From the number of confirmed kills to longest
shots ever made, here are 7 of the deadliest snipers in American history. 7. Carlos Norman Hathcock Carlos Hathcock is a Marine Corps sniper whose
success in the Vietnam war became legendary. He is famous for his confirmed kill count
of 93. It is most likely that is was much higher. Carlos estimated that he’d probably taken
out over 300 enemy fighters during his career. This suspicion is backed up by the fact that
a bounty was put on his head by the North Vietnamese Army of $30,000 – about 15 times
more than the usual rate for snipers. They called him the ‘White Feather’, because
of a feather that he would wear on his hat to spite the enemy. This name was later given to a variant of
the M21 rifle in his honor. He first deployed to Vietnam in 1966 as a
military policeman, but was soon transferred to the 1st Marine Division Sniper Platoon. He returned to the US a year later after a
particularly brutal mission. Carlos shared that his best shot was when
he was able to eliminate a woman known as Apache. She was a sadistic leader who would capture
and torture American soldiers by skinning them alive, cutting off their eyelids, removing
their fingernails and castrating them before letting them loose in the jungle where they
would die. He and his spotter were following her and
got their chance when she stepped off the trail to pee. In 1969 he returned to Vietnam to command
a platoon of snipers. While he was never hit by an enemy bullet,
he was severely injured when the armored vehicle he was travelling in hit an anti-tank mine. He suffered third degree burns before escaping
the wreckage, and received the purple heart for his brave efforts. 6. Lee Harvey Oswald Lee Harvey Oswald will go down in infamy as
the man who assassinated President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. According to four Federal government investigations,
Oswald shot and killed Kennedy as the President travelled by motorcade in Dallas, Texas. While most of us already know all of this,
did you know that Oswald was also a former U.S. Marine? Oswald enlisted in 1956, just after his 17th
birthday. He was trained and tested in shooting and
scored 212, slightly above the requirements to be a sharpshooter. He was court-martialed after accidentally
shooting himself in the elbow with an unauthorized .22 handgun and several other incidents where
he inexplicably fired his rifle. Just before turning 20, he was discharged
from the Marine Corps and Oswald defected to the Soviet Union. He eventually returned to the US in 1962. If he was in fact the lone assassin of President
Kennedy, this means that he was an incredibly skilled marksman. Although the distance from JFK’s car was
never more than about 90 yards during the shooting, there are many factors that made
this shot extremely difficult. The car was moving away, it was blocked by
an oak tree, all of the shots were fired within a very short amount of time, and most importantly,
the only rifle that could have been used was nowhere near that accurate. During the investigation, expert riflemen
from the US Army and the FBI attempted to duplicate the shot. Even after fixing the gun and shooting at
stationary targets, they were unable to accurately shoot the two hits out of three, within 6
seconds, that supposedly Oswald had made. 5. Chuck Mawhinney Charles “Chuck” Mawhinney was one of the
most lethal snipers of the Vietnam War with 103 confirmed kills. He holds the record for the most confirmed
kills by a US Marine. Son of a WWII Marine Corp veteran, he began
shooting at a very young age and was an avid hunter. When he graduated from high school in 1967,
he immediately joined the Marine Corps. A year later he was sent to Vietnam where
he continued “hunting”. One of his most famous engagements was at
night. A large North Vietnamese Army force was spotted
moving its way south toward the US base near Da Nang. A monsoon prohibited any air support so Mawhinney
volunteered to cover a river crossing where the Vietnamese were expected to march across. He left his sniper rifle at the base and went
with an M14 semiautomatic rifle and a Starlight scope, an early night vision device. He engaged the enemy at ranges from 25-75
meters. He is now famous for stopping this Viet Cong
assault by hitting 16 headshots in 30 seconds at night, during bad weather. After leaving the Marine Corps, he married
and worked for the U.S. Forest Service until he retired in the early 1990’s. Mawhinney told no one about his service as
a sniper and did not even know about his record. He was suddenly made famous in 1991 when a
fellow Marine sniper, Joseph Ward, wrote about him in his book, Dear Mom: A Sniper’s Vietnam. 4. Billy Dixon Billy Dixon was known for being a skilled
marksman, buffalo hunter and Indian fighter in the late 1800s. He is one of only 8 civilians to receive the
US Medal of Honor. As a non-military sniper, he is famous for
defending the Adobe Walls settlement against Indian attack with his legendary buffalo rifle. Adobe Walls (now Hutchinson County, TX) was
a trading post famous for the hundreds of buffalo that roamed the area. It attracted buffalo hunters from across the
country and the buffalo population began to drop. The Native Americans realized the threat of
the Adobe Walls trading post to their way of life and to the buffalo population and
organized to attack them. Early in the morning on June 27, 1874 a combined
force of Comanche, Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Arapaho warriors attacked the town. Billy Dixon was one of 28 men (and 1 woman)
who participated in the Second Battle of Adobe Walls from inside James Hanrahan’s saloon. The buffalo hunters repelled the attacks with
their pistols and short range weapons. On the third day, 15 warriors rode onto a
bluff so they could get a better view of the attack and how to proceed. This is when Billy Dixon made his move. He aimed and took a shot with a ‘Big Fifty’
Sharps rifle. Already known as a great shot, Dixon shocked
even himself when he cleanly hit a warrior from his horse nearly a mile away. While now controversy reigns over the exact
distance, US Army Surveyors who conducted a post battle survey determined that the shot
had, in fact, been over 1,500 yards, or nine-tenths of a mile away. Supposedly an impossible shot. Following these events, Dixon joined the army
as a scout, and three months later found himself in another battle at Buffalo Wallow. His gallantry in battle at this subsequent
fight earned him the Medal of Honor. 3. Herbert W. McBride Although originally from Indiana, Herbert
McBride served as a Captain in the Canadian Expeditionary Force during WWI. He was a sniper and commander of a machine
gun unit known as the “Emma Gees.” He was commissioned as an officer but was
reduced to a private due to his trouble with alcoholism. He was shipped off to England where he was
then sent to the Western Front. He is credited for killing more than 100 German
soldiers as a sniper. His book “A Rifleman Went to War” is now
a highly regarded book by students of riflery and is considered one of the best first-person
accounts of WWI. He notes that by the end of 1916 “the game
was over” and he was court-martialed and dismissed due to his alcoholic binges. He later joined the US Army’s 38th Division
where he served as a sniper until Armistice Day. He later became a marksmanship and sniping
instructor at Camp Perry. Then McBride moved to Oregon and worked in
the lumber industry in his later years. He died in Indianapolis of sudden heart failure
in 1933, shortly after finishing “A Rifleman Went to War”. He was 60 years old. 2. Adelbert Waldron Another sniper from the Vietnam War is Adelbert
Waldron. Until Chris Kyle in 2011, Waldron held the
record for most confirmed kills at 109, the highest figure achieved by any American sniper
in US history. Waldron deployed in Vietnam in 1969 as part
of the 9th Infantry and set his kill record in only 8 months of service. At the time the 9th Infantry was based in
the Mekong Delta, which was one of the most hostile territories in the war. This brought out his superior marksmanship
skills- at one point scoring a confirmed kill after firing from a moving boat 900 meters
away. Another time he managed to take out a group
of 8 Vietnamese soldiers from 500 meters away by using only 8 shots. One shot, one low. Waldron became one of the most feared and
wanted by the Viet Cong and became known as Daniel Boone. The Vietnamese had a $50,000 bounty on his
head. He was sent home in 1969 became a sniper shooting
instructor for the army, and left the military a year later. By the end of his service he had earned many
military honors including a Silver Star, many Bronze Stars, and a Presidential Unit Citation. 1. Chris Kyle No list of snipers would be complete without
mentioning Chris Kyle. He is the most accomplished sniper in US history. Kyle received an invitation to the 24-week
Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL school (BUDS) in 1999, and went on to serve four tours in
Iraq as part of SEAL Team 3. He served in many major battles that took
place during the Iraq War where he became notorious for his marksmanship skills. His first confirmed long-range kill was a
woman approaching a group of Marines while carrying a hand grenade. Kyle called his longest successful shot a
“straight-up luck shot” from his McMillan Tac-338 sniper rifle when he killed an insurgent
sniper aiming at other US military personnel at 1,920 meters away. His effectiveness led to a bounty of up to
$80,000 placed on him by insurgents who called him ‘The Devil of Ramadi’, while the Marines
he was tasked to protect began to call him “The Legend”. Like many other snipers, that exact number
of sniper kills is unknown since they have to have been witnessed. The Navy confirmed 160 kills, which beat Adelbert
Waldron’s US record of 109. Kyle helped found FITCO Cares, an organization
that provides at-home fitness equipment for emotionally and physically wounded veterans. Kyle was killed in 2013 along with a friend
at a shooting range in Texas by 25-year-old Eddie Ray Routh (Rowth) who was suffering
from PTSD and schizophrenia. Thanks for watching! Remember to subscribe and click here for more
videos. See you next time on Awesome America.
