The Disconnect Between Range Marksmanship & Combat Hitsmanship
It has been assumed that if a man can hit a target at 50 yards he can
certainly do the same at three feet. That assumption is not borne out by the
reports.
An attempt was made to relate an officer's ability to strike a target in a
combat situation to his range qualification scores. After making over 200
such comparisons, no firm conclusion was reached.
To this writer's mind, the study result establishes that there is indeed a disconnect between the
two. If there was a connection between range marksmanship and combat
hitsmanship, one would expect the combat hit potential percentages, to be
well above the dismal ones reported. That is because the shooting distance
was less than 20 feet in 75 percent of the 4000 encounters studied.