Carlos Norman Hathcock II (May 20, 1942 – February 22, 1999) was a United States Marine Corps (USMC) sniper with 93 confirmed kills. His 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 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. He married Josephine "Jo" Bryan (née Broughton; 1930–2016) on the date of the Marine Corps birthday, November 10, 1962. Jo gave birth to a son, whom they named Carlos Norman Hathcock III.
Before deploying to South Vietnam, Carlos Hathcock had won shooting championships, including matches at Camp Perry near Port Clinton, Ohio, and the Wimbledon Cup. In 1966, he 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 developing 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.
Confrontations with North Vietnamese snipers
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. The 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. When Hathcock saw a glint (light reflecting off the enemy sniper's scope) in the bushes, he fired at it, shooting through the scope and killing the sniper. Hathcock took possession of the dead sniper's rifle, hoping to bring it home as a "trophy", but after he turned it in and tagged it, it was stolen from the armory.
Hathcock said in interviews that he killed a female Viet Cong platoon leader called "the Apache woman", with a reputation for torturing captive Marines, around the firebase at Hill 55. However, scholars including Jerry Lembcke have expressed their skepticism for 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 an enemy soldier who was alleged to have been a general. The effort took four days and three nights without sleep and with constant inch-by-inch crawling. Hathcock said he was almost stepped on as he lay camouflaged with grass and vegetation in a meadow shortly after sunset. At one point he was nearly bitten by a bamboo viper, but had the presence of mind to avoid moving and giving up his position. As the enemy exited his encampment, Hathcock fired a single shot which struck the target in the chest, killing him.
After this mission, Hathcock returned to the United States in 1967. However, he missed the Marine Corps, and returned to Vietnam in 1969, where he took command of a platoon of snipers.
On September 16, 1969, Hathcock's career as a sniper came to a sudden end along Highway 1, north of Landing Zone Baldy, when the LVTP-5 he was riding on struck an anti-tank mine. He pulled seven Marines from the flame-engulfed vehicle, suffering severe burns (some third-degree) to his face, arms, and legs, before someone pulled him away and placed him in water because he was unaware of how badly he had been burnt. While recovering, Hathcock received the Purple Heart. Nearly 30 years later, he received a Silver Star for this action. He and the seven Marines he pulled from the vehicle were evacuated by helicopter to USS Repose, a hospital ship, then to a naval hospital in Tokyo, and finally to the burn center at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas.
Post-Vietnam War and health decline
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, his 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 which 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 the 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 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." He said in a book written about his career as a sniper: "I like shooting, and I love hunting. But I never did enjoy killing anybody. It's my job. If I don't get those bastards, then they're gonna kill a lot of these kids dressed up like Marines. That's the way I look at it."
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.