FDR and the Rangers
#throwbackthursday
Trigger Warning! This is a series of posts about my personal experiences. It has nothing to do with self-defense, hand guns, or Personal Protection.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt personally chatted with some soldiers of the 6th Ranger Battalion in the Oval Office shortly before he passed away from a cerebral hemorrhage.
The 6th Ranger Battalion was deactivated shortly after the end of the War.
https://www.army.mil/article/242208/75th_anniversary_of_the_deactivation_of_the_6th_ranger_battalion
Colonel (then Major) Bull Simons was the Acting Battalion Commander at the deactivation.
Six Degrees of Separation
Colonel Simons was Deputy Commander of the “Joint Contingency Task Group,” the Special Forces soldiers who conducted the Son Tay Raid https://www.army.mil/article/241352/operation_ivory_coast_a_mission_of_mercy in 1970. Another member of the JCTG was Major (then Staff Sergeant) Thomas Powell, who received the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions during the Raid. I was so fortunate as to go through Ranger School with Major Powell (then a Second Lieutenant) a few years later. He was instrumental in helping me receive an Outstanding grade for my last patrol, despite being so tired and hungry I could barely think.
I’m not sure if that gives me a connection to FDR but I am proud of the fact that I volunteered to be one of the “Original 600” of the modern era Rangers.
Cold War Memories – The Effects of A Thermonuclear Attack
#throwbackthursday
Trigger Warning! This series of posts has nothing to do with self-defense, hand guns, or Personal Protection.
Some time while I was a teenager, one of the Chicargo newspapers ran a Sunday feature article about what a Soviet thermonuclear attack would have been like. This would have been the period of 1968-1972. The article talked about the effects on the city if a Soviet thermonuclear weapon exploded over the elevated train Loop downtown.
IIRC, the article used a 1 megaton warhead as the weapon. However the most likely candidate during that time period would have been a missile of the R-12/SS-4 type that precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis https://www.russianspaceweb.com/cuban_missile_crisis.html . It had a maximum yield of 2.3 megatons.
The tactic of thermonuclear combat was to explode a weapon above a city as an airburst to maximize the destruction it caused. Even if the weapon’s fireball didn’t touch the ground, its heat would for a moment be hotter than the surface of the Sun. As a result, everything below the fireball would be vaporized. My memory of the article was that the entire downtown area would be turned into a crater 20 feet deep.
My research for this article uncovered a very informative website called Nuclear Secrecy by Professor Alex Wellerstein. An amazing part of the website is an interactive ability to input weapon and target parameters to generate a map of a weapon’s effects. https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ All maps in this article are courtesy of Dr. Wellerstein’s website. Using this website provided even more accurate indicators of the destruction a weapon would have caused. The airburst altitude for the parameters chosen was 4,120 meters (13,596 feet).
The entire downtown area would have been turned into a crater not the 20 feet of my recollection but rather 122 meters (402 feet) deep. The crater would have a diameter of about one kilometer. The fireball would have a diameter of about 7/8ths of a mile. Inside the fireball, everything would have been vaporized. All Starbucks baristas and customers in the area of the fireball would have ceased to exist in a millionth of a second. No further crying about too many customers would occur after that millionth of a second.
Unfortunately, the high school I attended during this time period was inside the “Moderate blast damage radius” of a weapon. This means the building had a high probability of collapsing but almost certainly would have instantly started burning. All of us would have been injured and many killed immediately.
“Most buildings collapse, Injuries are universal, fatalities are widespread.”
Department of Defense
Fortunately, my neighborhood was only in the “Thermal radiation radius.” Most of the buildings were brick so might not have been knocked down. Someone standing near a window would have been torn to shreds by flying glass though. Anyone outside would have sustained 3rd degree burns over much of their body and died shortly thereafter.
Much of Crook County would have been impacted by the blast.
A bleaker picture emerged during my research. A 1990 Federal Emergency Management Agency document, the Nuclear Attack Planning Base, forecast more than just one weapon would have hit Chicargo. The city’s prominence as a population center and manufacturing base for the military-industrial complex at the time meant that most likely 12 weapons would have been targeted against the area. Probably most of Northern Illinois not only would have been destroyed but would have been completely wiped off the face of the planet. https://nuke.fas.org/guide/usa/napb-90/index.html
No more crying at Starbucks about too many customers there for several centuries at least.
Next post: The Army and the Fulda Gap.
FBI Double Action Course
#wheelgunwednesday
Prior to the FBI adoption of the Wheaties cereal box sized S&W Model 1076 in 1990, revolvers were the Bureau’s sidearm for well over half a century. After the FBI switched to the S&W Model 13 revolver in 1981, it created a publication, FBI Revolver Courses and Techniques, for using the gun with the Weaver technique.
“Sight Alignment: During close-in shooting (five to seven yards), the shooter does not have time to acquire perfect sight alignment. The shooter is, therefore, instructed to fire with both eyes open and to bring the sights up to eye level, seeing the front sight in the secondary vision. As distances increase, the need for better sight alignment increases and trigger pull should be slower.”
One of the Courses in the publication is the Double Action Course. It is intended as a practice regimen for double action shooting. The par times are short as is the allotted time for the one reload included. All strings are fired from the holster except one string at 15 yards.
DOUBLE ACTION COURSE (DAC)
The entire course is fired using the Weaver Position.
5 Yards
6 rounds -2 rounds on each whistle (in 3 seconds)
4 rounds -2 rounds on each whistle (in 3 seconds)
7 Yards
6 rounds -2 rounds on each whistle (in 3 seconds)
4 rounds -2 rounds on each whistle (in 3 seconds)
10 rounds -Load 6 rounds, on whistle, fire 6, reload 4 rounds, fire 4, all in 20 seconds.
15 Yards
6 rounds -2 rounds on each whistle (in 3 seconds). Fired from Weaver Ready.
4 rounds -All 4 rounds in 6 seconds
25 Yards
5 rounds -All 5 rounds in 10 seconds kneeling position
5 rounds -Repeat
Scoring: 2 points each for hits in either the KS or K4 area.
100 points possible.
Firing at an indoor range where drawing from the holster isn’t permitted can be done by using a table start.
Par times can be used via ear buds underneath hearing protection muffs and a par timer app on one’s cell phone. The phone’s Bluetooth connection will transmit the start and stop beeps to the ear buds.
Although it was shot by FBI Agents on the huge B-21 target, any silhouette will do.
It’s a fun course and very practical for those who carry a weapon.
Note to indoor range owners and operators. Granted that OSHA regulations can be onerous to work downrange maintenance with. But having inoperative carriers, targets left downrange on carriers and on the floor, thousands of fired brass cases in front of the booths, etc. presents a very unappealing scenario to the public. This is not a new phenomenon. In 1919, Walter Winans devoted an entire chapter WHY PISTOL SHOOTING IS UNPOPULAR in his book The Modern Pistol and How to Shoot It about the unpleasantness of this experience.
Reliability Testing – Part II
Continuing on with “How many rounds would you say make up a legitimate ‘reliability test’ for a pistol?”
This is a comment to the 2023 post that echoed a comment I failed to notice and answer on the 2017 post.
“ ‘One of the mathematical analyses presented in the original Facebook discussion was that 5 malfunctions per 1000 meant more than one malfunction in a 17 round magazine (8.72%).’
You need to link to this math because it isn’t correct if you assume independence.”
Here is the person’s explanation, verbatim.
“Claude – 5 in 1000 is a 0.5% failure rate, or a 99.5% success rate per shot. The odds of shooting twice in a row is 99.5% X 99.5%, or 99.5% to the 2nd power. The odds of shooting 17 rounds with no problems is 99.5% to the 17th power, or 91.8%, leaving an 8.2% chance of failure.”
The problem is that the assumed 0.5% failure rate was the result of shooting twice. So double counting the failure and then raising it to the 2nd power is an inherent structural flaw in the analysis. I don’t claim to be a statistician but occasionally a structural problem in constructing a mathematical analysis will be immediately obvious to me. If the output of a mathematical analysis is obviously divergent from reality (Glock 17s do not average more than one malfunction per magazine), it means the math is flawed in one way or another.
What is the reliability of a Glock 17? During one class I was teaching at the elite Rogers Shooting School, I had two failures to go into battery with the Gen 2 Glock 17 I used as my School gun. I pushed the slide closed with my thumb (OMG, a diagnostic malfunction clearance) and went on with the drill. The malfunctions seemed odd to me because they were out of the ordinary. Upon further reflection, I realized the teaching season was nearly over (October) and I had neither cleaned nor lubricated the gun all year. It had fired, with various types of ball ammo, somewhere upward of 15,000 rounds without a malfunction. The other School guns performed similarly.
An analysis that determined a Glock 17 had a probability of one malfunction per magazine flew in the face of my experience. That’s the kind of thing I keep an eye open for. If an analysis doesn’t match up with a broad segment of reality, there’s probably something wrong with the analysis.
Having built a model rocket does not make you a rocket scientist.
Reliability Testing
A colleague asked me a few days ago:
“How many rounds would you say make up a legitimate ‘reliability test’ for a pistol?”
My response was 100 because that’s more than 99.9% of people will ever fire a pistol they buy. He was surprised about this answer because he thought it would be considerably more.
There’s a very detailed discussion about it in a post I wrote years ago. Most of the cognoscenti who were responded to the question then felt that 1000 rounds was the minimum desirable number. There were certain aspects of their analyses leading to that conclusion that I felt weren’t explored with enough depth.
https://thetacticalprofessor.net/2017/04/21/reliability/
Numerous justifications for 1000 round torture tests were presented to me by the cognoscenti. One of the mathematical analyses presented in the original Facebook discussion was that 5 malfunctions per 1000 meant more than one malfunction in a 17 round magazine (8.72%). My belief about that obtuse analysis remains the same.
“If I’m going to have at least one malfunction per magazine, I’ll just keep carrying a revolver.”
I’ll write a bit more about my latest revolver work for #wheelgunwednesday next week.
Hahaha. Alt Text autogenerated by Microsoft Word for the above picture:
“A board game with brown squares”
WWII Helicopter Rescue Mission – Unintentional Discharge Related
Dr. Mark Felton never ceases to amaze with his recounts of wartime exploits. The elaborate efforts made by the US Army to rescue a soldier involved a journey three-quarters of the way around the globe.
“A soldier based in a weather station atop a 4700 foot tall mountain [in Burma] had accidentally shot himself in the hand and infection had set in. He needed immediate evacuation to hospital.”
“On the 24th of January 1945, a helicopter undertook the first combat medical evacuation in history.”
Ironically, the first helicopter Medevac mission in history was not due to combat action but rather because of an Unintentional Discharge.
Cold War Memories – The Missile Batteries
#throwbackthursday
Trigger Warning! This series of posts has nothing to do with self-defense, hand guns, or Personal Protection.
My memories in Chicargo
The Missile Batteries
Another of my memories is the Nike-Hercules batteries that ringed the City of Chicargo during the Cold War. There were a lot of them. Probably the ones I remember seeing were in Jackson Park on the South Side because I loved going to the Museum of Science and Industry nearby.
In the early days, the batteries were equipped with Nike-Ajax, a relatively short ranged missile equipped with a conventional warhead to shoot down individual bombers. Later on, they were upgraded to the Nike-Hercules, which was nuclear capable.
Nike-Hercules was intended to shoot down whole fleets of Soviet bombers by using a nuclear explosion. Although which batteries in the US were actually equipped with nuclear warheads wasn’t publicly released, the general consensus was that at least some of the Chicargo batteries were. The warheads were switchable from 2 kilotons, a tac nuke, to 40 kilotons, larger than the bombs dropped on Japan.
Here’s an Army informational film about Nike Hercules.
Next week: The effects on the City in the event of a successful Soviet thermonuclear attack.
Memories of the Cold War – The Sirens
#throwbackthursday
Trigger Warning! This is a series of posts about my personal experiences. It has nothing to do with self-defense, hand guns, or Personal Protection.
I recently watched an entertaining video by Joey B Toonz, an Idiocracy commentator on YouTube. It is titled Starbucks Employee Crying Over Having to Work. The young fella was upset about having so many customers and having to work a full 8 hours.
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxyTKxPH-MPuYQ01wF8lTlXRYExkYwjUoY
It got me to thinking about the things that concerned me while I was his age growing up in Chicargo. Unlike the Greatest Generation, I didn’t have to walk seven miles through the snow to school, only one. However, one of the things we Boomers did grow up with was The Cold War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War and the accompanying specter of thermonuclear annihilation.
My Cold War memories in Chicargo
The Air Raid Sirens
My earliest memories of the thermonuclear specter are the air raid sirens that were tested mid-morning the first Tuesday of each month. I remember beginning to hear them around the time President Kennedy was assassinated when I was in Third Grade. Chicargo had many sirens, reportedly over 100, scattered throughout the city. The monthly tests continued long past when I joined the Army after I graduated from high school.
Probably once a year we would have an ‘Air Raid Drill’ at my elementary school. Because our classrooms had ‘cloak rooms’ where we hung our winter coats, we didn’t do “Duck and Cover.” We just all got up and went into the cloak room for a couple of minutes. In the case of an actual thermonuclear attack, we would have waited there for the building to be destroyed or completely set on fire by one or more 2.2 megaton thermonuclear explosions. More about the actual effects of what such an attack would have done to the city in a later post.
The loudest sirens were the Chrysler Victory sirens. They were marvels of engineering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Air-Raid_Siren Power for the siren was supplied by a Chrysler Hemi 180 horsepower engine and it produced a wail of 138 decibels, which is similar to the sound of gunfire. Hearing protection was required to operate them just like shooting a gun. They were mounted atop tall buildings, fire stations, and other such places that would allow them to be heard for miles.
A marvelous website called Victory Siren http://stall.net/victorysiren/ has a great deal of information about the Chrysler sirens. There is a recording on it http://stall.net/victorysiren/wav/sound.htm that sounds eerily similar to what I recall of those days. It is Sound Clip #10 – Warning Signal.
“This is a recording of Harry Barry’s Detroit siren as heard five miles away. Although the siren was pointed in Harry’s direction, it was not visible over a ridge between the two distant points. The siren was mounted on a trailer and not at optimum height for sound coverage. At this distance it takes the siren sound about twenty-four seconds (same length of time as this clip) to travel from the siren to the listener. The siren volume was estimated to be 55 to 58 dB at this distance!”
Next week: The nuclear armed anti-aircraft missile batteries surrounding the City of Chicargo back then.
The entire Joey B Starbucks boi video is here. https://youtu.be/KYf8HLDwNhs
Home Invasion – Part II
and that’s the first time I realized how difficult it was to try and remove somebody’s testicles by hand.
The gentleman was very angry that his wife and homestead had been attacked and he had been shot at.
He used a 6 inch revolver to shoot back. No results, unfortunately.
And with that I went back to retrieve my own firearm. So I went to the vehicle. I had a handgun, a 38 special with a 6 inch barrel.
Quite an amazing and educational story.
Part I https://thetacticalprofessor.net/2023/06/17/home-invasion-part-i/
Home Invasion – Part I
It’s not often that we are able to listen to such a detailed narrative of how a home invasion went down. Having the victim tell the story makes it even more remarkable. This is a very brave woman and family. The overhead view of the property and accompanying explanation of the movements are invaluable.
My thanks to the creator of the video. More about the story in the next post.
tacticalprofessor 
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