Confirmed kill
During the Vietnam War, Hathcock had 93 confirmed kills of PAVN and Viet Cong personnel. In the Vietnam War, kills had to be confirmed by an acting third party, who had to be an officer, beside the sniper's spotter. Snipers often did not have an acting 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 his time in the Vietnam War.
Confirmations with North Vietnamese Snipers
The PAVN placed a bounty of US$30,000 on Hathcock's life for killing so many of their men. Rewards put on U.S. snipers by the PAVN typically ranged from $8 to $2,000. Hathcock held the record for highest bounty and killed every known Vietnamese marksman who sought him to collect it.The Viet Cong and PAVN called Hathcock Lông Trắng, translated as "White Feather Sniper", 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.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.
A female Viet Cong platoon leader called "the Apache woman," with a reputation for torturing captive U.S. Marines, was killed by Hathcock around the firebase at Hill 55.
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.[who?] He was not informed of the details of the mission until he accepted it.[failed verification] This effort took four days and three nights, without sleep, of 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 General exited his encampment, Hathcock fired a single shot that struck the General in the chest, killing him.[self-published source]
After the arduous mission of killing the PAVN General, Hathcock returned to the United States in 1967.He missed the Marine Corps, however, and returned to Vietnam in 1969, where he took command of a platoon of snipers.
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