Saturday, May 08, 2010

Maybe There Will Always Be an England

From the May 2nd Daily Mail (U.K.):
An army sniper has earned a place in military history by killing two Taliban machine gunners from more than a mile and a half away.

Craig Harrison's record breaking shots felled the insurgents with consecutive bullets -- even though they were 3,200ft beyond the official range of his rifle.

The Household Cavalry veteran's kills from a distance of 8,120ft beat the previous record by 150ft.

He was using the British-built L115A3 Long Range Rifle, the Army's most powerful sniper weapon.

He was so far away that the 8.59mm-calibre bullets took almost three seconds to reach their target. Scores of Taliban gunmen have fallen to the gun which has been nicknamed The Silent Assassin.

It is only designed to be effective at up to 4,921ft -- just less than a mile -- and capable of only 'harassing fire' beyond that range. . .

Corporal Harrison, a married father-of-one from Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, killed 12 more rebels and wounded seven others. During an extraordinary six-month tour of duty he also survived a bullet that went though his helmet and a roadside bomb.

The blast broke both his arms but he was eventually able to return to duty, his accuracy unaffected.
(via National Review's The Feed)

2 comments:

Assistant Village Idiot said...

I recommend people go outside sometime this week and try to find something on the horizon that's 1.54 miles away, just to see what this is.

Helluva shot. Glad he's on our side.

OBloodyHell said...

> Glad he's on our side.

Obama's working on that. Give him time, enough, I'm sure that will change.

I'll leave the correct rejoinder to the reader.