Hoo boy! Note even the provenance of the term "Pratical Pistol"...
(...'scuse me, while I had heard much about this work, this is the first time I have had access to it).
Anyhow, here is "Gunsite" meets "Thunder Ranch", courtesy of the Shanghai Municipal Police, circa 1935...
PRACTICAL PISTOL RANGES
...To give an idea of what we mean, the range... has more than once been made to represent the interior of a Chinese lodging-house harbouring, among other inmates, half a dozen bad characters who will resist arrest.
A screen hides all this from the men who are going to shoot. All they see from the outside is a wall with a door, through which, one by one, they will have to enter the lodging-house. No one knows what he will encounter inside, and the onIy instructions given are that innocent civilians are not to be "killed"....
The first man to shoot pushes in the door, closely followed by the range officer... along a dark, narruw, twisting passoge,
kicks open a door at one point... and finds himself in a dimly lit room occupied by apparently harmless people (dummies) who vary from mere lodgers to dope fiends or stool-pigeons. He has to take in the situation in a flash, for his appearance is the signal for tho fun to commence.
A shot is fired at him (blank cartridge in the control room), amd the criminals commence their �get away� (�criminals� are life-size targets that bob up from nowhere and disappear as quickly, heads and shoulders that peer at him briefly round a corner, men running swiftly across the room, possibly at an oblique angle, etc, all masked at some point.. by the �innocent bystanders� who must not be shot).
There is no time to think, and anything resembling deliberate aim is a sheer impossibility. Furniture and dummies impede his movements, amd it is noticable that he instinctively adopts tho �crouch� and shoots as a rule with the arm in any position except fully extended. His only course is to shoot quiokly and keep on shooting until his magazine is empty.
Eric Anthony Sykes died of a heart attack in 1945.
Towards the end of the war Fairbairn and Sykes reportedly had a falling out, specifically about Sykes being intrumental in preventing Fairbairn from accompanying British Commandos on actual raids (although pushing 60 by that time, Fairbairn was certainly physically capable).
A correct decision, IMHO, Fairbairn being far too valuable to risk. Instead he was sent to Washington to help with the establishment of our own OSS. After that he was stationed in Canada at the top secret "Camp X", where he became an inspiration for a young Canadian Naval Officer and future popular spy fiction author named Ian Fleming.
Post-war, William Ewart Fairbairn was again assigned to the East on "Her Magesty's Secret Service" to deal with upheavals in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), likely much of what he did is still classified.
Sheesh! A pity ol' Fairbairn and Sykes never made it to the present, IMAGINE the endless reams of print in gun rags and books they could have written...
Birdwatcher
