United States Naval Institute proceedings Volume 22 - Livres de poche

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: [copyrighted.] U. S. NAVAL INSTITUTE, ANNAPOLIS, MD. A SYSTEM. OF AIMING DRILL. By Ensign Philip Andrews, U. S. Navy. Blunt's Rifle and Carbine Firing contains many valuable suggestions and rules for target practice with small arms, among them the following exercise for sighting: " Sight three times at a movable target which is each time brought into the line of sight without moving the piece." Following this rule, the triangle drawn through the three shots, if small, will indicate regular, but not necessarily correct sighting, since there may be a constant error. Blunt recommends that the instructor, after drawing the triangle, himself see whether the center is in the line of sight; but this affords no criterion, since the instructor's aim may be no better than the man's. The following method of sighting drill is believed to be an improvement on this method. It was first suggested by the writer in 1891, and was then used on the Chicago, and has since been used to some extent. The target board and rifle should be fixed throughout the drill in absolutely the same position. Let each man sight three times at the movable target after he understands theoretically how to sight. Connect his three shots so that they may be identified, and number the resulting triangle. The number of shots given each man is immaterial, as the mean point of impact of his shots can be readily found, but three shots will be ample. After ten or more men have shot (and about ten shots will be a long enough drill), find the mean point of impact of all the shots fired. This point will be almost exactly where the sightsof the rifle really point, and is certainly much more accurate than the sighting of any one or two men. The mean point of impact of the shots of any one man c...