American sniper rifle vs German sniper rifle

both weapons only work as good as the solider who handles the weapon, german soldiers may have been better trained and skilled than the american soldiers.
so in this case,the german sniper gun may take the title!

 

In practice, both are hand-picked weapons from the factory assembly line. So there wasn't really any substantial qualitative difference between them.

One veteran member of our forum said he had a scoped Garand. Now that would have been a dangerous weapon in a city fight. If he is reading this read, I would really like to ask him how he got it. Did the armorer toy around with the scope mount?

 

Rifle, Cal. .30-06, M1, Garand

I have also seen M1's retrofitted with scopes/mounts. They're readily available. M1-Garand Military Rifle Scope Mounts

 

Another point that should be considered is the quality of the scope used or whether the rifle is being used with it's standard sights.

Cheers

 

The M1903A4 was issued with an M73B1 2.5X scope made by Weaver, or as a substitute standard the M73 made by Lyman. The M1903A1 that was used by the Marines had an 8X Unertl target scope and was not used in the ETO

Perhaps someone familiar with German snipers could provide info about what they used.

 

Found this: " The 98 k could fix a bayonet, the Schiessbecher for firing rifle grenades and different Zielfernrohre ("scopes") ranging from the Zielfernrohr 40 and Zf 41 with a zoom factor of 1.5 to the Zf 39 and Zf 4 (also called Zf 43) with a 4x zoom ."

at Infantry Small Arms Infanteriewaffen Sturmgewehr

Cheers

BW

 

Do you have any reason to believe this is the case?

Nope. This thread is about the guns not the snipers.

 

america was not prone to be a nation of snipers and sniper guns,which germany was at the time of ww2.
sniper equitment was not really americans thing durind ww2!
all i was saying was thaat the germaan gun would be a little bit better thaan the american gun.
germans were very skilled with snipers and sniper equitment and i never hear anything about americas sniper and sniper guns!

please don't get angry,cause i said that germany's sniper gun is better than americas sniper gun,america had other equitment way better than germany did.

 

I'm not at all sure about that. Indeed I've heard that hunters make the best snipers and I'm willing to be a significantly larger portion of the American population were hunters than in Germany. Marksmanship has been something of an American tradition as well.

Why do you say this? Any hard evidence or just an impression?

Now I can see a case possibly being made for German scopes being better. So far it seams that opinion slightly favors the US guns but suggest there wasn't much difference.

It's true that there hasn't been a lot of press for them. I don't even know how they were organized but that doesn't mean they were inferior. For instance you also don't see a lot about tank kills by individuals in the US army. This is in part because it simply wasn't something played up.

I'm not angry. You may even be right it's just that I'm not seeing much to back up your hypothesis.

 

I get the impression that Germany's snipers were renowned as heroes for their excellent skill. This might have been because sniper rifles were complemented in mostly garrison divisions which would be fighting on their own turf.

 

The US Army had artillery, motor vehicles, fuel, and aircraft...

 

thts wht i had thought myself.

 

just an impression,i don't have any proff. it's what i have seen on programs in byts and pieces.

 

a single sniper can hold up an entire allied advance until he is found so as the germans were retreating they would leave snipers behind to hold the allies off and slow them down

 

In the spirit of full disclosure, one problem often cited with the '03-A4 was the inability to load with the 5-round stripper clip, due to the scope overlying the action. Frankly, I really doubt this was much of an issue from a practical standpoint.

Stripper clips do aid in rapid reloading of the magazine. However, snipers by definition are focused on well placed single shots and not rapid fire, hence the modern credo "one shot, one kill". The '03's magazine is easily loaded to full capacity one cartridge after another with the scope in place, just as most of us who hunt with bolt-action rifles do today. The "need" for a sniper to rapidly reload the next 5 rounds in the mag is anathema to the role of the sniper.



M73B1 Weaver Telescopic Sight, U.S. Rifle, caliber .30, M1903A4

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Further clarification on scopes used during WWII: Depending on the timeframe of issue, one would see the 3/4" Weaver 330C/M73B1 scope, the 7/8" Lyman Alaskan/M73 scope, the 7/8" Lyman M81 and M82, and the 7/8" Lyman M84. The M84 showed up very late during WWII, and was more often issued with the 1903A4 during the Korean War.

 

there were two kinds of springfields the 1903a3 and the 1903a4 both using a weaver or lyman scope

 

Did US infantry or Marine sections have designated riflemen with scoped Garands and Springfields?

 

I don't know if American snipers had the kind of coherent doctrine or formal structure as in the Wehrmacht or Red Army. But, the Americans were riflecraft fetishists with a tradition that dated back to before independence. A lot of the country hicks turned out to be crack shots and good stalkers.

 

This is an interesting read from Sniper by Adrian Gilbert on Google book search, between pp. 109-120. Sniper: The Skills, the Weapons, and ... - Google Book Search

This is consistent with other snippets I have read. Basically, the Germans and Soviets had better, more formalized and consistent sniper training during WWII. The US generally did have more experienced civilian rifle marksman in the pool, however, other skills besides accurate shooting are required of sniper teams and the US training programs lacked consistency during WWII. The role of the Marines in the Pacific is also discussed there and it was more of a counter-sniper role.

My understanding, again from things I've read and couldn't quote at this time was that the US started taking the sniper role more seriously over the course of the war and training improved. At war's end, the US Army again dropped the ball and didn't reinstitute sniper programs until the Vietnam era. Since then, that has remained a consistent doctrine.

Wolfy asks a good question. They certainly were "designated" sniper duo teams, but I don't know how they were organized into the unit stucture.

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Just some thoughts:

Getting back to the discussion of rifles, which really has to include scopes and ammunition, I've also run across criticism of the early US Weaver scopes for not being waterproof and prone to fogging. I'm not sure how far along this went before being addressed. Also the choice of a 2.5X scope seems a bit "weak" for the role of a sniper scope by the Army.

From my perspective as a hunter (as I've never been a sniper), the German choice of a 4X scope seems like a good general all around choice, as it the usual choice for a non-zoom hunting scope, providing an optimal blend of magnification and field of view over "usual" distances. While I know nothing about the scopes the German's used, their reputation in optics was certainly unparalleled at the time, so I'm guessing they were excellent. [correction: I was just looking at that Gilbert article again and I guess they used a variety of scopes from weak 1.5X to 4X to 6X, so I don't know how this played out with the Germans.]

The US Marine's choice of the earlier model '03 reflects their history as riflemen. That article linked above talks about how their first choice was the Winchester Model 70 (an excellent rifle) but due to the politics of military and government they went with the Springfield. Their choice of an 8X scope is interesting and obviously provides greater magnification at the expense of field of view. I wonder how that worked out for them in the Pacific theater?

I think that somebody else already mentioned that individual sniper rifles are specially picked and not just "off the rack", so I think if would be pretty safe to assume that all sniper rifles, regardless of country, were accurate rifles. However, I have read that the Germans suffered from lack of consistent ammunition production, especially as the war dragged on. I have no idea how much of a practical matter this was, if at all but something to consider.

 

this is true,the americans focus more on there attacking skills and there airplanes and ships more than there snipers equitment just to kill a two or three emeny soldiers.
While thee germans focus more on thee snipers equitments.
americanswere into the hard war and not the sit and wait war.so thee american sniper riffle won't be as efficent as the germans sniper riffel.