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United States Marine Corps sniper (1942–1999)

Carlos Norman Hathcock II (May 20, 1942 – February 22, 1999) was a United States Marine Corps (USMC) sniper with a service record of 93 confirmed kills. Hathcock's record and the extraordinary details of the missions he undertook made him a legend in the U. S. Marine Corps. He was honored by having a rifle named after him: a variant of the M21 dubbed the Springfield Armory M25 White Feather, for the nickname "White Feather" given to Hathcock by the North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN).

Hathcock was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, on May 20, 1942, to parents Carlos Norman Hathcock I (1919–1985) and Mae Thompson (1920–1989). He grew up in Wynne, Arkansas, living with his grandmother Myrtle (1900–2000) for the first 12 years of his life after his parents separated. While visiting relatives in Mississippi, he took to shooting and hunting at an early age, partly out of necessity to help feed his poor family. He would go into the woods with his dog and pretend to be a soldier and hunt imaginary Japanese soldiers with the German Mauser which his father, a veteran of two wars, brought back from World War II. He hunted at that early age with a .22 caliber J. C. Higgins single shot rifle. Hathcock dreamed of being a Marine throughout his childhood, and so on May 20, 1959, his 17th birthday, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. Jo gave birth to a son, whom they named Carlos Norman Hathcock III.

Before deploying to South Vietnam, Hathcock had won shooting championships, including matches at Camp Perry and the Wimbledon Cup. In 1966, Hathcock started his deployment in the Vietnam War as a military policeman and later became a sniper after Captain Edward James Land pushed the Marines into raising snipers in every platoon. Land later recruited Marines who had set their own records in sharpshooting; he quickly found Hathcock, who had won the Wimbledon Cup, the most prestigious prize for long range shooting, at Camp Perry in 1965.

During the Vietnam War, Hathcock had 93 confirmed kills of People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and Viet Cong personnel. In the Vietnam War, kills had to be confirmed by the sniper's spotter and a third party, who had to be an officer. Snipers often did not have a third party present, making confirmation difficult, especially if the target was behind enemy lines, as was usually the case. Hathcock himself estimated that he had killed between 300 and 400 enemy personnel during the Vietnam War.

The PAVN placed a bounty of US$30,000 on Hathcock's life for killing so many of its soldiers. Rewards put on U. S. snipers by the PAVN typically ranged from $8 to $2,000. Hathcock held the record for the highest bounty and killed every known Vietnamese marksman who sought him to try to collect it. The Viet Cong and PAVN called Hathcock Lông Trắng, translated as "White Feather", because of the white feather he kept in a band on his bush hat. After a platoon of Vietnamese snipers was sent to hunt down "White Feather", many Marines in the same area donned white feathers to deceive the enemy. These Marines were aware of the impact Hathcock's death would have and took it upon themselves to make themselves targets in order to confuse the counter snipers. One of Hathcock's most famous accomplishments was shooting an enemy sniper through the enemy's own rifle scope, hitting him in the eye and killing him. Hathcock and John Roland Burke, his spotter, were stalking the enemy sniper in the jungle near Hill 55, the firebase from which Hathcock was operating, southwest of Da Nang. The sniper, known only as the "Cobra", had already killed several Marines and was believed to have been sent specifically to kill Hathcock. Hathcock stated in interviews that he killed a female Viet Cong platoon leader called "the Apache woman", with a reputation for torturing captive U. S. Marines, around the firebase at Hill 55. However, scholars such as Jerry Lembcke have cast doubt on Hathcock's account and questioned the existence of "Apache". Hathcock only once removed the white feather from his bush hat while deployed in Vietnam. During a volunteer mission days before the end of his first deployment, he crawled over 1,500 yards of field to shoot a PAVN general. This effort took four days and three nights without sleep and with constant inch by inch crawling. As the general exited his encampment, Hathcock fired a single shot that struck the general in the chest, killing him. After this mission, Hathcock returned to the United States in 1967. Hathcock and the seven Marines he pulled from the vehicle were evacuated by helicopter to hospital ship Repose, then to a naval hospital in Tokyo, and ultimately to the burn center at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas.

After returning to active duty, Hathcock helped establish the Marine Corps Scout Sniper School at the Marine base in Quantico, Virginia. Due to the extreme injuries he suffered in Vietnam, he was in nearly constant pain, but continued to dedicate himself to teaching snipers. In 1975, Hathcock's health began to deteriorate, and he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He stayed in the Marine Corps, but his health continued to decline. Just 55 days short of the 20 years that would have made him eligible for regular retirement pay, he received a permanent disability separation. Being medically discharged, he received 100 percent disability pay. He would have received only 50 percent of his final pay grade had he retired after 20 years. He fell into a state of depression when he was forced out of the Marines because he felt as if the service had kicked him out. During this depression, his wife Jo nearly left him but decided to stay. Hathcock eventually picked up the hobby of shark fishing, which helped him to overcome his depression. Hathcock provided sniper instruction to police departments and select military units, such as SEAL Team Six.

Hathcock once said that he survived in his work because of an ability to "get in the bubble", to put himself into a state of "utter, complete, absolute concentration", first with his equipment, then his environment, in which every breeze and every leaf meant something, and finally on his quarry. After the war, a friend showed Hathcock a passage written by Ernest Hemingway: "Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and like it, never really care for anything else thereafter." He copied Hemingway's words on a piece of paper. "He got that right," Hathcock said. "It was the hunt, not the killing." Hathcock's son, Carlos Hathcock III, later enlisted in the U. S. Marine Corps; he retired from the Marine Corps as a Gunnery Sergeant after following in his father's footsteps as a shooter and became a member of the Board of Governors of the Marine Corps Distinguished Shooters Association. Hathcock died on February 22, 1999, in Virginia Beach, Virginia, aged 56, from complications resulting from multiple sclerosis. He is buried at Woodlawn Memorial Gardens in Norfolk, Virginia.

Hathcock generally used the standard sniper rifle: the Winchester Model 70 chambered for .30 06 Springfield cartridges, with the standard 8 power Unertl scope. He also used the M40 Remington 700 chambered in .308 with a Redfield 3 9x Scope. On some occasions, however, he used a different weapon: the M2 Browning machine gun, on which he mounted an 8X Unertl scope, using a bracket made by metalworkers of the SeaBees. Hathcock made a number of kills with this weapon in excess of 1,000 yards, including his record for the longest confirmed kill at 2,500 yards (since surpassed). Hathcock carried a Colt M1911A1 pistol as a sidearm. The 1998 movie Saving Private Ryan reproduced the "through the scope" shot against a German sniper.

The Discovery Channel series MythBusters tested the question of shooting another sniper through his riflescope. Episode 67, entitled "Firearms Folklore" (November 29, 2006) featured the test: "Can a bullet travel through a sniper's scope and kill him?" Using a police industry standard SWAT sniper rifle and standard police match ammunition, the MythBusters fired several shots at a scoped rifle mounted on a ballistics gel dummy. The bullet was unable to hit the dummy: it was either stopped or deflected by the multiple layers of lenses in the scope, leaving the dummy relatively unharmed. Without any clear evidence that a bullet can penetrate a sniper scope, the MythBusters decided to label the myth as "busted". But, due to much debate by viewers, it was revisited in episode 75. Using a period accurate scope (this story originates from reports of Carlos Hathcock in the Vietnam War, and the scope used by Hathcock's opponent did not have the numerous internal optical elements of the scopes tested), it was found to be plausible. Hathcock was mentioned in the NCIS episode "One Shot, One Kill", when a white feather was found at two crime scenes where the victims were shot and killed by a sniper. The series' protagonist, Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, a former Marine scout sniper, realized the significance of the feather as the perpetrator's "calling card", referencing Hathcock's nickname during the Vietnam War ("White Feather Sniper"). He credits Hathcock with "39 confirmed kills", apparently having transposed the digits of Hathcock's actual 93 confirmed kills. Hathcock's duel with Cobra was mentioned in the History Channel Sniper Inside The Crosshairs in 2016. As in Mythbusters, this show also tested the question of whether shooting a sniper through his scope was possible and came to the conclusion that it was highly plausible after four shots by a modern Marine sniper.