British sniper Craig Harrison revealed this week additional details about his famous 1.5-mile double kill, including his position when he took the shot and how many seconds his bullet was in the air.
Speaking to James English on “Anything Goes,” Harrison outlined the full story.
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As Harrison has told the media previously, the day was cool and calm when he began his overwatch protection of British and Afghan troops who were trying to clear a village of Taliban fighters.
“I could see all the Taliban in this village,” he explains. “I could see them queuing up, waiting, to attack this patrol coming in. I informed them, you’re going to get hit in a minute.”
Looking through his spotting scope, he saw another Taliban fighter even farther away holding a radio, informing the other fighters about the incoming patrol. The fighter was too far away for his range-finding binoculars to calculate the distance, so started “bracketing.”
Using this technique, Harrison fired nine consecutive shots, walking his way up to where the fighter was standing. When he hit the compound wall, the radio-wielding Taliban fighter took cover, and the fighters on the ground weren’t able to receive any additional information.
The engagement continued for several hours until he realized there was another fighter in the compound, and they were both firing at the men under his command.
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“I knew that I had shot there in the morning… so I fired my first shot, and it missed… just in front,” he said.
One of the fighters stood up, so he fired again, and the bullet took six seconds to reach him. That fighter went down, hit in the chest.
Now that Harrison was dialed in, he fired a third shot at the second fighter. While that bullet was in the air, he moved his point of aim and fired again.
“Now I’ve got two bullets in the air at the same time,” Harrison explained. “Third one missed, fourth one hit him in the side.”
He made all these shots leaning against a wall using an Accuracy International AWM chambered in .338 Lapua Magnum.
Harrison’s record has been broken twice since he made those two kills in 2009. The current record-holder is a Canadian sniper who made a 2.1-mile shot using a MacMillan TAC-50 rifle chambered in .50 BMG.
the governments like England and America have a bad habit of training these guys to kill but provide no integration back into society,WW2 and Korean vets were treated like heroes,Vietnam vets got treated like total shit! then came the gulf war,then the war on terror,those guys were treated like heroes ,now i guess the powers to be,THE NEW WORLD ORDER,feels they don’t need men like this anymore SOOOO,we’re back to treating them like shit again! in fact,they would probably hope that most of these men will off themselves and save them the trouble,if you doubt what i say,go down to washington,into the belly of the beast and ask the guys being held how the government is treating them!! and i believe most,if not all of them rotting in a dirty cell,being fed crap in that washington hellhole,are veterans!!!
Pretty impressive, for sure. But back in 2000 three members of the .50 Caliber Shooters Assn. invited me out to the Black Rock Desert to do a story for the New York Times Magazine, about the tremendous power of the 50 calibre Barrett. We aimed at a big piece of lava rock two miles away, and all four of us hit what we aimed at in 7 seconds, a second longer than Harrison’s shot. I’m not a ballistics expert and don’t have the numbers, but the 50’s a much fatter round so presumably a little slower than a .338. It ran in the 11/26/11 issue.
CORRECTION: SORRY, THAT WAS THE 11/26/2000 ISSUE, NOT THE 2011.
Great shooting! If Craig Harrison utilized an Angle Cosine Indicator on his sniper rifle, your welcome Craig. I’m the inventor, Ward W. Brien is a patent thief. The federal criminal investigation is near completion. Intellectual property theft is a federal crime. The Rutherford County, TN government is going down for their involvement and extortion.
I know where he is coming from. I was Special Operations in Vietnam. To this day, I live one day at a time. That is the only way you can continue to live. The Military considers you a tool. Like any tool, when they are finished with you, they toss you away and move on. They spend all the money on getting you ready to do the job they want from you, and when it is done, they will not spend a dime to reintegrate you into the world. The wives are the TRUE heroes of military service!!
Thank God for people like Craig Harrison! I actually did a tribute video on YouTube recreating the 2707 yard shot. That dude is a straight up hero and gave me the drive that got me into long range shooting.
I watched the entire interview on Craig Harrison, and I am angered about what happened to him both in America and in the UK. Everybody in America needs to see this, whether it gets on Fox News or something! How do we fix this and do him right? I can’t help but read this, like all of your other articles, and be completely convicted of sitting by Idlelea wow our countries use up good man like this and throw them away! Thank God for Craig Harrison! Thank God for the guys who he was with! Thank God for guns digest and your courage to bring the stories forward. How do we magnify the stories? They must be told! I just wish somebody like ‘Brian Or Tucker would run with his story, the complete story, and let America no of the aftermath things that happened to all of our men who step up like Craig