Posted on 02/11/2008 6:30:41 AM PST by Vor Lady
Sounds like the range is anywhere from 5-15 feet. It’s not IMPOSSIBLE but it’s a million to 1 shot.
Are you sure that's what he wrote? If so, I really hate to question Sgt Hathcocks memory of his no doubt deadly sniping exploits in Viet Nam, but the account of shooting out the tire of a moving bicycle at a range of 1-1/3 miles is simply preposterous no matter how skilled a marksman he was or how accurate his equipment was.
It would have taken at least the mathematical computations required to land a vehicle from the orbiting earth on a certain spot of orbiting Mars or Venus to have even come close to making that shot, and I have to seriously doubt that he could have made those computations in his head on short notice even if he could have seen the tire at that distance. Just the unknowable variables of numerous factors such as wind speed, bicycle speed, and the difference in elevation of the area between shooter and target would have been enough to make the shot so highly improbable that it stretches credulence past the breaking point.
I don't have the audacity to say that Sgt Hathcock possibly stretched the truth a bit in his memoirs, but if what you say is what is in his book, I will suggest that evidently somewhere between his writing the story and the publisher's printing it someone made a mistake in transcribing the account of his bicycle tire shooting incident.
An excellent analysis of the problems involved in the hypothetical shooting. Add to that the problems I mentioned and the probability of making such a shot on the first try is brought down so extremely close to zero it may as well be actually zero, even though it is mathematically possible I suppose.
Don’t be ridiculous. People move; air moves; poor target contrast; impact from the heavy (Spencer say, but who knows?) weapons of the day turn a brain to mush even if the braincase is not penetrated.
If this fiction if for discriminating shooters, then forget the night-time sharpshooting.
If it is for for the GnPop then, Heck yeah! Any of us can make that shot in a good story.
A similar scene was used in Saving Private Ryan as well. It almost defys belief that it was a *real* occurrance, not just Hollywood BS.
Of course, Hathcock wasn't trying to shoot the enemy sniper in the eye... it just happened that way. Which points out the problem with the scenario proposed at the top of this thread.
1,000 meters is relatively easy with a scoped rifle, specially when you consider that when I was in the Navy, we were doing that at Quantico using un-scoped vintage M-1 Garands.
“Are you sure that’s what he wrote?”
All I can tell you is to read his book. It’s called Marine Sniper. The thing is, that is not even the wildest story in the book. He has a tale in there about taking out an NVA general where he crawls 1000 yards across an open grassy field to get in position to take a shot. This open field is patrolled by NVA personnel with dogs and it takes him four days to crawl that distance without anyone seeing him.
There’s another story there where he and his partner pin down a whole NVA company.
I could be wrong on the exact details of the stories as I read it a long time ago. However, that is generally how the stories go.
There are other stories in there also that are pretty amazing.
“She supposedly got her info from a woman sniper for the Army.”
The Army has women snipers? You mean the US Army?
IIRC, Hathcock's shot (from a scoped Browning .50 caliber, pre-zeroed to the spot were the target was hit) struck the front of the bicycle frame, below the handlebars. Or perhaps it struck the bundle of AKs slung there, I don't remember the account word for word. I'm pretty sure that the shot was verified by a spotter, so the distance claimed by Hathcock is in all likelihood factual.
It is one thing on the range. This was in the jungle under mortar fire.
Oh, no question. Whole different ballgame.
maybe whiz his head within a few feet so the guy could hear the bullet whiz by his head. that would be scary enough and still a difficult shot.
but, hey, it's fiction! graze away!
If I were the editor of this piece, I’d change it to one in which the bad guy intends to shoot right next to the person’s head, and count on the flight crack to stun the target. Then, all you have to ignore is the velocity of those old rounds and the power of a supersonic crack. In the story case, he grazes the head of the target once.
Or, I’d suggest that the perp use a “beanbag” round with a very light load, and whack your target in the noggin with basically a padded sap, a concept way ahead of its time (for the period being written about).
That’s what she said, a friend who was an Army sniper and was a woman. Supposedly the woman came from a family of untrained sharp shooters until the woman was trained by the Army. Unless Ohio has its own army, I assumed she meant the US Army.
Nice rifle! Looks similar to my Mosin-Nagant (1920).
In the woman’s story, that is exactly her premise. Her bad guy uses the grazing shot thing to incapacitate his victims. I find the whole thing preposterous, but I wanted to get ‘expert’ opinions from my FRiends!
the circle is bigger than that even. MOA is counted center-to- center. centers of the two furthest bullets counted for MOA, not the outer edge of a bullet. a .30 bullet would have a MOA size of 1.3” - more than 4 bullet diamters variation.
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