Pistol Shot Training

I have yet to read all the way through Fairbairn and Sykes and related material used at the special forces training schools during WWII, but even so far it seems a significant improvement on the stand-up-straight a la Bisley style which had been taught in the armed forces up to that time. I've got a police firearms manual from the 60s and you do see two-handed grips in use in it, but the rest of it seems rather stiff and perhaps unrealistic by today's standards. I am just starting to study this stuff, of course.

 

I don't know what they teach with shotguns today, because in my day they figured it was a shotgun so point it, pull the trigger, pump it, repeat. No training required. There was no CG qual or ribbon or anything. Yet, when stationed on a Cutter in San Juan, a group of us got sent down to the Seals in Roosevelt Roads for shotgun training. This was the result of one of our officers getting drunk with a Seal and getting an earful about how great shotguns were in close quarters, and since we did drug boardings and it was free training that would look good on a junior officer's record, a bunch of us got dragged down there in a van. With no AC. There was never any AC. The one thing I learned and have passed along to many others, is that if you hold a shotgun loosely (instead of tightly as your Dad taught you) and aim at the groin (instead of center mass) of a silhouette target (or a human) the OO Buck pattern will create an narrow ellipse going up the centerline of the target from belt buckle to chin. The point of this, according to these Seals (who seemed to know what they were doing), was that you aren't going to hold the shotgun tightly enough in close range combat to keep the pattern where you point it. You're scared, you're ducking, hiding, whatever, so that pattern is always going to go high anyway, so aim low and hold it loose and use that.