Try searching for the United States' top sniper and you get a couple of names. Carlos Hathcock; a legend, but he doesn't have the most confirmed kills. Charles Benjamin "Chuck" Mawhinney; a talented sniper no doubt, but he's not top gun either.
The real deal? Staff Sgt. Adelbert F. Waldron III. He's the one of the most successful U.S. snipers ever, with 109 confirmed kills.
A passage from Inside the Crosshairs: Snipers in Vietnam, by Col. Michael Lee Lanning, describes just how good a shot Waldron was: "One afternoon he was riding along the Mekong River on a Tango boat when an enemy sniper on shore pecked away at the boat. While everyone else on board strained to find the antagonist, who was firing from the shoreline over 900 meters away, Sergeant Waldron took up his sniper rifle and picked off the Vietcong out of the top of a coconut tree with one shot (this from a moving platform). Such was the capability of our best sniper."
Waldron is one of the few people who have been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross twice, once each for separate actions in 1969.
He died in 1995 and is buried in California.
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