WWII Pacific USMC Snipers

[cplstevennorton]

It is interesting to me that I have said the exact same points as stated in the article above, but was told how wrong I was....

I keep on saying that the emphasis of training of a WWII Marine Sniper was on scouting and patrolling, and not that much on actually shooting. Usually school trained snipers were top shooters before they ever entered sniper school, so that was not the emphasis on training. I also keep on saying that many school trained snipers never saw a sniper rifle in the field.

The author above has for sure done some research, I can tell. But I do think he has some area's of opportunity to expand upon. I would add I've never seen an instance where a scout sniper was the actual dog handler himself. But I've seen where the Sniper was attached to a dog handler for patrol. Since usually both the Sniper and Dog Handler's were part of Headquarters, they worked along side each other a lot. As I keep on saying over and over, the WWII Marine Snipers were used for their patrolling, scouting, and intelligence gathering capabilities more than they ever were used for traditional role we think of a Sniper today.

Dog Handlers were most often armed with a M12 or 1897 Trench Gun.

I would also add I think the author make it appear they were used as Dog Handlers often, but I haven't found that to be correct. Okinawa seems to be the place I see it mentioned the most. But you usually see Snipers attached to Machine Gun or Mortar teams much more than Dog Handlers.

The real major correction I see is the author's mention of the Lyman A5 scope. This is a clerical error. Almost all knowledge that is public, other than the info Tim, Andrew, or I put out, is based on about a hundred pages that Frank Mallory released back in the day. In those docs, there are mentions that the Marines used the Lyman 5A sight. Which from those docs I could see how someone could make that error as it was a very limited snap shot.

But when you get into the Depot files, which aren't published, you find the actual counts of all the scopes they had. They only had a handful of lyman 5A they bought in 1940 for the Sniper trials. I have the Lyman purchase orders and also verified it from the Lyman side as well. But the Marines never used or adopted the Lyman 5A in WWII. Every count makes it very clear the Marines only had the Winchester A5 scopes they acquired in WWI, and they also acquired some used ones off the Army in between the wars.

Since the lyman 5a and WRA A5 were nearly identical in appearance, someone at some point confused the scopes during the war and whoever was typing up reports at headquarters incorrectly identified the scope. It's just when you research more in the Archives you realize this was a mistake.

I would also not agree entirely that the Unertl scope was deemed not effective in combat. There was a lot of confusion between the WRA A5 and the Unertl Scope in the Pacific, but that is a topic for another day.

But the author above did a decent job and I commend him. I can tell he has done research and did a much better job than most of the people who claim to have knowledge on the subject.