Getting Messed With on the Rifle Range

[Griff Murphey]

I used to hear a lot of the old time military high power shooters talk about guys who would ooch around during rapid fire, on purpose, and shoot extra rounds on other shooters' targets. These stories were mainly about interservice matches and usually involved trying to bring a particular shooter of grumpy disposition into a state of total apoplexy.

I had a Navy dental team shooting in the 1975 3rd Marine Division matches. In the practice sessions running up to that when I was trying to build my team one of my boys, DN Topaleski, was firing pretty wildly in offhand. Suddenly he started shooting 5's and pinwheel 5v's in offhand. His shooting became spectacular enough that several Marines started watching him. One Captain said to him, "By God, doc, we ought to recruit you for the Marine Corps!" At some point the line decided to have the pits investigate and it turned out the target pullers had gotten so disgusted they started marking the target like that to shall we say "muck" with old Tope. I think it was pretty discouraging for him to say the least because he quit right after that.

When I was up at Newport, RI, in 1974 taking my Navy dental officer indoc course I went to the indoor range they had up there and asked to shoot for qual. On the rapid and timed fire pistol stages I caught the Chief, out of the corner of my eye, holding the target button down and giving me a couple of extra seconds, I am pretty sure. I think I was kind of not at my best that day from club call the previous night. So there is "good" "mucking with" where they can help you out.

The one really raw deal I got was shooting Trainfire at Fort Sill in 1970 for my Army ROTC advanced camp and the near targets (like the "gimmie" 25 and 50 M ones from a dead rest foxhole position) were so shot up you could not get them to fall unless you could find a spot right on the edge. I had the second highest score in my platoon which was nice but it was only sharpshooter.

[gwp]

The one really raw deal I got was shooting Trainfire at Fort Sill in 1970 for my Army ROTC advanced camp and the near targets (like the "gimmie" 25 and 50 M ones from a dead rest foxhole position) were so shot up you could not get them to fall unless you could find a spot right on the edge. I had the second highest score in my platoon which was nice but it was only sharpshooter.

On the pop-up targets that where too shot up to fall; we would shoot the ground below the target and try to spray enough sand and gravel into the target to make it fall.

[Dan Shapiro]

"On the pop-up targets that where too shot up to fall; we would shoot the ground below the target and try to spray enough sand and gravel into the target to make it fall. "

Hahahahaha! AND it usually worked!

[alibi]

I had been involved with competitive marksmanship and had competed at the National Rifle and Pistol Matches, both high power and small bore rifle events. The Army made accurized M-14 rifles available for the first time that year and I choose to try out that rifle and did pretty well in the high-power rifle matches. If nothing else I learned a great deal about doping the wind at Camp Perry, where the range flags can be seen demonstrating the wind coming from the left at the left end of the butts, from the right at the right end of the butts, up range at the center of the butts and down range at the firing line.

So when I was drafted into the Army I was no novice to marksmanship. My experience with the qualification and familiarization firing was for the most part frustrating. It mostly got to the point that the time on the live fire range was so exhausting I didn't care if I ever put any rounds down range, much less qualified.

On one range I learned that the score keepers (who were soldiers on casual status) were soliciting money to pad range scores and that the more paid the higher the score. Because of my previous experience with marksmanship I didn't think I needed any such "assistance" but soon learned different.

On one range in which the course of fire consisted of rotating through four different target lanes, I was a magazine loader at the firing point of one of the lanes. Talk about being messed with as a shooter the first relay or two had to deal with ground fog that obscured most of the targets, but they were required to shoot anyway. Since I had the opportunity to observe where all the targets were located (once the fog cleared) on that particular lane when we rotated to be shooters I lined up for that group of lanes. I noticed that one lane (of the four I would be shooting on) people were avoiding lining up. After trying to locate the targets on that lane I soon learned why no one wanted to shoot on that lane. The scorekeeper several times stated "Your target is up" and I could not find a target to engage. These were pop-up targets and the vegetation around most of the targets was shot away and the targets were readily visible against the bare earth background, but not on this particular lane.

On another night firing range I was on the detail loading magazines with the top two rounds tracers. I took advantage of the opportunity and loaded two magazines with all tracers. When we actually fired the course we were supposed to use the tracers to locate the target and to then engage with full automatic fire. It happened that the rifle on the firing point I was on was an M-16 without forward assist. I fired the first tracer and observed that it passed over the shoulder of the silhouette target. I adjusted my aim and tried to confirm with the second tracer and the rifle didn't fire. I soon found the cartridge case stove piped in the ejection port. I cleared the malfunction and fired the second tracer with identical results as the first. I gave up using the tracers to adjust aim, set the rifle on AUTO and fired off the rounds just to get it over with.

About the only thing positive that came out of range firing in basic training I was favorably impressed with the accuracy of the M-16 rifle. By the time I was drafted the stories of the problems with the M-16 in Vietnam were well publicized. Other than my experience with the M-16 malfunctions on the night fire course I thought the M-16A1 better than the reputation it had at the time.

During Military Police AIT we were given the opportunity to qualify with the M-14 rifle which I was confident I could shoot without too much difficulty. One of the pop-up targets would not go down even though I knew I was hitting it, I even shot at the edges and "head" of it as I was aware some of these targets were so shot up in the center that they didn't register hits, I also tried the ploy of aiming at the ground immediately in front of the target. I told the scorekeeper that the target was defective and called my next shot in the dirt in front of the target. He would not give me credit for any hits on that target and I missed qualifying expert by one point.

We also fired for qualification the M1911A1 pistol. I was never much of a pistol shot and found that I had to aim at the lower left corner of the target frame to hit the scoring ring rings on the target. The day we actually fired for qualification I could not see any hits in the white of the target and after a few rounds began to think I was missing the target. So I started aiming around the frame to determine where my rounds were going. I soon had rounds in the white that seemed to confirm my original point of aim was correct. When we went forward to score the targets I found that those first few rounds that I thought were misses were actually in the black and fooled myself into shooting a poor score with the pistol.

One time while shooting a slow fire string on the National Match Course I was in the process of squeezing a shot when the ejected brass from the next firing point landed on my bare back where my shooting jacket had folded up. I tried to get the shot off, but I had to abandon the effort because of the burn. I wonder if that had happened in a sustained fire match it would have been an alibi?

It is clear that Murphy's Law is applicable to weapons firing and that much of a shooter's success in shooting is anticipating and overcoming the many things that can go wrong. How many of you have had the experience of finding your fount sight loose in the middle of a stage and check the front sight screw on your M-1 or M-14 (-1A etc.) between stages?