marksman shifted his 10X optic to the silver van—and discovered the driver videotaping the convoy while his passenger raised a scoped rifle! As one, the Marine sniper and his spotter fired, shooting dead the cameraman and his sniping partner. By itself this was a dramatic accomplishment, but there was more: Pried from the dead terrorist’s hands was a Marine-issue M40A3 sniper rifle—taken from a Marine sniper killed by insurgents in August 2005. It was now back where it belonged.

The Habbaniyah engagement was a limited but significant milestone in this unnoticed war-within-a-war, a quiet triumph of skill and courage, strategy and technology, which yielded a victory as great as that of British snipers who wrested domination of the World War I trenches from Germany’s snipers in 1915. "

More here (http://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/winning-sniper-war/)

Great job, General.  E-cred upped.

Remeber these special snipers. It's not like shooting a Moose or deer, these have to make a kill to save lives. When he lies down to sight in his target he has to have coolness to know if he misses our troops could die as a result. God Bless all our troops. RTR!

I think I saw that show a couple of months back.  Did he shoot one of the guys through a cement wall?  The show I saw had that.  He saw the guys sneak around the corner and they stopped right behind a wall.  He could see both exits where they had to come out, and was watching for them.  After a while they never showed, so he decided to take a shot through the wall.  He guessed about where their head would be and squeezed off a round.  The next thing he saw was that the wall behind them was sprayed red.  He never actually saw the guy after he hid behind the wall.

1. I just hope I can LIVE to see 84.

2. If I do, I just hope I am able to move around.

Kudos to this guy on keeping his skills sharp all these years. 

I dont remember that part, but I missed the beginning.  How scary would it be to be, to be up against one of these guys.   :o