TARGET-SHOOTING AND THE SOLANO TARGET.
id MATCH-RIFLE conditions and bull's-eye shooting are
directly opposed to service-rifle shooting and train- ing for war." The sentence is quoted from a lecture lately delivered before the Masonic) Rifle Clubs in Edinburgh by Colonel Egerton, Commandant of the School of Musketry at Flythe (published by Hugh Rees, 119 Pall Mall, 3(10, and we believe that those who are most anxious that rifle olubs should fulfil the best purpose possible would agree with the general sense of Colonel Egerton'a indictment. They might perhaps wish to substitute for "directly opposed some such phrase as "the most elementary introduction," for the soldier, like the child, must walk before he can run, and some form of bull's-eye shooting is still recognised as a valuable beginning. But Colonel Egerton's contention is clear enough to be accepted. Rifle-shooting, as practised by miniature-rifle clubs, and to a large extent as it has hitherto been practised by the Volunteers, has reached a stage when it should go forward if it is not to go back. The actual founding of rifle clubs was a step forward, for it ensured that a very large number of persons who otherwise might not have learned the use of a rifle acquired a very considerable knowledge of good target-shooting. But that knowledge is only a beginning. It was not enough in the case of the Volunteers ; it could not be enough for the Territorial Army ; and it should not be enough for the rifle clubs if they are to fulfil the best purpose possible. Broadly speaking, Volunteer shooting hardly moved out of the same groove since the first shot was fired it Wimbledon till the King's Prize was shot for at Bisloy last year. The main conditions remained the same, a black bull's-eye on a white ground, known distances from the target, and unlimited time to shoot a given number of rounds. Those are nothing like war conditions, and, as training for shooting in war, such rifle-practice can only be regarded as the most elementary kind.
To practise shooting at a black bull's-eye on a white ground was all very well in the days of the Crimea, when soldiers marched uptight with drums beating and colours flying, when your enemy was good enough to make himself conspicuous with bright uniforms and flashing accoutrements, and before the days of small-bore rifles and magazines. To-day the soldier has very different marks to aim at. Modern armies dress themselves in neutral tints of blue and green and grey and drab, and modern troops, almost or quite invisible at long ranges, can be so hard to distinguish even at short ranges that riflemen trained to aim only at black-and-white targets find their first difficulty in deciding where to shoot. Then, again, the modern science of taking every advantage of cover in attack at close ranges has altered conditions so that the stationary target, in actual warfare, no longer exists. All targets are disappearing targets, and, as Lord Roberts has said, the modern battle is decided by snap-shooting at close ranges. There is no time to dwell on the aim, or to wait until you have recovered your breath before firing. Running over rough ground and an exposure of the target for only two or three seconds alter all that, and with the alteration in battle conditions there should clearly be an alteration in peace training. In the Regular Army that fact has been recognised, and the bull's-eye target has been officially condemned. From the training of the Territorial Army, and from the practice of the rifle clubs, the bull's-eye target has not yet disappeared ; with the miniature-rifle clubs, indeed, it is still the main target. But if Bisley shooting is to be in the future, as it used to be forty years ago, a valuable form of training for shooting in war, clearly the bull's-eye target must disappear from I3isley as well as from the Regular Army course of musketry instruction. Its place must be taken by targets approximating in colour, size, and character to marks actually shot at in battle.
The question is how the change is to be brought about. Colonel Egerton speaks with high praise of a new style of target and form of training known as the Solano system, and a brief description of this system, to which the present writer has recently been introduced, may be interesting. The Solano system begins by discarding the circular bull's-eye. Targets are either triangular or rectangular. Diagrams of marks actually shot at in battle show that, to reach the vulnerable points of an imagined attacking infantryman, the shape of the target should be triangular. When a rifleman exposes himself for a second or two above a wall, for instance, the shape of the mark pre- sented is a triangle with its base on the line of the wall. The elementary target, then, consists of a triangle of blurred lines placed on a background of grey-brown,—the kind of mark a Boer might have made shooting from behind a rock on a kopje. But of course a soldier has to fire at other Marks besides solitary riflemen. He may have to fire in turn at a firing-line of skirmishers, at troops concealed in a fold of ground, at artillery crossing, or at distant troops in deep formation. In each case the Solano targets are designed to offer a mark resembling that at which the rifleman would fire in actual battle. For troops in deep formation the target is triangular, and for these reasons. The nearer the bullet strikes the base of the triangle, the more likely it would be to damage troops in column formation ; but a bullet fired high and straight would also be destructive,—it would find its billet in the rear of the column, while it would miss the column altogether if fired high and in the least degree crooked. The diagram of vulnerability is thus plainly triangular. Just as plainly the bull's-eye target is hopelessly unsuited to represent artillery galloping across the line of fire, or a line of skirmishers in open order attacking a position. The proper shape should be long and narrow, like a band of ribbon, and shots striking below or above the band should be counted as misses. These are elementary targets, and of course they. are capable of development on elementary lines. You might have a band of triangles, for instance, representing a line of heads above a wall.
But the really interesting and fascinating invention which Mr. Solano has designed for the training of troops in the essentials of musketry fire is something much more elaborate. It may be roughly described as a target consisting of four tiers of deal, like a four-step stairway, plated with sheet-iron.
That is the naked framework. Over these tiers are laid strips of canvas painted to resemble cornfields, ploughland, downs, &es so that the whole target, when clothed with canvas, looks like a panorama of English country. Behind is the sky,---canvas backed with iron plating. Horizontally along each of the four tiers run grooves, and in the grooves sliding carriers, in which can be set upright targets repre- senting galloping artillery, skirmishing infantry, and so on. Trees, houses, &c., can be dotted at will along the grooves. Next, each groove is calculated to be set at a certain distance from the firing-pointt twenty-five feet away. The lowest groove, for instance, is supposed to be from four hundred to eight hundred yards distant, the next groove above it from it thousand to fourteen hundred yards, the next sixteen hundred to two thousand, and so on. The movable targets are calculated to the exact size which they would look in battle, and by an ingenious system of strings and wheels can be worked from the firing-point to cross the target at exactly the pace they would move on the field. For each tier, too, there are three sizes of targets, and men could be instructed in judging the distance of the mark by the size of the target, —e.g., if a band of figures were placed on the lowest tier, the men would have to decide whether they were four hundred, six hundred, or eight hundred yards away, and would sight their rifles accordingly. At all these targets, moving and stationary, the miniature-rifleman can fire direct. But the target can also be employed to instruct men using the Service rifle with the ordinary Service cartridge. Firing at a short distance away from the target, they can aim their rifles at figures supposed to be anything from six hundred to two thousand yards distant ; but, owing to the angle at which the rifle is tilted, the bullets will not hit the figures aimed at, but will be caught by an iron screen above the skyline. Further, this screen is so ingeniously measured and spaced that it will be possible to see whether the men would have bit their mark or not. For instance, the instructor can order a squad of six men to fire five shots each at artillery crossing a thousand yards away. When the firing has ceased he can consult the screen behind the skyline, and by merely glancing at a space corresponding to the size and shape of the target aimed at by the men, can tell the squad precisely what damage they would have inflicted on the artillery in an actual battle.
We have not space to describe every detail of this remark- ably ingenious battle-practice target. If we can sum up Mr. Solttno's system in a sentence, it is that it aims at accustoming the soldier in practice to aim at, and hit, the marks he would see in battle. The Army Council, we understand, have expressed high approval of the system, and if, in any detail, it has still to be modified, what is certain is that the inventor is working on lines which are in the main right, and that the alteration and elaboration of musketry training which he proposes are necessary.
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