Why did military snipers use the .30-06?

[Bushman]

I just picked up the book Marine Sniper by Charles Henderson detailing the life of Carlos Hathcock and his preferred weapon was a Winchester M70 with a 10 power Unerl scope. I know that Carlos won the 1000 yard Wimbledon Cup shoot in 1965 so he could obviously shoot, but why would the preferred sniper round in Viet Nam be the .30-06 when so many other hotter, flatter shooting cartridges would have been available? It's not like snipers were shooting with standard issue ball ammunition and in Viet Nam the duty round was the .308 military equivalent. I also ran into a marine sniper over in MI. on a family visit and he used a .30-06 too. Why not a .300 WM or a 6.5-300 WM or even a .270 for flatter trajectory? Nothing wrong with a .30-06, but for ultra long range shooting I tend to think that back in the 60' and 70's that there might have been something even better.

The History Channel had a good show about sniping yesterday and now guys are using semi-auto .50 caliber rifles and shooting out to a mile! They interviewed one Canadian sniper who has the longest confirmed kill at 1.5 miles.

[stinky]

First off, I don't know. But I'll give you several noted possibilities.

They were operating in a combat zone and AVAILABLE ammo was a plus. A .300 WM and a 6.5 were probably handloaded for matches, whereas they could order match '06 and it had acceptalbe accuracy and would work just fine (more on accuracy later). If they couldn't get match '06, ball '06 would work, in a pinch. A case of ammo goes a long way. Now, they were likely tinkering w/their ammo....when they had time to do so. But, components didn't grow on trees, wheras they could pull a bullet, tamper/adjust the powder load for uniformity and/or size and put a match bullet back on, rather easily.

The reason they used '06 over 308 is velocity and range....the same reason you suggested .300 WM. Now, it is commonly believed that .308 is so much more accurate than the ;06 and that the '06 shoots like a shotgun, BY COMPARISON. Dumbest thing that I ever heard. I suppose that the .308 has an edge, but the dif is a about an inch at 1,000 yards (a tenth at 100yds) and most folks will just have to take your word on it (as they have no idea and you can't prove by their targets). In short, the '06 is plenty accurate and it pushes bullets faster and farther than a .308....FACT!!!

If they were going to shoot a 6.5, the the one to shoot was a 6.5-08 (which wasn't invented yet but the long 6.5 bullets really buck the wind)...but anyway, I think that it likely gets back to available bullets.

The 150 grain '06 load shoots as flat, w/the same velocity as a 130 out of a .270. Gains are made w/longer, heavier bullets that have a higher BC. They are not shooting at a prairie dog. They are shooting at a target that is 3 feet tall and any hit in that 3 feet is considered a bulls-eye hit, so bullet drop is not that big of a factor. The chest is a foot tall, from the base of the neck to the bottom of the chest bone/sternum. If you smack the sternum w/a bullet, anywhere in that foot, w/a wind drift of 6" to any side, it completes the mission. (that would be a one foot square target, OK 12 inches by 8 inches). At 400 yds, if you adjust for drop, a sniper can hit you in the noggin. Iif he misjudges the drop and only hits you in the neck, he has the spine and two juggulars to hit, if he misses them, then that guy is still going to die...slwoly and painfully (the NV didn't have any helicopters to wisk their troops off to a hospital and their health care stank).

Another thing to think about is the noise, and dust, smoke caused by the rifles discharge. So, a magnum's blast is just harder to hide.

Something better than an '06...did you actually say that.. What were you thinking ; )

[Greybeard]

My elk hunting partner was an army sniper. He used a .300 Win. mag. 165 grain, same rifle and scope. He did not like the scope however and switched to a commercial Leupy 3x9, always set to 9x. His picture was in Time magazine (tall skinny dude) with a bandolier of ears across his chest. Major came into his camp and ordered him to bury the ears.
Why 30.06 for the marines? Probably personal preference and long time familiarity with the round. They knew where it shot and it did the job. Maybe that was all they had available - standardization. Back in the sixties, a lot of guys shot .06s in the 1,000 yard matches. Greybeard/

[Altjaeger]

I saw the show and it was a good one.

In answer to your question think about the Canadian running out on the Canadian made ammo and switching to the hotter U.S. loaded ammo. He used what was available and issued.

The answer on why they used the .30-06 is that it was regulation, issue and what was available. While efforts to enforce can be varied there are regulations against use of non-issue weapons in most cases. Also when moving an Army the standardization and interoperatability of supplies and equipment is critical.

[LeeInSC]

In the early part of the war in Vietnam, there was very little formal sniper training. The .30-06 was still used in much of the competition by the Army and Marine Corps teams. The Navy teams were the first to convert their Garands to 7.62 NATO and win a national championship. The others were shooting 1903 Springfields and Model 70s with heavy barrels and Redfield aperture target sights.

So when Haithcock and others went to Vietnam, their COs picked up rifles for them from the PX. These were usually Model 70s or Remington 700 ADLs with iron sights in .30-06. The PX sold the Redfield 3-9x40mm scopes. There was plenty of proven long-range match .30-06 ammo available, as well as good 150-gr Garand ball ammo. If you look at old news photos in Life magazine, you will see these sharpshooters on patrol with with these hunting rifles.

Competition shooters from the teams were sent to Vietnam as snipers, and some were involved stateside in setting up development of sniper training schools at FT Benning and FT Bragg. John Plaster is famous for his work with the Marine Corps.

By 1968, the Marine Corps had Rock Island build up some match grade M-14s with scopes, and Remington was supplying the long action M-24 with a wood stock in 7.62 NATO. There was plenty of match ammunition for it, loaded with the 173-gr bullet developed for the .30-06. The Redfield 3-9x40 variable with the Accu-trak ranging reticle was used a lot, and it works great to 600 yards.

The .30-06 is still officially active today. The CO can order his designated sharpshooters equipped with anything that is standard.
During the mission in Kosovo, one helicopter unit was equipped with Model 700s in .30-06. Today, the M-24 is being issued in .300 Win Mag, because its M-700 long action will handle the 7.62x51mm, the .30-06, and the .300 Win Mag.

[Bushman]

One would certainly wonder why there isn't more standardization across the different branches of the military. If the .30-06 is still an active duty round today and sniper rifles can be supplied in 7.62 NATO (.308) .30-06 or .300 WM or even that big .50 BMG and don't they have a .338 caliber in test now too, you would sure think that there would be the opportunity for a supply line screw up. Aren't all the military handguns being supplied today 9mm M92 Beretta models? What happened to standardization in the sniper corps?

[LeeInSC]

From the short history I posted, you can see how the build up in Vietnam caught our infantry without enough snipers during a transition from .30-06 to 7.62x51mm. After Vietnam, the Army and Marine Corps tried to standardize on the 7.62x51, but the Army had started with a rifle built off the long action Remington Model 700, which let them use .30-06, .308, or .300 WM. The Marine Corps had started off the Remington 40X platform. The Army keep (and continues) to be supplied with the M-24 built by Remington. The USMC buys just the actions and builds their own M-40 bolt actions in .308. It wasn't until about 1985 that everything got cleared to use the Sierra 168-gr HPBT Matchking in deployment of any kind.

Special Forces and SEAL teams have always been able to use other weapons. That is why they were able to source the .300 Whisper in an upper receiver unit for the M-16, and develop the 6.8mm SPC from the .30 Remington cartridge. They continue to use HK USP 45 handguns, Wilson Combat 1911s, etc. They contract with small inventors to supply suppressors.

All this has spilled over into the regular forces while Donald Rumsfeld was Secretary of Defense. He opened things up for the military to try some of the accessories used in the civilian and police markets to modify the M-16 and M-4 rifles, without having to go through years of formal trials and all that, just to get an NSN for ordering through the GSA.

Now the handgun contract is opened up for the .45 ACP again, with Ruger, FN, HK, and Beretta competing for the new service pistol contract.

[LeeInSC]

Stinky is right about the sound of the .300 Win Mag giving away your position.

During a battle, your ears can pick out the sounds of the AK-47 and SKS, vs the M-16s and M-4s, the M1 carbine, the Thompson submachinegun, the M-60s and the M-14s. A bolt action .308 is going to blend right in with the M-60s and M-14s. The boom of a .300 Win Mag or some other oddball round is going to stand out. If it is off to the side somewhere from the main action, it really stands out - and draws mortar and machinegun fire.

In urban environments, the shots are going to be less than 400 meters, so you don't need a .300 Win Mag. You need to be able to pick up a running man or moving vehicle quickly, with only a second to two to fire, and maybe have to move to a second or third target. That's why all those M-14s were pulled out of mothballs, and now the military is buying Knights 25s in 7.62x51.

If you look at police SWAT records, the typical shot is about 30 yards, handgun distance. But they have to have the rifle and big scope just in case, and because the Secret Service and FBI have them.

[Bushman]

This has been a very enlightening thread for me as has the sniper book that I just finished. Those guys sighted in at 700 yards, which they considered a "medium range" shot. Also the highest power scope that was mentioned was a 10 power Unerl scope or an 8 power Unerl scope both with external adjustments. A 3x9 Redfield was also mounted on some of those sniper rifles that were either a Winchester M70 or a Remington M700. In contrast the Viet Cong snipers used the Russian made Mosin-Nagant with only a 3.5 power scope with a post reticle of all things. Being as hot as it was over there, the heat mirage would have probably been more of a problem for shooting with higher power scopes. Varmint hunters have told me that over 10x the heat mirage or even heat off the barrel from sustained shooting gets to be an issue. I would have thought that snipers using a .30-06 would opt for a flatter shooting 150 grain bullet, but not so. A 173 grain Sierra boat tail bullet was mentioned several times in the book. You guys are exactly right about the noise of a larger rifle cartridge. A larger round than a .30-06 would raise more dust from the concussion too which was another way that snipers would be spotted. Carlos put a cloth down on the ground under the muzzle to hide the dust raised by a shot. While Hathcock and lots of others competed in the 1000 yard national matches with the .300 WM, he still used that .30-06 in Viet Nam. That proves it is not the stretched string flat trajectory of the bullet that matters, it is knowing the trajectory of what you are shooting that counts.

I suppose there is some back biting between the military, but it said that in a lot of cases that the Army snipers just got dropped off on a high hill by a helicopter with a big gun and that is how they sniped over there. The Marine snipers were more in the bush with full camo and more into a hunting kind of mentality. No digital range finders back in the '60's so those guys had to be good at judging distance, wind and mirage to hit at those kinds of ranges.

Hathcock got kind of a raw deal I thought by having to leave the Marine Corps after 19 years and 10 months, just two months short of getting a pension. He got burned really badly during his second tour over there and was a sniper instructor here in this country. Given how some of my buddies did their time over there, you would sure think that they could have stretched Hathcock's time those extra two months.

[Sidekick]

I suppose there is some back biting between the military, but it said that in a lot of cases that the Army snipers just got dropped off on a high hill by a helicopter with a big gun and that is how they sniped over there. The Marine snipers were more in the bush with full camo and more into a hunting kind of mentality.

Not true.

[Bushman]

I'm sure that it was written from a Marine Corps perspective and the even more narrow perspective of this one particular Marine Corps sniper. You sure can't take anything away from how these guys could shoot though. When I am at the local rifle range and see a lot of mirage through my scope or the wind comes up, I quit shooting as it is a waste of ammunition shooting groups. Here is an excerpt of what snipers did:

"He watched for signs of wind-trees rustling, smoke drifting from the cooking fires next to sandbagged gun positions, the waving of the grass and weeds between him and the target. But more important than these, he watched the mirage, how it danced and boiled above the earth and tilted with the wind.

From that he could calculate the wind velocity by dividing the angle of the mirage by four. After determining that, he could multiply the velocity times eight, which represented this particular range in hundreds of yards, and then divide that again by four and have the number of clicks or half-minutes of angle he would need for windage."

That is kind of a wow to my way of thinking that a guy could be that level headed when he is faced with the kind of shots and the kind of targets that those people were taking. Heck, I go to pieces when I see a deer.

[Sidekick]

Talk about being "one" with the rifle!

[Twanger]

I watched a hunting show the other day... an episode of "The bucks of Tecamate" and they gave a free management hunt to a military sniper / hunter that had been injured in combat. What a great gift!
So they're sitting there in the box blind and the host ranges the buck and says something like "He's at 350 yards." and the sniper says "No problem." And the host says something like, "that's pretty far, just how long a shot could you take" and the sniper says "oh... 500, maybe 600 yards. Are you ready?" Then he pulls the trigger and lays that buck right out.

And the thing is, he was the most humble guy... not even the slightest edge of arrogance in his voice, but it was very clear from the way he said it that there was no doubt in his mind that any deer inside 600 yards was toast - if he wanted it to be so.

[GF.]

And the thing is, he was the most humble guy... not even the slightest edge of arrogance in his voice, but it was very clear from the way he said it that there was no doubt in his mind that any deer inside 600 yards was toast - if he wanted it to be so.

Hear the arrogance, smell the bullschitt!


I'm thinking that guy usually runs with a crowd where making a solid, 600-yard hit is nothing that a guy feels the slightest need to brag about. That would be like my bro-in-law 'bragging' about being able to land an aircraft on a carrier - not an easy thing to do by any stretch, but when that's what you do for a living, you kinda forget that it's anything all that 'special'....

I like being around people like that.

[Bushman]

Maybe being around guys who land on aircraft carriers, but I have to tell you that being around that sniper guy who was a family friend at a family reunion in Michigan made me a little uneasy. He too had an ear collection and seemed a little left of center. I'm kind of glad that we have Lake Michigan between us.

[Dennis Keith]

I worked with a Seal who spent 4 years sniping on the plane of jars. He was telling me he grew up putting meat on the table for himself and his Grandmotoher who was raising him and pocket money winning shooting bets as a kid before going into the Navy. I asked him if he still hunted. His reply, "I have a job that pays enough cash money to buy meat, besides, critters aren't the challenge that Men are, critters don't shoot back."

Men who have hunted other men are indeed a breed apart.

[Hi Ball]

Bushman the Carlos Hathcock story is indeed a sore subject with this old soldier! The things he did during his time and the fact he got that sniper school going for the military, not to mention his medals and awards, the military did NOT do him or his family right at all. This guy and his Sgt. fellow sniper buddy should have a monument erected in their honor by golly and Carlos Hathcock should have gotten his pension plus some add on's in my humble opinion. The Corp gave him Jack Squat!!! However, they use his name everyday breaking in those new people at that sniper school. Yes, he is great damn legend you betcha!!!

Well, I for one am going to try to reach those and put some heat on the fact that something like what happened to Sgt. Carlos Hathcock does NOT happen to any other person who has distinguised themselves while in the service of Uncle Sam. There should have been truck loads of mail sent to Congressmen throughout our nation to rebuke any so called military ruling on not being able to get one's pension early because of medical problems.

[Twanger]

Maybe being around guys who land on aircraft carriers, but I have to tell you that being around that sniper guy who was a family friend at a family reunion in Michigan made me a little uneasy. He too had an ear collection and seemed a little left of center. I'm kind of glad that we have Lake Michigan between us.

Reminds me of a quote... "The doing of unpleasant deeds requires men of an unpleasant nature."

... and then there's the corollary, which I sometimes point out to my pacifist sister... "We sleep soundly in our beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf." [Churchill]

[Sabre]

Reminds me of a quote... "The doing of unpleasant deeds requires men of an unpleasant nature."

... and then there's the corollary, which I sometimes point out to my pacifist sister... "We sleep soundly in our beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf." [Churchill] Not neccesarily True. One of my best friends is a former army sniper and he's one of the nicest, gentlest guys you'd ever meet.

[Sabre]

Maybe being around guys who land on aircraft carriers, but I have to tell you that being around that sniper guy who was a family friend at a family reunion in Michigan made me a little uneasy. He too had an ear collection and seemed a little left of center. I'm kind of glad that we have Lake Michigan between us. I had a great uncle like that. He wasn't a sniper but was a WWII combat vet with many kills to his credit. He had pics of enemy soldiers heads laying in a line on the hood of a jeep with him posing with his M-1 and a big smile on his face, like a proud hunter posing with his kill. He was a bit on the strange side.

[Twanger]

Not neccesarily True. One of my best friends is a former army sniper and he's one of the nicest, gentlest guys you'd ever meet.

I think I know what you're saying Sabre. I think in the sense of both of these quotes that the men they speak of are fully capable of visiting violence upon their opponent without hesitation or remorse. It doesn't mean that they are angry or threatening people in normal life. They simply have a different side to them than most folk do not, and you would not want to be on the receiving end of that alternate-ego.

I've seen this two-sided nature among the hunters in our deer hunting group. Many are calm and quiet people. Among the group we have a PhD biologist, a PhD Economist with the World Bank, and accountant for an internationally known firm and a guidance counceler for a local high-school. If you ask anyone who knows me they would be shocked to hear of me ever getting mad about anything. Every one of them is among the nicest people I've ever met, but get a deer in front of them and they have icewater in their veins. There is little doubt of the outcome of the encounter.

[Hi Ball]

Twanger at the time, the 30-06 was just about the perfect caliber able to do the job intended by our Army & Marines! I remember a story that was told to me via a friend down in Louseeanna, who himself was quite a rifle shooter. He said that a Col. had come to Aberdeen to discuss wlth the director of operations his need for a particular caliber. Well, the Col. went on to tell the director of his needs and wants, then the director just calmly told the Col. that he already had the magic caliber............the 30-06!!!

[Hi Ball]

Bushman they are now shooting out to 2-miles plus!!! Man that is hard to fathom but the weapons choosen seem to be able to do the job in spades.

[Bushman]

Hi Ball, The .338 Lapua seems to be the newest round designed for military long rang sniping. That round sends a .250 grain fmj bullet out at 3,000 fps and a 200 grain bullet in the 3,200 fps range. A week or two back they had a program on The Sportsman's Channel where Larry Vickers took a high end sniper type rifle and a big like 24x Nightforce scope out to Arizona and tried to hit a garbage can at one mile. He did hit it eventually, but it was far from a certainty. He had a spotter with a spotting scope behind him to help walk the rounds in and had some scope mount problems due to the significant recoil of that rifle. The wind drift was a bigger problem than the bullet drop. If I remember right the longest recorded sniper shot was pulled off in Afghanistan by a Canadian sniper using a .50 BMG round. Two miles is a very long way to shoot at anything with a rifle, even a very large one.

[Hi Ball]

Bushman I watched a program on the internet "channel 195" military and they showed a soldier using a Barret .416 semi-auto rifle being fired. The distance was something close to 2500 yards, close to 1.5 miles. This sniper had no problems hitting the white square target that was 15 x 20 inches. Now the thing that blew my mind, was him shooting at a concrete bunker made of concrete blocks (not cinder blocks) and I mean this rifle's fire power was impressive to say the least. The sniper completely blew those blocks to pieces and leveled that bunker that was 5 feet tall and 6 foot across.