There is calling a shot, and then there is calling a shot

by Hap Rocketto

Each Friday morning a group of we gray bearded rifle shooters meet at the club to shoot a postal match. Ernie Mellor, Charlie Adams, Dave Vinkler, Steve Rocketto, and I spend the morning blasting away at the NRA/USA 50 target and then repair to Steve’s home, just a short distance from the club, for lunch.

As you might expect with such a varied group the conversation wanders considerably afield but is always, in some way, related to shooting. A few weeks ago we were debating what characteristic was most important to the success of a shooter. One suggested the mental game, another the ability to build a position, another calm under stress, and I thought it might be the ability to call a shot.

I based my argument on the fact that to successfully call a shot one must be aware of all aspects of the release of the shot. From the acquisition of the target until the follow through is complete after the release of the shot, if a shooter is paying attention then he will know almost exactly where the bullet will pierce the target. By doing so one will perfect hold, squeeze, breath control and follow through.

At my pontification Steve had an “A Ha!” moment and quickly turned from the table to grab a volume from one of the many book cases that line the walls of his aviation themed kitchen. It was a copy of Dick Halvorsen’s Steeds in the Sky in which the author discusses what he thinks were the nine most fabulous World War II fighters. Steve leafed through the book to a section about the “Falcon of Malta,” George Frederick “Buzz” Beurling DSO, DFC, DFM & Bar. Beurling was the most successful Canadian fighter pilot of the Second World War, with 31 confirmed kills.

It was the British practice in those days to ‘harmonize” the machineguns and cannons on its fighters. This meant that the guns were so aimed by bore sighting that their combined firepower would converge at 250 yards. While having four Browning 50 caliber machine guns and two 20mm Hispano cannons pointed to meet at the same point was a pretty good idea it did have a down side. If an attacking pilot was either too close or two far away rounds would fly past the target on either side and the tracers would warn the quarry of the attack.

Halvorsen commented that Beurling never had this problem as he had had mastered the art of shooting either one of his two cannon, rarely both and with his fantastic vision and deflection shooting he could, and Steve added with emphasis as he read, call his shots and could tell within a few feet of where they’d hit.

It was written of him that, “He only fired when he thought he could destroy. Two hundred and fifty yards was the distance from which he liked best to fire. A couple of short, hard burst from there and that was usually it. He picked his targets off cleanly and decisively, swinging his sight smoothly through them as a first-class shot strokes driven partridges out of the sky. It was a fluent and calculated exercise… For Beurling the confirmed kill was the thing.”

Like many of his contemporaries Beurling had had a strong enough taste of the exhilaration of aerial combat that it became an addiction. With the war behind him Beurling had to find a way to satisfy his craving. It soon came along when, in the 1948, he was recruited by the infant Israeli Air Force to fly P-51s. Beurling joined some other legendary aviators such a Chalmers “Slick” Goodlin who was scheduled to take the Bell X-1 through the sound barrier until the Air Force took over the project and installed Chuck Yeager. Others were the likes of Bill Pomerance, who downed four enemy planes in one day during World War II and Leon Frankel who flew torpedo bombers in the Pacific and was awarded the Navy Cross for helping to sink the Japanese light cruiser HIJMS Yahagi.

Tragedy overtook Beurling and he never reached Israel. Beurling, who had survived nine previous crashes, did not survive his tenth when the Noorduyn Norseman he was piloting crashed and burned in a failed landing attempt at Aeroporto dell’Urbe in Rome. He is interred in the Israeli Defense Forces’ military cemetery at the foot of Mount Carmel in a grave marked, like all others, simply with his name, rank, and serial number.

One story on Beurling’s uncanny ability to call his shots relates that once he shot down a plane which he saw crumple after a forced landing on an island near Malta. He wanted the confirmation of victory, and alerted the ground to make the claim. He told them in which numbers on the fuselage markings the bullets would be found-and that is exactly where they were.”

Now there is calling a shot and then there is calling a shot. Most of us can accurately call a shot on an NRA.USA 50 target from standing but to call a shot, even within a few feet of the point of impact, at 250 yards when sucking oxygen through a rubber mask while flying at 300 miles per hour, pulling a few Gs, as adrenaline is pulsing through your veins, is a whole other matter.