In early 1953, on a windy early morning, on the position of Shangganling, and on the position of the American army, in the tiny space of the gap between two bluestones, a gun was quietly erected, and the black muzzle of the gun was facing the position where the prey was about to appear, and a pair of eyes behind the scope were staring intently, only to have the prey appear in the crosshairs. He is the American ace sniper "ghost", he has to wait for the sniper king of the volunteer army "Zhang Taofang", a death god who makes the US army tremble, the distance between the two is 180 meters, the gun in the "ghost" hand is an M2 heavy machine gun, which can be fired continuously, and equipped with an optical sight, and Zhang Taofang has no sight, only an ordinary single-shot rifle, and it is ambushed, the victory or defeat of this sniper seems to have been determined, but the result is unexpected, the gunshot sounds, the "ghost" is headshot and falls in a pool of blood, Like countless battles before, volunteer soldiers with inferior weapons once again defeated the well-equipped American ace.
What may make the US military even more confused is that Zhang Taofang, who made them feel frightened, was still a rookie who couldn't hit the target a few months ago, so how did he grow from a recruit egg to a sniper king in just a few months? Today we will tell his story.
Zhang Taofang
In 1951, the 20-year-old Zhang Taofang joined the army to serve the country, and in October 1952, he was ordered to go to Korea with the 24th Army to fight, when the Korean battlefield entered the stage of position warfare, because our army did not have air superiority, the firepower was also at a disadvantage, so the soldiers did not dare to shoot at the enemy position with intensive firepower, otherwise they would incur retaliation from the enemy's aircraft and artillery. The enemy soldiers were fearless and arrogant, often lying on the positions basking in the sun en masse, talking and laughing, and not taking the volunteers on the other side seriously. In order to teach these provocative enemies harshly, the officers and men of the support army of the mechanism carried out cold gun tactics that is, snipers to kill individual or small group targets of the enemy.
Battle of Shangganling
Zhang Taofang's company began to select sharpshooters for this purpose, taking on the task of sniping the enemy, Zhang Taofang enthusiastically signed up for the selection, but he fired three shots at the target, but what he got was three "big burnt cakes", all off target. Zhang Taofang was ashamed, eager to find a seam to drill into, he was very depressed, why was he so bad? He thought about it, and suddenly thought of the gun factor. When training in China, he used Japan's three-eight big cover, and in North Korea, it was issued with the Soviet Mosin Nagant rifle, which has a short barrel and a large sitting force, so the accuracy is worse, thinking about this, Zhang Taofang made up his mind to practice arm strength, he tied more than a dozen pounds of sandbags to his arms for aiming, after some hard training, his arm's ability to resist impact was greatly improved. In addition to arm strength, he also practiced aiming. Originally, sniper rifles would have optical scopes, but the volunteers at that time did not have such a high-level thing, and the aiming could only be done with the naked eye. In order to improve his aiming ability, Zhang Taofang even let his comrades dangle with oil lamps at night, and he held up a gun in an empty warehouse to aim at the swinging wick. In this way, day and night, Zhang Taofang finally practiced the ability to track and aim at moving targets.
Zhang Taofang training
Just at this moment, a message came that his 214 regiment was about to be sent to the front, and he finally had the opportunity to snipe the enemy at the front.
In early 1953, on the seventh position on the 597.9 height of Shangganling, Zhang Taofang ushered in the first opportunity to snipe the enemy, and two enemy soldiers drilled out of the bunker 100 meters away from him. Zhang Taofang held his breath, loaded, aimed, pulled the trigger, slammed a gunshot, he looked up, he couldn't help but be stunned, actually did not hit, the enemy heard the gunshot and began to flee, Zhang Taofang was not willing, slammed 12 shots at the enemy, the muzzle was hot red, the shell shells flew down from the magazine one by one, but he didn't even hit a devil's hair, was it so long in vain? Zhang Taofang held the gun and began to think again, what is the problem? Suddenly, he patted his thigh and suddenly realized, Yes, how did I forget the advance measurement? Turns out the enemy is a moving target! Aim at the enemy to shoot, after the bullets fly over, the enemy has run away from the position just now, so it is necessary to predict where the enemy will reach, aim there and shoot to hit.
Attack the enemy
But to determine the amount in advance, it is necessary to measure the distance. But Zhang Taofang only has an ordinary rifle, and it is easy to accurately measure, but this is difficult for him. He pointed his thumb at the enemy and determined the distance by comparing the sizes, which really worked. A few days later, three enemies came down from the opposite hill, Zhang Taofang, measured the distance, raised the gun and shot, only to hear a crisp gunshot, the enemy in the middle fell to the ground, Zhang Taofang finally opened, the comrades-in-arms congratulated him, but he was not happy at all, it turned out that he was aiming at the first enemy, but it was the second that fell, what went wrong this time? After he thought about it, he thought that it was because he was going down the mountain. The descent will take a route that will have an inclination, and if it is aimed at the upper body of the first person, the bullet will most likely hit the person behind when it flies. Zhang Taofang thus summed up a set of lessons, if the enemy is up the mountain, aim at his head, because even if you can't hit the head, you can hit the body, and the enemy must aim at his feet when he goes down the mountain, so that he can hit his upper body.
Fight against the enemy
Follow-up story and see X tomorrow revealed, you may wish to pay attention to the official, thank you!