JTF2 heard you, Scott
Vincent J. Curtis
22 June 2017
For some time now, Publisher Scott Taylor has criticized the
Canadian government for allowing Canadian soldiers to fight in the front lines
in Iraq against ISIS forces. One example
of front line fighting was of a Canadian soldier taking out a VBIED with a
relatively short range Carl Gustav rocket launcher. The Canadian troops deployed in Iraq are on a
training mission, and fighting in the front lines runs contrary to that agreed
upon mandate, he argues.
It appears that Canadian Special Operations Forces in Iraq
were paying attention. In June, a Canadian
JTF2 sniper made a record-breaking kill shot in Iraq from a twice-confirmed
range of 3,540 meters. You can’t get
much further behind the front lines than that.
Any further back, and you’d bump into the Iraqi Officer’s Mess.
Canadian snipers now hold three of the top five confirmed sniper
shots. Dropped into second place, with a
range of 2,475 meters, is British sniper Corporal of Horse Craig Harrison of
the Blues and Royals, followed by Canadians Cpl Rob Furlong at 2,430, and MCpl
Arron Perry at 2,310, both of 3 PPCLI.
Fifth place, at 2,300 meters, is held by Sgt Bryan Kremer, 2nd
Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment of the United States Army. The famous GySgt Carlos Hathcock III, USMC,
falls into sixth place at a mere 2,286 meters, albeit made with a scope mounted
M2 Browning machine gun - not ordinarily considered to be a sniping weapon,
until he made it into one.
The first Canadian experience of sniping occurred during the
Boer War. The Boers were armed with the
Mauser Model 1895 that fired the 7 mm Mauser spitzer cartridge. This combination completely outclassed and
outranged the British Magazine Lee Enfield rifle, which fired the Mark II .303
cartridge - hard-hitting but ballistically wanting. The Boers were largely an army of snipers,
and it was this experience that gave Sir Charles Ross and Sir Sam Hughes the
idea of an army of marksmen equipped with a rifle superior in accuracy and
range to the Mauser – the Ross rifle in .280 Ross calibre – and with the Colt
M1895 machine gun included for additional firepower.
The British learned some lessons too from the Boer War, and
they entered World War I with the Mark VII .303 cartridge and the Short
Magazine Lee Enfield rifle. Under Sam
Hughes’ tutelage, Canadians stayed with the Ross, adapted for the improved
British cartridge. Major H.
Hesketh-Prichard, author of Sniping in
France gives his account of ‘How the British Army won the Sniping War in
the Trenches.’ He writes, “The Canadian
Division and, later, the Canadian Corps was full of officers who understood how
to deal with the German sniper, and early in the war there were Canadian
snipers who were told off to this duty [i.e. counter-sniping], and some of them
were extraordinarily successful.
Corporal, afterwards, Lieutenant, Christie, of the PPCLI, was one of the
individual pioneers of sniping.”
In his book A Rifleman
Went to War W.H. McBride wrote of pre-war Canadian training. “Here, in Canada, the program, which was
certainly laid out by an officer who knew his business (I suspect it was
Colonel Hughes himself) was one calculated to do just two things: to put the
men in physical condition to endure long marches and to thoroughly train them
in the use of weapons….In the Battalion were many of the best riflemen in
Canada, including Major Elmitt (member of the Canadian Palma team of 1907)….I
just mention these things to show how it was that this particular battalion
developed into a real aggregation of riflemen….We were using the Ross rifle,
a splendid target weapon…”
The top Canadian sniper of the war was Cpl Francis
Pegahmagabow, 1st Bn CEF, with 378 kills with his Ross.
In World War II, Canadian snipers were equipped with a
scope-mounted Lee-Enfield No. 4 Mk 1 (T) and organized into Scout-Sniper
platoons. Perhaps the most famous
picture of a sniper, then or now, is of Sgt Harold A. Marshall of the Calgary
Highlanders, wearing a Denison smock and a Hollywood-handsome look.
In 1972, the Canadian army adopted the C3 Parker Hale, which
was based upon a modern target-competition rifle with all the latest
improvements for consistent, long-range accuracy. This excellent rifle was in combat service as
late as Op APOLLO, and MCpl Graham Ragsdale of 3 PPCLI recorded over 20 kills
with a C3A1 in Afghanistan in March, 2002.
The 7.62 NATO calibre C3A1 is being phased out and replaced
with the C14 Timberwolf, in .338 Lapua Magnum.
The problem with all the classic rifle calibres for sniping nowadays is
lack of range. They are limited in
effectiveness to the distance at which the bullet falls below the speed of
sound, and this typically occurs about 900 meters downrange. Better ballistics dramatically improves range. The Lapua Magnum cartridge is good to 1,500
meters, and the .50 calibre BMG, to over 1,800 meters; and the extraordinary multi-kilometers
kills were done with these. The problem for
accurate, long-range sniping becomes accounting for such esoteric factors as
atmospheric pressure, and the curvature and speed of rotation of the earth. For this, the sniper’s spotter and his
ballistic computer become an absolutely essential part of the team.
The idea of Sam Hughes and Charles Ross of an army of
marksmen proved to be impractical, and precise, long-range shooting is now delegated
to platoons of snipers with special equipment.
Beginning with Hughes, the Canadian army developed a culture, and now
have a reputation for excellence in sniping. Sniping is a skill that is inexpensive to
develop. It is a craft that smaller armies like Canada’s, lacking in money and
men, can cultivate, and snipers can deliver tactically important results.
With modern tools, Canadian soldiers don’t have to be in no
man’s land to be able to dispatch the enemy.
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