Although there are not many sniper rifles, they have long range, good shooting accuracy and high first-time hit rate, so they are very popular. Some light weapons critics believe that in modern warfare and counter-terrorism activities, sniper rifles and sniper warfare are still an effective method.
Combat tools and methods of combat. At present, there are dozens of countries that have listed sniper rifles as military standard equipment, and many countries are still developing new sniper rifles, especially large-caliber sniper rifles. The author is based on the Swiss "International Arms Magazine"
》1998 special issue will systematically introduce the emergence and development of sniper rifles.
Make an appearance on stage
Snipers in today's army share the same experience as their ancestors, that is, the success or failure of a battle depends on the life or death of the leader. Therefore, in ancient wars, warriors devoted all their strength to subdue the enemy leader's guard, and most of them
It is fighting in close combat. Later, they tried to use cold weapons with distances such as bows and crossbows. After the development of firearms, hot weapons such as firearms and artillery were used. Eliminating the enemy leader will make the enemy leaderless and lose their combat effectiveness. In addition,
Pay special attention to eliminating other particularly important individuals in the enemy army, such as subordinate commanders, couriers carrying orders, and especially gunners, as a single shell can potentially destroy a wall or rampart, which can determine the survival of a city or castle.
In order to eliminate enemy officers and artillery, experienced soldiers who can use their weapons well are often selected. In this way, snipers and sniper rifles have entered the stage of history.
Norbert Chatoschi's memoirs describe the experiences of a sniper during the Thirty Years' War in Europe. Warring parties continued in the West German cities of Münster and Osnabruck.
Peace talks were held for several years in an effort to end the war. By the summer of 1648, the peace treaty was about to be signed. In order to strive for a better bargain at the negotiating table, all parties to the negotiation wanted to expand the results and gain an advantage in the final moments of the war. The Swedes tried to seize the
Occupied Vienna and Prague. On July 26, 1648, the Swedes captured Prague Castle and a small wing below the castle. However, the most important part of Prague, the new and old cities on the other side of the Mordau River, were still resisting tenaciously.
.The Swedes first attacked two bridges and suffered setbacks. Then they tried to cross the Moldau River in a small boat, which also failed.
In early September, the Swedes began to erect a tall wooden tower on the left bank of the Mordau River, with a fortress on the top. After the wooden tower was built, it was guarded by a sniper. On September 8, the sniper actually shot and killed
The officers on the other side of the river commanded the posts, which caused great losses to the defenders on the other side of the river. The Prague people immediately figured out who the snipers in the wooden tower were. It turned out that the Swedes came from South Bohemia (also from Prague)
He bribed a sniper marksman with excellent shooting skills who was sentenced to death for killing his unfaithful wife and her lover. He was told that if he was willing to serve, he would be given leniency. In order to gain the favor of his master
In order to win the favor, he had to shoot 9 Prague people every day. The weapon he used was a small-caliber "Teshen" flintlock gun (see color box 1), which was used in Teshen and other Silesian cities at that time.
Mass production. The "Swedish" sniper shooter was eventually killed by two colleagues from Prague. The two sharpshooters noticed that every time the "Swedish" sniper shooter fired a shot, he would lie on the parapet of the fortress to see if it hit.
There was no target. One of the two shooters was hiding behind the city wall, holding a hat on a pole and waiting for him to take aim and shoot. At this time, the other shooter was waiting for him to show up in the wooden tower and took aim and shot.
.Therefore, hitting the hat held high by the first shooter became the last result of this "Swedish" shooter.
In the second half of the 18th century, troops with precision shooting as their basic tactical thinking emerged in the armies of various European countries. The troops were mainly composed of professional sniper shooters and were called "sniper troops."
Line-up of infantry and sniper units
In the 18th century, infantry fought in line formations. The soldiers moved forward in a line on the battlefield, automatically organized, loaded and fired according to the orders of their commanders. They hit the enemy with raindrops of lead bullets. They carried muskets.
Moving hand in hand, it is impossible to shoot accurately at the enemy. The rifles used by snipers are not only of good quality, but most of them have rifled barrels and are equipped with aiming devices; snipers walk in front of the infantry line and use the bunkers in the offensive zone to find suitable ones for themselves.
In order to accurately shoot targets at various distances, snipers not only use adjustable sights - first a folding sight, and then a front-and-back moving sight, but also can choose the most appropriate sight according to the distance of the target, and pack it in advance
Good ammunition. By the 19th century, troops were equipped with real military sniper rifles with lights.
The manufacturing cost of a sniper rifle is higher than that of other ordinary rifles. In order to be suitable for its tactical mission, its accuracy and power must be higher than that of ordinary infantry rifles. In addition to sniper units, some other special forces were also produced at that time, such as the Hague Army at the end of the 18th century.
The Tyrolean Sniper Regiment of the Busburg Monarchy, their members are equipped with 20-gun "wind guns". This unit and the sniper unit can be regarded as the direct ancestors of modern snipers. The weapons they are equipped with are larger than those of other soldiers.
The weapons are perfect, although there is no auxiliary optical sight. They use different tactics from ordinary infantry, but they always fight together with the entire large army, and do not act as individual soldiers or special forces in other units like the typical snipers later.
Group combat. So did the first sniper units produced during the American Civil War.
In the United States, the conditions for producing sniper rifles are very favorable. First, hunting bison requires weapons with long-range performance, and second, Americans have a tradition of frequent shooting competitions. This prompted the development of sniper rifles. In the 1840s
, some American gunsmiths began to manufacture small weapons with optical sighting devices. In 1848, Morgan James, a native of Utica, New York, designed a tubular sight that was as long as the barrel. What is particularly eye-catching is that he used
A glass lens is installed on the rear half of the sight, and the barrel is fixed to prevent vibration from affecting accuracy. There are two cross lines on the tube sight.
Rifle with long scope
In the United States, rifles equipped with long optical sights were initially used for hunting and competition. Later, during the Civil War, they quickly showed their superiority as sniper weapons. It is said that there was a heavy-duty target shooting machine with an optical sight at that time.
The rifle used was made by H.E. Dimick of St. Louis, Missouri or Edwin Wesson of Northborough, Massachusetts. It was frequently used by both warring parties in the American Civil War. However, the gun was too heavy and inconvenient to use in the field.
And it does not load quickly. Therefore, the gun was gradually replaced by popular military front-loading rifles and breech-loading guns and even magazine guns with a greatly improved firing rate. The sniper rifles used in southern states are mainly British products, mostly from Enfield.
Arsenal. The industrialized northern states use their own products, among which the rifles are products of Remington, Henry, Spencer and Colt. These sniper rifles usually use ordinary mechanical sights and rarely use long-barrel sights.
Scope. The company that provided tubular sights was the Colt Company, which cost $15 each from 1860 to 1866. From 1867 onwards, a new telescopic sight was installed on every gun, which cost $30 each.
The breech-loading gun developed by American gunsmith Christian Sharps gradually became the favorite sniper rifle of the Northern Army. Although its rate of fire is slightly lower than that of the Colt or Spencer single-shot guns, and it is also single-shot loaded.
However, its rate of fire is unmatched by muzzle-loading guns. At the beginning of the American Civil War, Colonel Hiram Berdan established the first sniper unit-"America's First Class Marksman", often called
"Berdan's First Order Marksman Unit". Hiram Burton is the inventor of the Berdan primer and its rifle structure named after him today. The breech-loading gun he invented was handed over to the Russian army in 1867.
When Hiram Berdan organized the sniper marksman group, many good shooters came to sign up, and two regiments were finally established. Colonel Berdan carefully assessed each applicant and required them to shoot at 200 yards.
Shoot 10 rounds at a distance of (183m), and each round will hit the target plate. The hit point shall not deviate from the target by more than 5 inches (127mm). The gun used for the assessment is a front-loaded single-shot gun with a tubular sight. The first sniper
Company C and Company E of the regiment were equipped with this gun. However, during use, they felt that it was too heavy and unsuitable for combat. So in July 1861, Colonel Berdan applied to purchase the Springfield Company's Type 1861 rifle.
Soldier Truman Head served in Company C of the 1st Sniper Regiment. His nickname was "Californian" and he used a private 1859 Sharps rifle. The rifle of "Californian" left a deep impression on Bourdain.
, and even proposed to equip his snipers with some such rifles. However, his suggestion was rejected by the higher command. In Berdan's army, the Sharps were replaced with 0.56in Colt reloading rifles with 5 rounds of ammunition.
For breech-loading guns, the Colt revolver has a barrel length of 32 inches (813mm) and costs $45 each.
Berdan's snipers preferred Sharps sniper rifles
Bourdain and his marksmen liked the Sharps single-shot breech-loading rifle. After careful consideration, the Procurement Department purchased 1,000 Sharps rifles for Bourdain's snipers on January 27, 1862, and on February 6, 1862.
1,000 units were purchased for the Second Sniper Regiment. The gun has good performance within the effective range, including accuracy. The structure is simpler than other military rifles and is easy to clean and maintain. It is an ideal weapon for snipers.
The rifle provided to Berdan snipers is the "Sharps 1859 New Military Rifle", a breech-loading gun that uses a vertical folding bolt and is fired by a trigger. The caliber of the gun is 0.52in (13.2mm) and the length is 1190mm.
Weighing about 4.35kg, the cylindrical barrel is 30in (762mm) long and has 6 riflings. There is a flash cap chamber on the right side of the trigger, whereby the flash cap is automatically fed into the chamber. The Sharps breech-loaded percussion gun is designed to fire paper bullets
It is designed with a military-style muzzle with a bayonet mount. The Sharpes rifles provided to the Berdan Sniper Regiment do not have the usual scimitar-shaped bayonet, but a shorter bayonet. A gun used by some soldiers of the Berdan Sniper Regiment.
They carry searchlights, and some soldiers use rifles with 36in (914mm) barrel lengths.
The Sharps breech-loading rifle was the most popular rifle in the American Civil War, and later became the favorite rifle of professional buffalo hunters. A total of 115,000 M1859 and its improved M1865 and M1866 Sharps rifles were produced in the United States.
and the Navy purchased a total of 80,512 carbines and 9,141 long rifles. The barrel of the Sharps carbine is 560mm. It was the second most used gun by the cavalry troops of the northern states in the American Civil War after the Spencer carbine.
In the American Civil War, the 2,750 soldiers serving in the Berdan Sniper Regiment were killed 300 people and injured more than 1,000 people. But they also caused heavy casualties to the Confederate Army. Their superb shooting skills impressed both sides of the war.
The "California Soldier" once used the Sharps sniper rifle in his hand to kill a higher-ranking officer in the Southern State at a distance of 700m. The Confederate Army's results were also brilliant. The history books describe John from the Northern State.
·The situation when General Sedgwick was killed in the spring of 1864: The general was reprimanding the soldiers who were looking for bunkers, calling them cowards. In order to encourage the soldiers and make them more courageous, he stood on a high place in the unprotected area.
He shouted loudly: "I'm afraid the opponent can't even hit one of our elephants at this distance!" In an instant, Sargent Glass of the Fourth Georgia Regiment in the South shot him in the heart at a distance of 731m.
In the American Civil War, there were some examples of snipers killing officers, gunners and other important military personnel. Although these snipers could not affect the course of the war, they entered the stage of military history as a special operations group for the first time. Among them
Some people have adopted the tactic of lying in wait and killing the enemy with a single shot at random, and a few people have also used auxiliary optical sights.
Sights for long range shooting
The attempt to develop optical sights for long-distance shooting did not occur in the United States geographically, nor in the mid-19th century. As early as the 16th century, people knew that ancient Europe had done this.
Efforts. During this period, firearms with eyeglass lenses fixed on the butts appeared. The earliest gun to use "optical sights" was the German carbine of Denmark's Frederick II (1534-1588).
There are "sights" inlaid with gold. According to written records, in the 16th and 17th centuries, Germany also had "shooting glasses", which can help people with poor eyesight aim and shoot. It is more effective than improving aiming devices for shooters with normal vision.
History books write that before the 1730s, firearms already had telescopic sighting devices, which were not only used for aiming under low-light conditions, but also for aiming under normal light conditions. This kind of sight was not yet available.
Perfect, it cannot solve the problem, and it is far inferior to the barrel scope on the American sniper rifle.
The first telescopic sight that could be mounted on a weapon was invented by a forestry administrator named August Fiedler. His invention was accepted in 1884. From the 1890s,
Forming a series of structural styles, mainly used for shotguns. The emergence of this kind of scope created conditions for the appearance of snipers in World War I. At the beginning of trench warfare, most of them still used shotguns and rifles made for hunting.