Viet Cong Sniper Rifles?

January 26th, 2010 by eranio

Just curious, what kind of sniper rifles did the VC use in the Vietnam War?

One Response

llordlloyd
January 26th, 2010 at 6:00 am

In the early part of the Vietnam war most Viet Cong equipment was either captured French, or Chinese. Most Chinese-supplied weapons were short-range automatics such as PPSh-replica submachine guns and SKS rifles, copied from Russian designs, and the Russians made a lot of this sort of weapon because of their circumstances in World War II.

So most Viet Cong snipers before about 1967/8 would probably have used French Lebel rifles, or Soviet Moisin-Nagant bolt-action rifles. Garand M1s captured from the South Vietnamese arly would also have been used a lot.

After this date Russian equipment was available in large amounts and sniper versions of the AK series would have been more common.

Bear in mind the VC in the early days was not very well equipped- they had what was left over from the French period and what little equipment could be brought down the Ho Chi Minh trail, and what they captured or purchased from corrupt South Vietnamese officials. Many pictures of the VC up to 1966 show French era weapons, especially M3 ‘Grease guns’ and M1 carbines.

Another thing to remember is that much ‘sniping’ would actually have been carried out at pretty short range with ordinary weapons.