Customer Reviews

Snipers: Profiles of the World's Deadliest Killers

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It's difficult to know where to begin with this book, but the authors' statement that it was formulated in a pub after several drinks explains a lot. It is riddled with inaccuracies and irrelevant text, much of it in the form of quotes from novelists such as Remarque and Fleming, neither of whom were renown for their expertise on firearms. [Fleming disliked guns and had to have the workings of the Walther PPk pistol explained to him.]

The chapter topics are curious as well, the death of Nelson [the result of a lucky shot by a French marine and not sniping in even its remotest sense] receives six pages, whereas the Great War, from whence came all current sniping knowledge, receives a scant four. Neither do the authors appear to understand even the basics of firearms technology - musket balls are undersized, not oversized. Priming powder does not fall out of the pan on flintlocks [the frizzen closes over it to prevent this]. Percussion ignition did not happen in the 1790's and British cartridges were never lubricated with animal fat, beeswax and tallow were used.

The dismissal of the abilities of the Enfield P14 rifle are curious too, for it was not introduced as a sniping weapon until AFTER the Great War had ended, yet the widespread use of the Short, Magazine Lee-Enfield as the primary Commonwealth sniping rifle during the war is bafflingly ignored. There is even a little short story at the end of the book, possibly to make up for the lack of hard substance.

One could go on, but frankly, life is too short to read bad books. Save your money, there are better publications out there.

I was a Marine Corps Scout Sniper for many years and am well read on the history of the subject. This book just isn't very good. It is historically inaccurate and plays fast and loose with the facts. The chapter on Zaitsev surprised me. Everyone knows the guy wasn't real and was made up for Russian propaganda mills. The author acknowledges the dispute but says he will assume Zaitsev was real and writes an entire chapter on a fictional person. He also says that Russian snipers with experience in Chechnya were hired as mercenaries by the israelis to shoot Palestinianse. Why? Because Israel doesn't have any good snipers. Yeah. I happen to have some personal experience in that area and all i can say is don't waste your time.

This book certainly does read as though it was written after consumption of several pints, as the the introduction says. Frederick Forsyth contributes the foreword, and he should not have associated himself.

Cabell and Brown point to several milestones in the development of the modern sniper, beginning with the American War of Independence, and continuing with the death of Lord Nelson, then on to WWI.

The American Civil War is not mentioned, with its organised companies of "sharpshooters" raised by Berdan, nor the 800 yd shot which killed Gen Sedgewick at Spotsylvania.

Also not rating a mention is the Boer War, or there the Lovat Scouts of the British Army, the first known sniper unit to wear "ghillie suits".

At a finer level the book does not seem well edited. In Ch 4 Passchendaele is described as "desiccated", which means to be thoroughly dried. In the same sentence it is described as a "porridge of mud".

In Ch 7 the road to Rome, Highway 6, is described as running "over the mountaintop of Monte Cassino". What a mad bit of road building that would have been. The old Via Casilini, one of the most ancient military routes in the world, runs through the Liri valley, and is dominated by Monte Cassino, but is below it.

Monte Cassino is described as "The Allied Stalingrad" in Ch 7. Pardon? Not quite. The Allies were not surrounded or eliminated there as the German 6th Army had been. A bloody meat grinder it certainly was though, with more than 70000 casualties from both sides. However Stalingrad is the largest land battle ever fought, with nearly 2 MILLION casualties total. There is no comparison.

Perhaps Cabell and Brown mean that it was the Allies' introduction to the same horrors that Stalingrad provided. I'd agree with that. There was worse to come though, for instance at Okinawa and the Battle for Berlin.

Fact and fiction are mixed here with equal enthusiasm, so that it becomes hard to separate which the authors think is which. "Saving Private Ryan" and "War of the Rats" get a mention, as does urban non-military sniping.

That will do here, but if you do not mind these flaws, the book is quite readable. Just don't go quoting it as a reference.