Sgt Grit,
I subscribe to a weekly email from Military.com which includes links to interesting videos. One recent link was to a video called "One Mile Kill Shot" taken from History Channel. In it, the Marine Corps sniper uses a .50 cal single shot rifle to take out insurgents during an operation in Iraq (http://shock.military.com/Shock/videos.do?displayContent=219051&ESRC=marine-a.nl ). I forwarded this to my dad, retired Marine Colonel Barkley "BB" Yarborough (Enlisted as E1 1943, Retired as O6 1988). He enjoyed watching it and replied as follows:
"Reminds me that in 1951 we used the older .50 cal machine gun, sandbagged with a scope sight, for a sniper weapon. It worked long range too!"
Well, that intrigued me and I asked hit to elaborate a little and this is what he wrote:
"The gun was mounted on a tripod, with scope sight on top. Placed on ground and moved to get the sight set on the target spot. The target spot was one which had been observed with binoculars as a place where enemy soldiers were seen frequently. The sight could be changed every few days to pick a more likely traffic spot.
Once the sight was set on the spot, the tripod was anchored with sand bags to it would not move. Then a gunner would stand watch on the gun, and a second Marine would use binoculars and tell the gunner when a person had entered, or was about to enter the target spot. When the gunner had a target in the sight, he would squeeze off one round. Gotcha!
Our gun was set at the ridge line just over the left shoulder of the XO in this photo, taken in front of Charlie Co. CP.
You can read about the machine gun by clicking this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2_Browning_machine_gun"
I have attached the image my dad referred to above. I hope the readers enjoy the story.
Semper Fi,
Cris Yarborough
(USMC 1979-1983)