Combat Firing with Handguns

I went to the gun range recently, and in the stalls to the left and right were some chaps with their 1911's.

I proceeded to use my Glock 23 and dump three 15-round magazines without one failure-to-feed, stovepipe, or any other malfunction.

The guys in the other stalls gathered behind me. I turned around. After a few seconds, one of them asked, in a quavering voice, "....are you a WIZARD?"

It is interesting that the ‘safety’ idea of the latter placement of the finger didn’t come around until around sometime after I retired from the Army in 1993.

Depends on who trained you, and when. When I went through Armor AIT in the Summer of 1965, our training on the M1911A1 and Grease Guns was, like you say, pretty minimal. But when I got to my eventual duty assignment with the 70th Armored, one of the first introductions I got that this was not one of your run-of-the-mill units was my first week burning off around 3000 rounds of .45 ACP [1000 to the .50 can!] just like in training...then at sundown, and finally at night. Right hand, left hand, both hands, all the possibilities, and yep, we got told to keep the finger out of the trigger guard unless we were pulling on the trigger. I think that technique came about as a result of the Grease Gun's kind of *minimal* safety, and which was downright nonexistant if the chamber cover had broken off.

Our last 2000 rounds left over after that little familiarization was shooting from the crew positions of an M60 tank, driver's, loader's and TC hatches, plus a short session firing from prone underneath with a dropped driver's belly hatch. After that, enjoy the weekend. Next week, same thing again, but now with the .45 burp guns, all on silhouette targets, to the front, and the sides, and even a pair set up on the back deck of the tank, like they were trying to get a satchel charge in the turret.

I wondered why they trained [some] tankers that seriously? Then when they told us the Marines were going to evacuate all American personnel from Israel during the 1967 war, and that the 70th would be holding the Haifa docks area with our battalion while the Marines got everyone there for evac, I figured it out. With 13 unit awards and 22 campaign streamers, the 70th Armor Regiment is the most decorated armor unit in the United States Army. That, and this guy: Skip Johnson.

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