A short time later I received orders to attend a one-month course at the Fighter Gunnery Instructors School at Foster Field in Victoria, Texas, along with a newly assigned pilot named Tom Holstein. This was the Top Gun program of its day, where pilots learned not only the latest methods for weapons delivery but ways to teach those methods. Actually there were more differences than similarities between the current USAF Red Flag and Navy Top Gun programs and our school, but it was the best we had at the time. We fired at targets using no radar and what were essentially the same type of gunsights used in World War I. The modern programs send groups of fighters on simulated combat missions where they can be attacked at any time by aggressor fighters simulating enemy aircraft and tactics. In addition to the very high rate-of-fire Gatling guns, the weapons used are radar-guided missiles and heat-seeking missiles. Of course the students don't actually fire their weapons, but the combination of airborne and ground-based radars, video recorders, and computers makes it possible to analyze the tactics and relative positions of the combatants and determine who would have shot down whom. This can be done in real time, allowing the range controllers to tell a pilot when he has been destroyed and must disengage. In the earlier days all the pilots involved in practice dogfights could argue that they were the victors, and they invariably did so. This modern equipment has added an unwelcome element truth to the program and has taken away one of the fighter pilot's favorite weapons, exaggeration.
Although I was already quite proficient in gunnery and didn't plan to instruct, it was important that I learn the most up-to-date methods in order to test weapons systems properly. I was overjoyed to get the chance to attend this school and thereby move closer to the top of author Tom Wolfe's ziggurat of "the right stuff." In peacetime, firing at targets is what being a fighter pilot is all about. All of the flying training and practice is to improve the pilot's ability to get into position to hit a target. I had always loved gunnery and looked forward eagerly to a month or so of it.
Competition in gunnery is always stiff, because gunnery scores are one of the few ways a fighter pilot can demonstrate tangible evidence of his skill. P-51s and P-47s were used at the school, but the P-47s were D models. To train in the aircraft we would be testing, we flew there in two of our P-47Ns. I led the flight to Victoria with Tom on my wing. It was a clear day, and we flew at 2,000 feet to stay below headwinds at the higher altitudes. The only thing of interest we saw was the San Jacinto Monument near Houston, a 570-foot obelisk honoring Sam Houston's victory over the Mexican general Santa Ana. After a flight of a little over three hours, we landed at Foster Field. It was a typical World War II AAF airfield with three runways, a large ramp filled with fighters, and wooden buildings. We checked into the BOQ (Bachelor Officer's Quarters) and were told to report to the headquarters of the school at seven-thirty the next morning.
Eager to get started, Tom and I arrived early. We were divided into two groups, P-51 pilots and P-47 pilots, and each group was further broken into flights of three and assigned an instructor. Tom and I were in the same flight, under Captain Bumgardner, a top-notch instructor as well as a pleasant man. We learned that we would spend half the day flying and the other half in ground school learning theory, weapons, and techniques. We would also be reviewing our gun camera film with the instructors, who would assess our passes and suggest methods of improving our techniques. I was pleased to find out that we would spend quite a bit of time on the skeet range. The course would include air-to-air and air-to-ground gunnery, air-to-ground rocketry firing five-inch HVARS, and dive-, glide-, and skip-bombing. Gunnery missions were scored by the straightforward method of counting the holes in the targets, and rocketry and dive- and glide-bombing were scored by triangulation. In skip-bombing, large vertical targets were used, and hits were scored by penetrating the targets.
The first thing on the schedule was air-to-ground gunnery. The targets were set up on Matagorda Island on the coast, a strip of sandy beach a mile or two wide and thirty-five miles long about forty miles northeast of Corpus Christi. They were arranged in groups of four, with one group for each flight and one target for each pilot in the flight. Each target consisted of a wooden frame, about ten feet square, covered with cloth on which a bull's-eye was painted. They were placed about twenty feet apart and were tilted back about 15 degrees.
Although the P-47 had eight .50-caliber machine guns and the P-51 had six, only two guns were loaded during these training missions. This saved a great deal of ammunition and target damage and was quite effective for training since the other guns would hit the same area as the two that were fired. Each gun was loaded with two hundred rounds of ammunition for each mission, air-to-air and air-to-ground.
The first two missions were flown with gun cameras only, allowing us to practice the proper spacing on the passes and, by observing the film, to see how well we were holding the sight pipper on the target. There was an indicator on the film to show if we were skidding or slipping during the passes. If the ball was not in the center, the bullets would not hit the target even though the sight was right on it.
Two safety rules were stressed both in the ground school and by Captain Bumgardner. The first was to maintain sufficient spacing between the firing planes to be sure the first plane could complete his pull up and turn before the next plane fired, thus preventing ricochets from hitting the plane ahead. We were told that more than one plane had been shot down by the following plane when this rule was not observed. I don't know if it was true, but it certainly got my attention.
The second rule was to avoid target fixation; that is, don't concentrate so hard on getting hits on the target that you fly into the ground. It was a relatively common error, especially in combat. We had lost several pilots in China that way, and we nearly lost my favorite pilot, me. According to my wingman, I had cleared the roof of a building I was strafing by at least an inch. Despite this warning, a few days later one of the pilots in another P-47 flight hit the ground with his propeller, damaging it so badly that he had to shut down the engine. Fortunately, he was able to make a safe belly landing on a wide stretch of beach.
To qualify as an expert aerial gunner a pilot had to score 50 percent on air-to-ground gunnery and 30 percent on air-to-air. I scored well above 50 percent on all my air-to-ground missions and up into the eighties on early morning flights when the air was smooth. Turbulence made it difficult to keep the pipper on the target for any length of time. The trick was to fire a short burst when it was on the target. I had always been a good gunner, having qualified as an expert as a cadet, but part of the reason for my high scores was the practice I had been getting at Eglin for the past three months.
The bulk of the training in the course was devoted to air-to-air gunnery, which was by far the most difficult of the skills to master. The problem of deflection shooting (all air-to-air gunnery except firing from head on or from directly behind) is far from simple because the pilot is firing from a moving platform at a moving target and both are capable of movement in three dimensions. The amount he must lead the target is constantly changing as the angle between the firing plane and the target changes. In skeet shooting or bird shooting the shooter is stationary while the target is moving. Although the problem is much simpler, it is about the best practice available on the ground, since a different amount of lead is required at each of the firing stations.