Chuck Mawhinney, Camp Pendleton Marine who became deadliest sniper in corps history, dies at 75

Chuck Mawhinney, the Camp Pendleton Marine who became the deadliest sniper in the corps’ history while serving in the Vietnam War, died on Monday at his home in Baker City, Oregon. He was 75.

The Marine Corps credited Mawhinney with 103 kills as well as 216 “probable” kills that could not be confirmed because of the dangerous conditions in which the shootings happened.

Mawhinney, who attended Camp Pendleton’s Scout Sniper School, made the kills during a 16-month period that began in early 1968, when he was fighting the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong. He was a member of Camp Pendleton’s 5th Marine Regiment at the time.

The Oregon native recorded all of the kills before he turned 20. The journal American Rifleman says Mawhinney, whose father was a Marine, primarily carried a Remington M40 sniper rifle, typically firing from a distance of 300 to 700 yards. Some shots were made from more than 1,000 yards.

All of this was largely unknown until 1991 when it was revealed in the book, “Dear Mom: A Sniper’s Vietnam” by Joseph T. Ward. Further details surfaced in 2023 with the publication of, “The Sniper: The Untold Story of the Marine Corps’ Greatest Marksman of All Time” by Jim Lindsay. Mawhinney directly contributed to that book.

Serving as a sniper “was the ultimate hunting trip: a man hunting another man who was hunting me,” Mawhinney told the Los Angeles Times in 2000.

“Don’t talk to me about hunting lions or elephants; they don’t fight back with rifles and scopes. I just loved it.”