I also don't particularly care for the reporter calling the sniper an "assassin". Kind of belittles what snipers do.
By the way, here is a picture of the rifle in question.
"Corporal Matt Hughes killed an Iraqi gunman from 900 yards with a “wonder shot” in which he aimed 56ft to the left and 35ft high to allow for wind."
Absolute amateur gun guy question: Is this anywhere near real?
It's real...
56 feet left and 35 feet high? I'm not a shooter, but those numbers sound more like he was shooting a longbow than a sniper rifle!
The British. Reaching out and touching people since the days of the Norman archers.
}:-)4
I believe that it should be inches and not feet.
That just means that he dialed that much correction into his scope. That is a lot of correction though.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
His first was with a standard issue M-14 (.308) with open sights at over 800 yards.
The cong referred to him as "Long Trang" or, "White Feather"...the feather he wore in his cap.
He has CONFIRMED kills at 2000 yards.
I think so. On long shots you definitely have to aim higher as the bullet will fall due to gravity.
I also don't particularly care for the reporter calling the sniper an "assassin". Kind of belittles what snipers do.
By the way, here is a picture of the rifle in question.
Very real.
I had the pleasure to work with the scout sniper school. On the range, they routinely make these kinds of shots out to 1000 yards with a 308. They can reach even farther with a 50 cal. I didn't get to play with them in the field but if you hang out with them, you hear about some miraculous shots.
Before desert storm, they desimated the Iraqi front line soldiers. They liked to maximize psychological effect. They would pick a target and wait hours until he was in the middle of a discussion with someone else, then they would make his head disappear leaving the other guy talking to a corpse.
Eventually the Iraqis moved back a mile from the front line, beyond the reach of the 308. That's when the Barret rifle arrived. The snipers say that the Iraqis never figured out that they were getting shot purposefully at that range allowing them free hunting until the war started.
Yes. An example - with nothing but the standard M1, sharpshooters in the Second World War, firing over open sights, routinely killed targets they could not directly see.The M1 has a very long reach, far more than most realize.
They did so with the aid of a spotter. The shooter would fix on something he could see, say, a tree or a rock - and the spotter, using binoculars, would observe the strike. The spotter would direct the shooter to adjust the M1's sights, to move the impact. The shooter would stay focused on what he could see, and the spotter would 'walk' the rounds onto the target. This is the same technique used for spotting indirect mortar or artillery fire, just with much smaller caliber.
An experienced team could kill beyond range of the unaided eye, one round to locate the hit, the second to kill. And some good teams - much as described here - could do it with one round. The spotter adjusts his shooter's sight picture from visual clues as to wind and distance. The shooter may be looking at one thing and hitting another.
if he's sited in at 600 (which he should be) he'd only have 144 inches of drop (12 feet) at 900 yards. he'd have to be shooting up a mountain to shoot 35 feet high.
In a word, Yes
"Absolute amateur gun guy question: Is this anywhere near real?"
Nah, not even close. On my Palma rifle I come up 13.5 MOA from a 600 yard zero for the 900 yard line. That's only 11 feet or so. I shot in a howling gale a few weeks ago and came off the 900 yard line with 23 MOA right on my sight, or 17.25 feet.
Sounds about right. Although I thought a .308 was more like 20 feet elevation at 1000 yards, must have had a headwind.
Try doing it yourself.
http://www.shooterready.com/
quite possible, and if true, a heck of a shot.
1 inch at 100 meters is about a minute of angle.
high and low are pretty easy. the windage is tough, because the wind gusts in a way that is not completely predictable before the trigger is pulled.
Of course statistically, we get no information on his misses.
Now me: I would have had a mortar round on him in a few seconds. Nothing that can be done with a .30 caliber sniper round can't be done better with a 120mm mortar.
I dunno if it is real or not but his chilling nickname needs pimped.
"he has earned a chilling nickname — The Man Who Never Misses."