[old roper]

Bart B, just asking I remember this old post

Bart B Bart B is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2005
Posts: 1,639
Re: U.S. army sniper school
In 1971 while on active duty in the US Navy, my detailer in the Pentagon called me and said a SEAL Team Training Center in Hawthorne, Nevada wanted to get me on board as a sniper. A few weeks later they called my detailer and asked again but this time it was for me to be an instructor. Bless my detailer, he didn't let me go as I was already in a critical billet for the Vietnam situation. And besides, he said, it was risky business as a sniper and many instructors went to 'Nam with their students. Seems the USN had records on who had earned the USN Distinguished Marksman Badge and those people were who they were after for the SEAL teams; I learned all this at a Navy reunion a couple of years ago talking to one of the guys that was stationed at the Hawthorne, NV site.

I did some investigating and learned some stuff about what they did cover in their courses. Very little ballistics was covered; the shooters didn't need to know it. They got good training on wind doping in learning how to read mirage or heat waves through spotting scopes and what their zeros were for different ammo types they might use in their rifles. Most of their training was learning how to be sneaky but some naturally was in marksmanship.

The US Navy's Small Arms Match Conditioning Unit in San Diego made virtually all the rifles used by their SEAL Team Snipers. Remington 700 actions with match grade barrels made for Lake City M118 ammo epoxy bedded in synthetic stocks wearing Redfield 3x9 scopes. After each one was built, it was taken to their 600 yard test range, clamped in a machine rest then various lots of M118 ammo was tested. When a good ammo lot was found two cans (920 rounds) of it were packaged with the rifle then shipped to a Seal Team. Most of the time the rifles would stay inside of 5 inches at 600 yards with the ammo shipped with them. Not bad for ammo that had to shoot about 10 inches at 600 yards by Lake City Arsenal specs. Accuracy dropped to about 6 inches at 600 yards when the 20-inch long 2-inch diameter silencer was put on.

The Unit also modified a few M1 Garands they had rebarreled to 7.62mm NATO for the USN Rifle Team by adapting M14 magazines to fit. These would shoot almost as good as the Rem. 700's using M118 ammo. When fed the "Mexican Match" ammo favored by the USN Rifle Team, these M1's would equal the Rem. 700's for accuracy. This ammo was M80 ball made by Lake City Arsenal using IMR4475 powder packaged in 8-round clips for the Navy but had the 147-gr. bullet replaced with a Sierra 168 Int'l. match bullet. Not surprising as the Navy's converted M1 Garands were more accurate than the US Marine Corps' or Army's best M14NM's available at the time. The Unit's manager once told me that if they could find some non-hollow point bullets that would shoot well in these M1's they would have proposed they be used as the standard US military sniper rifle.
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