Sniping at Nelson
The Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 marks two significant events: Britain’s greatest naval victory and the death of her greatest naval hero, Admiral Horatio Nelson.
After attacking the combined French and Spanish fleet led by Admiral Villeneuve, Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory became closely engaged with the Redoutable, commanded by Captain Lucas. The French captain was an able individual and his men were well trained. Many sharpshooters were sent up to the tops of the French ship to pick off targets below. One of these shot Nelson, who died shortly afterwards, having been taken below. According to Robert Southey, who wrote a biography of Nelson, the shot was taken from a range of about 14m (15 yards). The crew of HMS Victory began to avenge the death of their admiral and fired back at the Frenchmen. Lieutenant John Pollard and Midshipman Francis Edward Collingwood are credited with shooting the man who shot Nelson along with many of the sniper’s comrades.
THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 1861–65
By the time the American Civil War was underway, the rifle was no longer the preserve of elite sharpshooters but was standard issue. However, some rifles were better than others and sharpshooting and sniper tactics would evolve so that targets could be picked off at ever greater distances.
Berdan’s Sharpshooters
In a similar way to Daniel Morgan and his sharpshooters of the American War of Independence, Hiram Berdan (1824–93) organized sharpshooter regiments for the Federal Army that were dressed in a similar way to the British 95th Rifles, wearing a green uniform with black facings. Hiram Berdan described it as consisting of:
a green cloth coat, with black metal buttons–pants of same color and material. Goatskin leggings [sic], and hair outside. 2 pair strong low shoes–with leather gaiters. Grey felt hat. Grey overcoat with cape moveable and india rubber lined. The fatigue dress will be green flannel “round about” [jacket] and pants–2 pairs grey Russia linen pants and proper under clothes.
He explained,
My reasons for selecting this uniform are that the men composing this regiment will not content to wear the common U.S. uniform; and as they will be skirmishers, they not be conspicuously dressed–the green will harmonize with the leaves of summer while the grey overcoat will accord with surrounding objects in fall and winter. The goatskin leggings are to protect the legs against snakes and briars.
Admiral Horatio Nelson is shot by a French sharpshooter on the quarterdeck of HMS Victory at 1:15, October 21, 1805. It is thought that the fatal shot was fired from the mizzen topmast of the Redoutable, commanded by Captain Lucas.
Berdan also developed a rifle, though his corps were initially issued with Colt revolving rifles and later with 1000 Sharps breech-loading rifles. These were effective weapons, which in trained hands could fire up to ten rounds per minute. In addition or as an alternative to the Sharps, Union sharpshooters sometimes used a variety of sporting or hunting rifles, including the muzzle-loading Dimick sporting and target rifle and the Spencer magazine rifle. Berdan’s Sharpshooters were required to pass a rigorous selection test, which included the requirement to group ten shots in succession on a target of 25.4cm (10in) diameter from 183m (200 yards). The sharpshooters were to play an important role in many battles of the Civil War. In the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, they were prominent in engaging Confederates on a rocky outcrop known as the Devil’s Den.
Confederate marksmen
Although Berdan’s Sharpshooters were well trained and well equipped, the Confederates had some natural sharpshooters in their own ranks and these made a considerable impact. Whereas the Federal sharpshooters tended to come from educated backgrounds, the Confederates fielded a large number of men who were used to hunting in the wild, and possessed tracking, concealment and rifle skills. Some of the best sniper rifles for the Confederates were produced in England. Due to a Federal naval blockade, these rifles were difficult to come by and, partly due to the difficulties in supply and partly due to the quality of craftsmanship, they were very expensive to buy. The most popular of the English rifles were the 1853 Enfield Rifle and the prized Whitworth long-range target rifle.
The Whitworth rifle was designed with a hexagonal bore and incorporated a fast-twist polygonal rifling system. It had its own ammunition, which was carefully designed to be exact and consistent in weight and size. The result was unparalleled accuracy at considerable ranges. Since the Whitworths were only allocated to the best marksmen, the combination was formidable.
Like their British counterparts, the Confederate sharpshooters were often first in the field and the last out. Unfortunately, many did not leave the field of battle at all for they were often in the most exposed positions and casualty rates were correspondingly high. Even where the sharpshooters were well concealed, their lethal effectiveness was sometimes met with a devastating response from the enemy. At the Devil’s Den at Gettysburg, for example, a Confederate sharpshooter was killed by an artillery round. If the Confederate sharpshooters were less organized than their Union counterparts, they certainly had a way of dealing with criticism. General John Sedgwick was unwise enough to comment on the shooting ability of Confederate skirmish lines at the beginning of the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House on May 9, 1864, when his corps was probing forward against skirmishers. At about 910m (1000 yards) his men were already diving cover as rounds came over. In an attempt to rally his men, Sedgwick shouted, “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance!” With these words, he fell off his horse with a bullet hole under his left eye. At that range, the bullet was likely to have come from a Whitworth rifle.
Major-General John Sedgwick was shot in the head by a sharpshooter with a Whitworth rifle at a range of roughly 900m (500 yards). Ironically, he had just been telling his men to ignore the Confederate sharpshooters. This underlined the power of the sniper to change the course of a battle by shooting senior commanders.
“They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance!”
Last words of General John Sedgwick, May 9, 1864
Although American Civil War battles featured incidents attributed to individual sharpshooters, such as the death of General Sedgwick, on the whole the sharpshooter regiments acted as skirmishers, their movements largely based on Rifle and Light Infantry Tactics by William Hardee. The skirmishing formation involved spreading out in groups of four with about five paces between each man, thus forming what has been described as a “cloud” of men. Due to the distances between the men, the skirmishers were taught to respond to bugle calls instead of voiced orders. Unlike regular soldiers of the time, when called to a halt, the skirmishers would automatically seek the nearest cover, whether behind a tree, rock or other obstacle or by falling flat on the ground. In this way, they were almost identical to the modern soldier.
THE ANGLO-AFGHAN WARS
In the novel Kim by Rudyard Kipling set in British Imperial India Kim says: “Now I shall go far and far into the North, playing the Great Game.” Though Kim was a boy and would not have fully understood the “game,” it was in fact political and military maneuvering between Britain and Russia, which resulted from Russian probing south into Central Asia and British concern about the threat to the jewel of their Empire India. The “Great Game,” which lasted for about a hundred years, was partly played in the rugged and inhospitable mountains of Afghanistan and here the British and Russians met a formidable foe, the Afghan mountain tribesmen.
The British came to the conclusion that, in order to provide a buffer between India and the Russians, they should occupy Afghanistan. So, in December 1838 a large British force moved north into Afghanistan where they took over Kabul and installed a friendly ruler. The Afghans soon came to resent the British occupation. There were many reasons for this, including insensitivity towards their culture and immoral treatment of Afghan women by British soldiers. By 1841, riots had broken out in Kabul and a senior British officer, Sir Alexander Burnes, was murdered by a mob. When another British officer was killed and his body dragged through the streets, t
he British decided to withdraw. This was not so much the end of the nightmare for the British as the beginning. As the British occupation began to implode, the Afghans attacked British outposts. On one occasion a British brigadier formed up his men in squares, anticipating an Afghan cavalry attack, only to find his men dropping down dead all around him. The Afghans were not risking their lives in a cavalry charge but instead picking off the British soldiers from long range with their Jezails, or long-barrelled muskets. These had a longer range than the standard-issue British Brown Bess and were more accurate. The only hope the British had in this situation was their nine-pounder cannon. The Afghans knew this and carefully targeted the gun crew with their Jezails. Soon the British could do nothing but flee for their lives.
The retreat from Kabul
On January 6, 1842 the British forces began their retreat from Kabul through the treacherous passes. As soon as they left, the Afghans began to snipe at them at long range with their Jezails. This was followed by attacks on horseback. To add to the misery of the fleeing British-Indian army, which included women, children and retainers, the Afghan winter was bitterly cold and many became victims of frostbite. After a night in the open, during which many died of exposure, they set off again but the Afghans continued to snipe at them from long range. As they approached the Khoord-Cabol Pass, the Afghans had taken up sniping positions in the rocky crags. About three thousand died in the pass.
THE JEZAIL
The Jezail was a mostly homemade weapon adapted by Afghan tribesmen in such a way as to take advantage of existing technology (the lock and trigger mechanism was often taken from discarded or captured Brown Bess muskets) while adding certain refinements to improve range and accuracy.
The barrel was long and designed to take closefitting ammunition. It was often rifled. The stock had a characteristic curve, which suggests it may have been designed to fit under the arm. The Jezail was often fired while supported on a forked rest to support the long barrel.
The stocks and other parts of the Jezail were often finely decorated. A Jezail could be used effectively at 457m (500 yards), whereas the Brown Bess had a maximum effective range of 137m (150 yards).
Afghan soldiers watch one of their companions as he aims a Jezail, the long-barrelled musket. The Jezail had an effective range of about 457m (500 yards) and was very effective when fired from secluded sniping positions.
A British soldier, Dr. William Brydon, who was the only Englishman to survive the massacre, at one point rode straight at an Afghan with a Jezail. The Jezail bullets broke his sword and wounded his pony but he managed to get away. At Gandamak, the 44th Regiment of Foot mounted a last stand and were all killed. In the words of Peter Hopkirk, author of The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia, echoing the thoughts of the British Governor-General in India, “A mob of mere heathen savages, armed with home-made weapons, had succeeded in routing the greatest power on earth.”
The British response
The British had been humiliated but they managed to put a tough general in charge of a relief force that would restore some of their dignity. General George Pollock recognized the tactical advantage the Afghans held with their Jezail marksmen and he made sure his troops were not going to be served up as easy targets again. As his expedition set off through the Khyber Pass, he sent flanking columns up onto the high ground. As the Afghans took aim at the troops below them, they were astonished to find themselves being fired upon from above. The British had learned their lesson, at least temporarily: to deal with snipers, use other snipers.
The opening of the Siri Bolam Pass in 1839 on the way to Kabul by James Atkinson shows how difficult it was for the forces moving in the passes to deal effectively with their assailants in the rocks above. Tribesmen armed with the Jezail could pick off their victims at will.
“BOB THE NAILER”
During the Indian rebellion of 1857, sometimes known as the Indian Mutiny, the city of Lucknow, capital of Oudh, was besieged by a Sepoy army. The British were defending the Residency within the city, which also contained civilians. The rebellion had been triggered by the introduction of the Enfield rifle, which required a greased cartridge. It was believed that the cartridge grease was made from beef and pork fat, which would defile the Hindu and Muslim soldiers.
About eight thousand Indian Sepoys and several hundred other native rebels besieged the Residency between July and September 1857. Apart from indiscriminate shelling, the Sepoy rebels employed a number of highly effective sharpshooters, the most famous of which became known as “Bob the Nailer,” due to the fact that he used nails as ammunition.
Bob the Nailer demonstrated many of the characteristics of a classic sniper. He would lie in wait for hours, having selected an invulnerable firing position, until he saw a glimpse of a red uniform or any sign of movement. He would then literally nail his victim. There was no time of day or night when the defenders felt safe from the attentions of Bob the Nailer. Shooting back at him proved useless and eventually the defenders had to dig a tunnel under the house where the Nailer was lodged and plant a mine to blow him up.
As the tension with Russia continued, the British were back in Afghanistan for the Second Afghan War of 1879–80. In most of the battles fought on open ground the British prevailed, but at the Battle of Maiwand in 1880 they were heavily defeated by the Afghans. There is a coda to this battle: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional character Dr. Watson, companion of Sherlock Holmes, was said to have been wounded at Maiwand by an Afghan Jezail.
THE BOER WARS
The Boer Wars (1881–82 and 1899–1902), fought between the British and the Boer farmers of Dutch descent in southern Africa, offered a familiar recipe. Here again was a substantial army trained for traditional tactics up against lightly equipped men of farming stock who used movement and concealment along with accurate shooting to make up for their inferior numbers.
The Battle of Majuba Hill in 1881 underlined the difference in approach. The British trained their soldiers to move as part of a larger unit and not to think for themselves. The Boers, on the other hand, like the American frontiersmen, were individualists, trekkers, good horsemen and good hunters.
At Majuba Hill, instead of attacking the British enmasse, as the British might have expected them to do, the Boers made maximum use of the available cover and fired at the British from long ranges. As their comrades and officers began to fall around them, British discipline began to crumble. There was little the British could do about it. They could order their men to fire back but there seemed to be nothing visible to fire at. Blending into their surroundings, the Boers could barely be seen. The last straw for the British came when their commander, Sir George Colley, was shot by a Boer marksman when trying to organize an orderly retreat. This was classic sniper work: causing maximum confusion by taking out selected important targets. The British tried to make their escape but were sniped at from ridges as they went. The Boers had demonstrated their mastery of sniping tactics as well as fire and movement.
In the Second Boer War, at Magersfontein in 1899 and at Spion Kop in 1900, the British were also subjected to accurate fire from Boer marksmen who were either hidden in craggy knolls or concealed in well-dug trenches, invisible to the eye. Devastatingly accurate rifle fire soon sowed confusion. To add to their difficulties, developments in gunpowder technology meant that there was barely any smoke once a Boer Mauser rifle had been fired to identify the marksman’s position. At the Siege of Mafeking, however, the tables were turned. Here the Boers were the dominant force and the British, commanded by the founder of the Scouts, Lord Baden-Powell, were the underdogs who survived due to ingenuity.
Although the Boers were eventually defeated, there were many lessons to be learned in the Boer War for large armies fighting against smaller ones or even against bands of guerrillas. Surprisingly, by the time of the next major war in Europe in 1914, fire and movement was all but forgotten and huge armies settled down for a static slogging match.
Boer sharpshooter
s at the Siege of Mafeking between October 1899 and May 1900. Well concealed, and with accurate, powerful Mauser rifles, the Boers were a formidable foe.
Three elements in this photograph demonstrate the effectiveness of the Boer sharpshooter: the powerful Mauser rifles, the plentiful ammunition clips and the clear sharp eyes of the natural hunter. They were also masters of camouflage and fieldcraft.
This .280 caliber Ross hunting rifle was presented as a gift from Lord Londonderry to a junior officer in the 2nd Durham Light Infantry at Houplines, France, in 1915. Officers would often use their own personalized weapons, and hunting rifles made excellent sniping tools.
SNIPERS IN THE TRENCHES
In the foreword to Sniping in France by Major H. Hesketh-Prichard, General Lord Horne writes that “we were slow to adopt, indeed our souls abhorred, anything unsportsmanlike.” The “unsportsmanlike” methods Horne was referring to included the use of gas and of sniping. The Germans were ahead of the game with regard to sniping at the beginning of World War I. In the stalemate of the opposing trench systems and with No Man’s Land blasted and cratered by artillery, infantrymen had several major fears: these included going over the top and being shot down by machine-gun fire or inadvertently raising their heads above the trench line or crossing a gap and being found by a sniper.
A sniperscope is used by a British marksman in the trenches during World War I. The idea was to fire the rifle while remaining below the trench line but the eccentric device did not prove very effective.
German snipers at the beginning of the war were well trained and well equipped. They were often recruited from gamekeepers, hunters and others who were well versed in long-range shooting and tracking their quarry. Apart from natural talent and training, the sniper needs excellent equipment. The German sniper had both a good rifle, the Gewehr 98, and good telescopic sights. The Germans had a wide range of manufacturers of high-grade optical sights to draw on, including Zeiss, Goerz, Hensoldt and Voigtlander. Today, Hensoldt continues to produce military sights as the military arm of Zeiss. Fitted with such sights, the Gewehr 98 had an effective range of 800m (875 yards) which, in view of the fact that opposing trenches were sometimes only 182m (200 yards) apart, provided plenty of scope. As the standard Gewehr 98 was not designed to take optics, a special production variant with an altered bolt was produced for sniping. Over eighteen thousand of these adapted rifles were issued to snipers during World War I, demonstrating the German commitment to sniping from the outset.
Sniper in Action Page 2
