Snipers Sniping & Countering them

[Firn]

@david: I'm perfectly fine with that.

Going through the articles and some other works I tried to find out what else compromised a sharpshooter's or sniper's location or cost him his live. Some give-aways are easily greatly mitigated.



Eliminating the optic's shining or glare


Modern optics provide many big advantages but they can easily give away the position of very well camouflaged soldier by the tell-tale glare.

But the Germans also put a sniper to watch us. And so I was watching, observing during my shift (because the eyes would get tired), and Marusia said: "Let me take the watch now." She got up, it was a sunny day, and she apparently moved the lens. As soon as she got up, there was a shot, and she fell. Oh, how I cried! The German was 200 meters away from us. I screamed so loud it could be heard all over the trenches, soldiers ran out: "Quiet, quiet, or they'll open mortar fire!" But how could I be quiet? She was my best friend. We sat until the evening, and I kept crying all that time. Then we buried her. I remember there were many wildflowers. It was at Orsha, at the 3rd Belorussian Front. Later her grave was moved to Mogilev, that's where she had been born. Later Nadia Lugina was also wounded from among us. My second partner was also named Marusia, last name Guliakina.

Glare often meant a sniper's death - they are often both hunter and hunted.

There was another episode when we executed a specific task. A German sniper appeared at our sector of defense and started troubling us. Volodia and I used the same tactics of hunting. There was, however, only one difference (a helmet was used to bait a very skilled German machine-gunner who was the terror of the whole company): the day was sunny, therefore I slightly rocked my rifle with the optical sight over the parapet to motivate the German to fire.

(In the last episode the second sniper of the "hunter pair" spotted the enemy MG gunner due to the shot (muzzle flash, movement, ..) and killed him. )


Of course the very valuable periscopes and scissor telescopes were subject to close observation and targeting.

At 200 to 400 yards several scissors telescopes and periscopes were smashed to pieces. One sniper shot down a small rock which had been placed in an observation slit three times in rapid succession.

A very interesting episode of WWI (From sniping in France)

Once the Germans startled a new and large form of periscope and we ceased destroying them at once the moment a clever observer found that with the telescope he could read the reflection of the numbers on the shoulder straps of the Germans who used them, thereby allowing us to identify the opposing unit with both comfort and ease.

Interestingly rule 1 in the use of spotting scopes (telescopes) of the same book is:

Rules for uses

1. Always extend the sun-shade (more O.P. have been given away by the light shining upon the object-glass of telescopes than in any other way)

... also

6. When looking into the sun make a sun-shade nine inches or a foot long to fit on the short sun-shade of the telescope. This will give you great assistance when the sun is over the German lines. This trick is borrowed from the chamois-hunters of the Pyrenees

What can be done about it?

- (Very) long sunshades
- Little honey-combed "kill flash" covers
- Using both togheter or separate, according to the specific needs

Both solutions are pretty cheap. There should be easily money enough to prevent 95% of all shining reflections upon the ever more widely used optical devices. Every optic and every soldier behind it should protected by such a cheap and yet very effective solution.


Firn


P.S: Not only optics revealed the important targets:

No, I didn't tell everything. That hill. We attacked. Then we got pinned down by that machine gun and the sniper. The regiment chief of staff Aleksei Kitaev was next to me. He had a cap with a bright band. They shot him from the beginning.