Thought I'd reply to my own thread...
Note a couple of familiar truisms...
...target shooting is of no value whatsoever in learning the use of tho pistol as a weapon of combat. The two things are as different from each other as chalk from goose, and what has been learned from target shooting is best unlearned if proficiency is desired in tho use of the pistol under actual fighting conditions...
...in circumstances which preclude the use of a better weapon, that is to say, when it is impracticable to use a shot-gun, rifle or sub-machine gun.
The significance being that these two Brits were the first guys to put such down on paper, the same truths subsequently repeated many time over by our own post-war generation of experts.
Note that Fairbiarn and Sykes had their raw recruits practice on a full-size combat silhouette at a distance of only
two yards so as to best duplicate the conditions of most "affrays", teaching instinctive point shooting from the hip and also a sort of "pistol alignment by silhouette" on the target much as later taught by the famed (and recently deceased) NYPD Detective Jim Cirillo, who likewise was instructing based upon his own experience in shootouts with armed criminals.
Fairbairn and Syles taught the use of the sights with a two-handed hold at longer distances (25 yards) and recommended high-visibility sights such as there were back then (silver front posts), in all cases recommending rapid-fire until the target went down.
Most surprising to me is their use of dynamic courses of fire involving running and rapid-fire at pop-up targets, as well as the practice of forced-entry techniques, this all developed back in the 1920's in Shanghai, at a time when everybody else was training mostly by shooting one-handed at targets.
Sykes (formerly Schwalbe) had previously been a professional hunter in India and in Shanghai formed a police sniping squad, complete with scoped rifles, he and Fairbairn being popularly credited with developing the world's first SWAT teams, except I expect they could be a lot freer in that time and place at firing upon suspects than would be tolerated today.
Birdwatcher
