A History of the United States National Outdoor Smallbore Rifle Championships 1919-2013

A History of the United States National Outdoor Smallbore Rifle Championships 1919-2013 By Hap Rocketto August 25, 2013 i Acknowledgement This history is an attempt to capture the events and personalities that make the National Rifle Association’s National Outdoor Smallbore Rifle Championship such a powerful and interesting story. Covering the years 1919 through 2002 was done under the auspices of the NRA’s publications division, as source material for The National Matches: 1903-2003 The First 100 Years. The reports of the years 2003-2010 were written for, and published by, Precision Shooting Magazine until that publication’s demise and thereafter they were specifically written for this history. This is not a formal history in the sense that bibliography is not appended nor are sources cited. However, much of this story was collected from the rich store of information archived in the written reports found in the shooting journals Arms and the Man, The American Rifleman, Tournament News, Shooting Sports USA, and Precision Shooting Magazine as well as the programs and bulletins of The National Matches and NRA Shooting Trophies. To these writers, the many anonymous NRA staff writers who reported on the events at Camp Perry without a byline, Kendrick Scofield, Edward C. Crossman, Walter Stokes, C.S. Landis, Stephen Trask, David North, Jack Rohan, L.J. Hathaway, F.C. Ness, C.B. Lister, Robert D. Hatcher, John Schofield, Ron Stann, Paul Cardinal, Frank J. “Al Blanco” Kahrs, Paul Pierpoint, Alan C. Webber, Ronald W. Musselwhite, William F. Parkerson, III, Robert W. Hunnicutt, J. Scott Rupp, Michael R. Irwin, Tom Fulgham, Ron Keysor, John Zent, Karen Davey, Joseph B. Roberts, Jr., John Grubar, Hap Rocketto, Michael E. McLean, Michael O. Humphries, Joe Kerper, and Daniel McElrath I owe a debt of gratitude. I am also grateful for those who have shared their tales of the National Match experience with me Roger McQuiggan, who took me to Camp Perry for the first time, Steve Rocketto and Charlie Adams who also served as editors and critics, Shawn Carpenter, Dick Scheller, Walter Tomsen, Greg Tomsen, Bill Lange, Arthur C. Jackson, Wally Lyman, David Lyman, Ken Meise, Patti Clark, Harry Wilcoxson, Charlie Langmaid, Dave Smith, Jay Sonneborn, Jeff Doerschler, Lones Wigger, Jr., George “Spike’ Hadley, Gene Barnett, Kay Anderson, Don Durbin, Lenore Lemanski, Bobbi Vitito, Marianne Driver, Eleanor Dunn, Lester Hull, Lance Peters, Al Metzger, Edie Fleeman, Jennifer Smith Sloan, Erik Hoskins, Dan Holmes, Joe Graf, Paul Fecteau, Kent Lacey, Ethel Ann Alves, Ernie Mellor, Tom McGurl, and Nicole Panko. To anyone I have inadvertently omitted; my apologies. In particular I would like to thank David Lyman, of The Blue Trail Range, and Jim Foral who made their collections of Arms and the Man and The American Rifleman available and to Paul Nordquist who did yeoman work in finding obscure and odd documents. My thanks go to Karen Davey and Joe Roberts of the NRA whose support was invaluable. Words of appreciation must also go to my wife Margaret and daughters Sarah and Leah who amiably tolerated the many months that I was occupied preparing this text. This work is, essentially, a rewriting of the many years of reports that I have collected. I do not present this as totally original composition in any way. Too much is owed to those mentioned above for me to take credit. My role was simply to order it into a continuous flow, weaving the individual strands into whole cloth. Where possible I added color commentary in an attempt to make the tale as interesting and enjoyable to read as possible. I owe its success to all who helped me and accept responsibility for any errors or inaccuracies that might appear. Any flaws are not from any lack of effort to attain perfection. The author reserves the moral right to be recognized as the creator of this work. ii iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgement Chapter One 1919-Crossman’s Dream Come True 4 Chapter Two The Roaring Twenties 14 Chapter Three The 1930s-Surviving The Great Depression 45 Chapter Four The 1940s and The Great Diaspora 73 Chapter Five The 1950s-The Golden Age 96 Chapter Six The 1960s-A Decade Of Transitions 119 Chapter Seven The 1970s The Wind Blows and Wigger Wins 146 Chapter Eight The 1980s The Wind Still Blows and Wigger Still Wins 193 Chapter Nine The 1990s-The Wigger Era Closes, Sort Of 249 Chapter Ten The 2000s- The Wigger Era Closes, Again, Sort Of 314 Chapter Eleven The Two Thousand Teens-A New Era 452 Appendix A The Trophies of the Smallbore Championships 496 Appendix B The National Smallbore Championship Records 509 Appendix C The National Smallbore Champions 512 Appendix D The National Smallbore Championship Courses of Fire 523 Appendix E The National Smallbore Championship Locations 528 iv CHAPTER ONE Crossman’s Dream Comes True… 1919 The National Outdoor Smallbore Rifle Championship has its antecedents in 1845 when noted French gun maker Nicolas Flobert developed the 22-caliber rimfire cartridge. Flobert experimented with percussion caps to create a quiet, low-powered short-range cartridge. The Gallic inventor formed the soft copper caps to give them a rim and placed a lead ball in the recess as a projectile. The priming mixture in the cap was sufficient enough propellant to allow Parisians to shoot at targets indoors during soirées in the more fashionable upper class salons. The cartridges used in the predecessor of our modern day gallery shooting came to be known as Bulleted Breech Caps, or BB caps. The next step in the development of the classic rimfire was combining four grains of black powder, in a longer case, with a 29-grain conical bullet. This, the 22-caliber short, created in 1857, has remained virtually the same to this day, only the type of powder has changed. The short has been in continuous commercial production for over a century and a half, making it the oldest self-contained cartridge in existence. A larger cartridge of the same design, the 22-caliber Long, came into existence in 1871 which was followed in 1887 by the 22-caliber Long Rifle, the end of the evolutionary line of the most popular caliber cartridge in history. Flobert's rimfire cartridge has come a long way. Likewise, smallbore rifle shooting has also progressed since the early days in Paris. Through the first two decades of the Twentieth Century 5 smallbore rifles were the poor cousin to military rifles for competition. However, World War I would play a major role in promoting the rimfire sport. Interest in marksmanship grew in direct proportion to the United States’ involvement in world affairs, particularly in the great buildup of the military that surrounded the entry of the United States into the World War. The National Matches, which had been conducted in concert by the Federal Government and the National Rifle Association since 1903, was cancelled while the boys were “over there” in 1917. When the fighting in Europe ended the National Matches again resumed in 1918 at Camp Perry, Ohio with renewed interest and support. As the armed forces expanded to meet the needs of the war effort so did their need for training facilities. Lieutenant Colonel Charles Grant, US Army Ordnance Corps, scouted out range locations on the east coast and brought the possibilities of a rather swampy area in northern New Jersey near Caldwell, just 20 miles of so west of New York City, to the attention of Colonel William “Bo” Harllee, USMC. Harllee, the Director of Naval Marksmanship, had developed of the first Marine Corps rifle range at Stump Neck near Quantico, Virginia in 1910, and was one of the most experienced range constructors available. When the Navy was given the task of conducting the 1919 National Matches Harllee, was in the thick of it. Under the direction of Captain William D. Leahy, USN, the Director of Gunnery Exercises, and one of only four naval officers to reach the rank of Fleet Admiral, the Navy elected to use the new Caldwell Range at Great Piece Meadows and began to expand the drained swamp area to meet the anticipated need. Soldiers from Governor’s Island New York, sailors off of the USS New Mexico, and 200 marines all toiled away side by side on range construction. 6 The job seemed well in hand when it began to rain, a deluge that continued for seven straight days. The continuous rainstorm refilled Great Piece Meadow. When at last the sky cleared the soldiers, sailors, and Marines again drained the swamp, restored the butts, and began construction of firing points and walkways of sufficient height to clear another flood. As the troops beavered away the water from the storm ran off, filling a large nearby lake but the earthen dam that formed the lake was unable to contain the rush of additional water and it soon burst under the increased pressure. Water again swept through the range area, washing away anything within its reach. In the little time remaining after the second flood, the range crew was able to restore a semblance of order, just in time for the next series of rain storms that bedeviled the matches. Along with the constant damp the range staff and competitors had to put up with swarms of particularly hungry mosquitoes that bred in the countless pools of standing water dotting the besotted camp. The weather nearly ruined the matches and the matches nearly ruined Harllee. His supervisors certainly understood that he had struggled manfully against the elements and he did all he could to prepare the range and its facilities, and for this he was praised.

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