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Tom Dixon

Someone posted this link on another forum, its a link to a downloadable pdf.

Very interesting read, I'm only halfway through but thoroughly enjoying it, nicely written and full of interesting quotes and information.
This one in particular made me smile, the chapter was on WW1 and the superiority of the german snipers during the early stages of the war. The germans were firing from loopholes in heavy steel plate which the 303 enfield could not penetrate, some officers purchased big game rifles, including the 600 nitro express, to counter this problem and took them to the front...


All of these calibres had sufficient velocity and bullet weight to punch through the toughened steel, but it took the Germans very little time to realise that their loophole plates were vulnerable to these massive rifles, and they countered the threat by simply placing one plate behind another, and filling the gap with earth. This effectively rendered them proof against any rifle calibre bullet, and put the British snipers back to square one. Not all officers were adept with their rifles though. Major Penberthy related the story of officers in a line regiment early in 1915, who purchased between themselves a sporting rifle equipped with a telescopic sight, which none knew how to zero. This didn't dent their enthusiasm, however, and after
some weeks of use and abuse, another officer, experienced with telescopic sights, spotted it and asked to examine it. He checked its zero and found at 200 yards it was shooting 2 feet right and 3 feet high from the point of aim. 'Oh', replied one of the owners, 'that explains what happened yesterday. I was aiming at that loophole plate over there and a Hun sniper fell out of
83 the tree to the right of it'.

Enjoy, if you haven's read it already..

http://vulcantoth.free.fr/Snipers_Divers/A_History_of_the_Military_Sniper.pdf