And you thought Rattle Battle was Exciting

by Hap Rocketto

An early Camp Perry postcard "In Ohio's Lake Erie Vacationland"

Personally, I think that I am a collector of rare and historically important shooting ephemera. My wife, on the other hand, thinks me a packrat. Of the many things that I have archived, cluttering up the house my wife would say, is a collection of some 150 Camp Perry post cards dating from 1907 to the present. The colorful “Sighting In For The Big Match, Camp Perry, Ohio”, dates from the early 1930s. It depicts a firing line full of riflemen strapped into ‘03s, shooting prone, campaign hats shielding their eyes from the sun under the watchful eye of an officer, standing tall with jodhpurs tucked into knee length riding boots and a telescope to his eye. In the background two generic biplanes lazily drone about the old water tower. Another linen finished penny postcard, titled “Aeroplane Park, Camp Perry, Ohio, shows a neat flight line of, what looks like, the standard attack aircraft of the era, the Curtis A-3 Falcon. The seven ‘planes face south with cowlings neatly covered by canvas shrouds. In the background can be seen the water works standpipe and further back the old Clubhouse

Nowadays few know that airfields existed on both the eastern and western extremes of Camp Perry. Confirmation of that fact lies buried deeper in the overflowing midden heap of documents that fill the file cabinets in the dark recesses of my basement. There can be found an airmail envelope postmarked “Port Clinton, Ohio Jul 20 P.M. 1934 (Camp Perry BR)”. In the upper left hand corner is the signature of Harry H. Kerr and the printed words “Airport Dedication” In the opposite corner are postage stamps to the tune of eight cents. “Sandy” Kerr, the Camp Perry Superintendent from 1919 through 1949, had originally arrived there on March 15, 1907 as a 22 year old mule skinner to help build the range.

About the most exciting shooting a high power shooter can do today at Camp Perry today is the National Trophy Infantry Team Match, the Rattle Battle. This rapid-fire event fired in four stages from 600, 500, 300, and 200 yards. Six riflemen with a 384 rounds between them and under the direction of a captain and coach assume the prone position at 600 with rifles locked and loaded, eight targets are exposed for 50 seconds and there is no limit to the number of shots the shooters may fire during that time. The teams then move forward, on line with each other, with rifles unloaded and actions open to 500 yards where they repeat the 600 yard line evolution. They continue to 300 yards where they fire from the sitting or kneeling position and end up, if there is any ammunition left, standing at 200 yards. The non firing team captain and coach may use binoculars to direct fire. Blasting away as fast as one can at multiple targets in limited time is exhilarating, to say the least.

Now there is Rattle Battle and then there is Rattle Battle and, while July 1934 may mark the first official use of Perry as an airfield, there had been an earlier aeronautical activity there that would leave most Rattle Battle shooters green as the copper residue on their cleaning patches with envy. The New York Times, of August 27, 1920, reported that Pilot Lieutenant O.G. Kelly and Observer Sergeant William Steckel of the Army Air Service won the aerial match at the National Matches at Camp Perry the previous day. Probably flying the Air Service’s work horse, the DeHaviland DH-4, mounting Browning machine guns the airborne pair engaged targets on the ground, scoring 520 points out of a possible 800. Kelly was required to shoot at an upright target with his fixed machine guns, aiming the ship as if it were a rifle. He racked up an impressive 270 points out of 300. As Kelly maneuvered to keep the plane stable Steckel shot at a smaller recumbent target with a pair of flexible machine guns mounted on a Scarff ring, posting a score of 250X500. In second place were Captain Walter R. Lawson and Lieutenant Leland Bradshaw with a 462. Apparently being in front of the guns wasn’t the only dangerous place to be that day as one of the aircraft was wrecked during the competition.

Lawson came in second at Perry but the National Match experience was put to good use less than a year later. “Tiny” Lawson found himself 60 miles off of the Virginia coast piloting a Martin MB-2 bomber, a squadron mate of Jimmy Doolittle. Slung beneath each of the six twin engine planes of General Billy Mitchell’s 1st Provisional Air Brigade were 2,000 pound bombs and below them lay the captured German dreadnaught Ostfriesland. Twenty-one minutes after the first bomb fell from the sky the Ostfriedland slipped beneath the waves, her hull split open by the excessive water pressure created when the bombs detonated underwater hard by her. The sinking proved, at least as far as Mitchell was concerned, that air power should be the nation’s first line of defense.

Unfortunately the Fates dealt Lawson a pair of ironic jokers. Taking off from Dayton, Ohio’s McCook Field in 1923 he lost power and crashed into the Miami River. The Georgia native lost his life at the controls of the very MB-2 he piloted over the Ostfriedland. The Army named the balloon landing facility at Fort Benning, in his home state, Lawson Field in his honor in August of 1931. After World War II the name of Second Lieutenant Ted W. Lawson was added to his, giving the parsimonious post war Army two memorials for the price of one. The second Lawson was author of Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, a memoir of his experiences as a pilot on the historic World War II raid lead by the first Lawson’s fellow pilot in the 1st Provisional Air Brigade, Doolittle.

Just as Captain Lawson and Camp Perry are historically linked so, likewise, are the late captain and the Rattle Battle. Some of the nation’s finest National Trophy Infantry Team Match competitors train just a few miles from Lawson Field on Easley and McAndrews Ranges, for Fort Benning is also the home of the United States Army’s Marksmanship Training Unit.