In Part 1 we covered a bit of history of the Silent Sniper Rifle, and it’s development, and the specs. Please check out part 1 to better understand the Silent Sniper Rifle. You can read it here.
Archived information I could find ends at the rifle’s deployment to Vietnam. Bill Woodin advised the rifle did have issues in its operation and its hefty weight was a deterrent. The suppressor was also very bulky and made the weapon very wide.
Moving through the brush with such a heavy, and bulky rifle would be a challenge when the goal is to be quiet. Not much of a point in having a suppressed rifle if you are crashing through the jungle trying to carry it. In an attempt to find men who had actually handled the rifle I contacted a variety of Vietnam veterans turned historians.
I found these gentlemen to be an amazing source of information and very helpful locating veterans who handled the weapon. I’d like to thank Mr. Harton, Mr. Roush, and Mr. Hines for always answering my questions, and being quick to respond. These gentlemen were instrumental in finding veterans who handled these rifles, and had firsthand knowledge of them.
The Experts
The first was Lones Wigger Jr. An absolute legend in the Shooting community. Lones Wigger Jr. has held 27 world records in team and individual shooting competitions. Mr. Wigger was a 4 time Olympian and won over a hundred medals in various shooting competitions. He also served two tours in Vietnam and 25 years in the Army. He ran the Sniper School at Chu Lai, where the Silent Sniper System was sent.
Mr. Wigger was incredibly helpful. He advised the rifle was quite heavy, and very inaccurate. His time with the rifle was short, but he remembered those were the two biggest reasons the weapon failed. He then passed me the information of Burl Branham. Burl Branham was the NCOIC of the Sniper School in Chu Lai.
Mr. Branham was a jovial fellow who took my call and was happy to provide me with the information he had. Mr. Branham has a long history with the art of sniping, he also served in Korea where he carried an M1D. The M1D being an accurized and scoped M1 Garand. Mr. Branham was a Master Sergeant in the Army at the age of twenty, and reportedly was a crack shot.
Mr. Branham confirmed the sniper rifle was quite inaccurate and heavy for day to day use. They tested and evaluated the weapon thoroughly over a short period. In their testing they found the subsonic round to be inaccurate past a hundred yards. The rifle did not meet the Sniper’s standards and was declared a failure.
Mr. Branham did say the rifle succeeded in its goal of being very quiet. He confirmed the rifle met it’s goal of being inaudible past a 100 meters. He described the noise as, “A slight thump, and that was about it.”
The Problematic Rifle
Both men blamed the rifle’s accuracy on how slow the bullet traveled to achieve that subsonic velocity. With the experience these men held in their craft I believe them. A 500 grain projectile, with a round nose bullet, traveling at less 1,100 feet per second would make long range shooting difficult.
Burl Branham asserted the sniper rifle was never fielded or used in combat in anyway. The system was simply not suited to the role of a Vietnam Sniper. They found a suppressed M21 to be the superior option for combat and for their snipers. Mr. Branham informed me that a sniper equipped with the M21 killed a Vietnamese soldier at over 1,200 yards. A helicopter had to retrieve the body.
The rifle apparently passed testing at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds. The testing procedure of the sniper rifle at Aberdeen is lost to history. I have two theories why the rifle passed Aberdeen’s tests, but not testing in Vietnam.
The first was the fact the fine soldier’s at Aberdeen were not snipers. The accuracy standards they had were different from the standards of Mr Wigger and Mr. Branham. They also may have only tested the weapon for function and noise reduction, and not overall accuracy. This may be the case as one note from the LWL states,
Functioning and Safety Evaluation testing by MTD, USATECOM, and APG MD has been completed.
APG MD standing for Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland.
The second theory is the environmental differences between Aberdeen, Maryland and Chu Lai, Vietnam are significant. Humidity and temperature effects ammunition, velocity, and potentially accuracy. The temperature humidity differences between Aberdeen and Chu Lai are significant.
Final Word on the Silent Sniper Rifle
Whatever happened to the system after it was tested is somewhat of a mystery. From the impression left on the snipers, and the assertion the M21 was better rifle, the system was a failure. When searching for an ‘Official’ conclusion to the project I came up empty. What happened to the six rifles seems to be a mystery.
They could be sitting in a warehouse, collecting dust next to the Ark of the Covenant or more likely they were scrapped and destroyed. Occasionally, a single round of the ammunition will appear for sale. Proving it’s an actual military round is essentially impossible.
While the weapon was not a success, it did set a standard for noise reduction. The LWL would go on to help provide suppressed weapons to MACV-SOG. These were more traditional platforms like the AKM and Walther pistols. The LWL was shut down after the Vietnam war but many of their designs and inventions would inspire future designs we use today. This just wasn’t one of them.
I’d like to thank Bud Harton, Gary Roush, Les Hines, Lones Wigger Jr, and Burl Branham for their time, knowledge, and willingness to answer my emails, and phone calls, regardless of how small the question and how often I inquired.
