Posted on 05/18/2010 9:41:57 PM PDT by ErnstStavroBlofeld
Why isn’t Conneticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal on that list? : )
One other note, Chuck Mawhinney actually has more kills than Hathcock, but like Waldron never wrote a book, was not a career military man and stayed pretty much to himself. I think he has the most kills of any Marine.
Hathcock’s shots were simply amazing. I think that his greatest contribution though is probably the Marine sniper school at Quantico and the creation of Sta platoons.
Mosin Nagant ping! from a guy who can pave his driveway in hot 7.62x54 brass!
Model 70, 30-06?
HARTMAN: Anybody know who Lee Harvey Oswald was? Private Snowball?
SNOWBALL: Sir, he shot Kennedy, sir!
HARTMAN: That's right, and do you know how far away he was?
SNOWBALL: Sir, it was pretty far! From that book suppository building, sir!
HARTMAN: All right, knock it off! Two hundred and fifty feet! He was two hundred and fifty feet away and shooting at a moving target. Oswald got off three rounds with an old Italian bolt action rifle in only six seconds and scored two hits, including a head shot! Do any of you people know where these individuals learned to shoot? Private Joker?
JOKER: Sir, in the Marines, sir!
HARTMAN: In the Marines! Outstanding! Those individuals showed what one motivated marine and his rifle can do! And before you ladies leave my island, you will be able to do the same thing!
Also known as 7,62x53r, if you happen to be using a Finnish M 28-30 reworked Moisin-Nagant...
Same round, just a different designation. Plus the .308 barrels of M28-30s like a .308 diameter bullet.
Mr. Häyhä seemed to me to be polite, gracious and charming when we had the pleasure and honor of meeting him shortly after the 60th-year commeration of the Finnish-Soviet Winter War, the Talvisota.
Until the Nazis came to the Ukraine and became even more hated than Stailin.
Bad mistake, on the Nazi's part. Lyudmilla Palvichenko was Ukrainian, and she and her rifle put over 300 of them out of the picture.
By January, things were not going good for Ivan; particularly at Suomussalmi and Ratte and Kollaa's *Killer Hill*- where Simo Häyhä fought.
The Finnish butcher's bill was pretty close to 27,000 lost, plus around 50,000 seriously wounded and out of action until the war's end in February 1940- as was Simo Häyhä.
But the Russian casualties were certainly MUCH higher than the *official line* propaganda reports. And years later, when Nikita Kruschev was the Soviet Premier, he looked back on his days as a pmilitary commisar with troops during the Finnish *exercise* and remarked that the loss of a million men had not been worth it.
In 1959, after more successful adventures in East Germany and Budapest, the Soviets considered visiting Finland again; the prospect of some nice Baltic ports was just too attractive. The Finns had no great defense budget, no massive standing army or conscript pool, and knew that if another invasion came, they were not in a good p[oistion to do much about it.
They opened their national armories full of equipment left over from the 1918 Civil War and the 1939 Talvisota to U.S. arms merchant Sam Cummings of Interarmco. Cummings piched the most collectable and interesting specimens, and in turn the Finns received 300,000 former British Sten guns letover from WWII. The Finnish industrial base began churning out Sten magazines and 9mm SMG ammo, and for some reason the Soviets, with long memories of the crop of the Red Army wounded and freezing to death in the -40 degrees temperatures in the Finnish forests, and decided not to come a calling again.
The Red flag of the Soviet Union no longer flies, save over a few student unions in the USA. That of free Finland still does.
There's some pretty room for variance here based on definition- not all of some shooter;s hits may be logbooked, and there's a legitimate line of thought that fatally taking out an enemy with a single round is not as efficient asa really serious wound- which removes him from active service, as well as those who evacuate him for medical treatment, uses up medical supplies and ties up the services of top-quality medical persionnel; surgeons and surgical staff.
Too, kills are not the only criteria, or a sniper with a radio may never fire a shot but may destroy a battalion or more by calling in an airstrike or directed artiller fire. And at least one on that list used a machinepistol in semiauto-fire mode almost as much as he did his long rifle. It was simply the better choice of weapobn for the conditions and close ranges involved, particularly at night.
If we're talking about truly great, numbers of kills is certainly not the only criteria. Which should remind us of this guy....
YORK, ALVIN C.
Rank and organization: Corporal, U.S. Army, Company G, 328th Infantry, 82d Division.
Place and date: Near Chatel-Chehery, France, 8 October 1918.
Entered service at: Pall Mall, Tenn.
Born: 13 December 1887, Fentress County, Tenn.
G.O. No.: 59, W.D., 1919.
Citation:
After his platoon had suffered heavy casualties and 3 other noncommissioned officers had become casualties, Cpl. York assumed command. Fearlessly leading 7 men, he charged with great daring a machinegun nest which was pouring deadly and incessant fire upon his platoon. In this heroic feat the machinegun nest was taken, together with 4 officers and 128 men and several guns.
The ruskies never messed with the finns after that for a reason. For any Finlander: Outstanding.
#1: Paul Tibbets.
Single plane, single bomb, ignored by the japanese as — what damage could one bomber possibuly do?
Surprise!
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