American Rifle - Alexander Rose [190]
Annie Oakley was one of the finest shots in the world. Here she attempts a signature trick: Hitting an apple balanced atop her rather stoic hound’s head.
The Russo-Turkish battle of Plevna in 1877 was the first time repeaters were pitted against single-shot rifles in a major clash, but its lessons were ambiguous. American companies, like Winchester, supplied the Turks. Here, Turkish officers inspect American rifles during a visit to the factories.
German-American leagues upheld the marksmanship tradition in the late nineteenth century and inspired the creation of the National Rifle Association.
As the “cult of accuracy” spread throughout the army after the bloodletting of the Civil War, the image of the marksman turned more positive. Here, an unidentified African-American soldier proudly sports his marksman badge and sharpshooter medal.
Nowhere was marksmanship more rigorously practiced than at the Creedmoor range on Long Island, New York. American teams defeated the world and turned the sport into the most popular one in the country. In a variety of positions, the Americans are fine-tuning their shots in preparation for a match against the Irish.
Emory Upton, whose ideas on military reform transformed the army from being a frontier police force into a fighting service capable of combating the finest European infantry.
General Nelson Miles (accompanied, at left, by Buffalo Bill) surveying a hostile Indian camp. Miles remained determined to preserve the army’s traditional prerogatives. He would eventually be ousted as commanding general by the reform-minded President Theodore Roosevelt.
Theodore Roosevelt’s fascination with firearms and the frontier influenced the course of American military history.
These two 1890 images are based on photographs snapped the moment the order “fire” was given. In the first case, French soldiers fired an 1874 rifle using regular gunpowder; in the second, they employed an 1886 gun loaded with the new, top secret smokeless powder. The regular gunpowder produced a murky cloud of smoke that rolled back into the men’s faces, obscuring them from view (and obscuring theirs).The smokeless round resulted in a thin, hazy veil that almost instantly dissipated. At one hundred yards, even at its thickest, the puff was invisible. The “Smokeless Revolution” had arrived.
A Springfield Model 1903 outfitted with the revolutionary Pedersen device and magazine. The short-lived invention came just too late to influence the direction of World War I, but its rapid-fire capability threatened the army’s “cult of accuracy.”
A terrifying glimpse of firepower’s future. At left, the soldier wears experimental armor pierced by pistol bullets; in the middle, a soldier exhibits hits by a regular rifle; and on the right, one can see the damage inflicted by a machine-gun. Nevertheless, the rifle could kill at greater range, economy, and accuracy.
General John Pershing presenting an award to a soldier for his performance in the 1919 Inter-Allied marksmanship competition. American shooting had reached its apogee, and U.S. troops (such as Sergeant Alvin York) were renowned for their lethal abilities.
During the 1920s and 1930s, competition was fierce in the race to replace the army’s venerable Springfield Model 1903. The eventual winner, pictured at bottom in an early prototype, was John Garand’s Semiautomatic