The British Rifle That Held the World's Longest Kill Shot

He was standing up. Corporal of Horse Craig Harrison had his L115A3 raised to his shoulder and was standing — not prone, not supported — looking through the Schmidt and Bender scope at a target 2,475 metres away. That is 975 metres beyond the rifle's specified maximum effective range. Below him, a British convoy was being hit by a Taliban PKM machine gun crew. It took nine ranging shots to find the exact impact point. Then Harrison fired. The bullet took five seconds to reach the target. It dropped thirty metres in flight. It curved as the Earth rotated beneath it. He wasn't aiming at the man. He was aiming at where the man would be in five seconds. He killed two machine gunners with two consecutive shots. A third shot destroyed the gun. The distance — confirmed by Apache helicopter laser rangefinder — was 2,475 metres. The longest confirmed kill shot in the history of warfare. It held for eight years. Harrison called it a bit of a fluke. The nine ranging shots said otherwise. The rifle was built by Accuracy International, a company founded in Portsmouth in 1978 by a British Olympic shooter who believed no existing bolt-action rifle was accurate enough. He was right. IronBritain. One weapon per video. From the factory floor to the front line. 🔔 Subscribe — new video every day.