M16 20” @ 500 yards?

[lemaymiami]

Like so many, my dad volunteered for the draft in the winter of 1942 and went in at the bottom. He was sent into the Engineers when they found out he'd been working as an on-site supervisor for Pan Am building airstrips in South America and Africa before the war - when a construction crew was lots of native labor with picks and shovels along with a very few heavy construction machines - in very primitive surroundings... That job also entailed being a mechanic since you had to keep the gear working with only what you had on hand... Eventually he volunteered for gliders (and told me years and years later -"thank God they cancelled gliders since the casualty rate on landing was just too high"..). After that he became a drill sergeant then was lucky enough to get a shot at OCS... Many years later (1970 or 71) he retired out after 28 years.... the hard way, including two tours to Vietnam.

That world is long gone -and will never come again. All of his accomplishments were done with only what college he could pick going to night classes as he served. Something not possible today at all... While he struggled with 45 auto, I can remember seeing him shoot the lights out with a 22 rifle off-hand while trying to teach me the basics... That old G.I. 45 with the way they were teaching it all those years ago (one handed off-hand) was a tough nut compared to today's much improved 45 pistols, shot two-handed from the start..

 

[Jenrick]

A few points:

The reality of sustained training, versus qualification: I was on the range cadre for my agency (large metro agency in the top 20 size wise in the US) for 5 years and taught a lot of rifle schools. Part of our qual is 5 standing, 5 kneeling, 5 prone, in 1 minute at 50 yards. Fifty, five-zero, that is not a typo. I would frequently watch officers throw 4 or more rounds off the equivalent of a IPSC silhouette at 50 yards coming back to shoot their annual qual only a year after the school. These same officers in our rifle school would shoot 3/4 IPSC silhouette steel at 300 yds from standing, kneeling, prone and get 7-8/10 hits after 3 days of shooting instruction. It is definitely a perishable skill. And from speaking with my counterparts in the military, they have similar issues with troops who's occupation is not a combat arms type usually. If you only handle a rifle once a year for quals, it requires some retraining/brush up to get people back up to standard.

Shooting a qualification versus practical use: A qual target is usually on a high contrast background, centered in the target frame (usually laterally, and often vertically as well). A frame hold, ie holding centered in the target frame, can dramatically simplify the marksmanship issue. A 500 yard target in the real word can present itself in this way, a wide desert plain, a target skylined on a ridge etc. IIRC however the US Army basically established that without magnification 300 yds was the limit to detect rapid movement of upright targets against a temperate (ie German) background when using Russian style uniforms. The lower, slower, and more camouflaged the targets the further this range decreased.

Wind at 500 with 5.56:
M855 is about a .3 G1 BC. So on average it will deviate ~1.8 MOA for every 3 miles per hour of wind at 500 yds. The trick is to be able to read the wind to a precision close enough to hold within your targets bracket. If you're referring to the 19" wide E type silhouette that means you have approximately 1.8 MOA from center to edge and 3.8 edge to edge. If you have a steady directional wind (ie left to right at whatever value and MP), you only have to be within about 6 MPH of the correct value to land a hit somewhere in there. If you have cross gusting (eg the wind a the firing point is left to right, at the target it is right to left) you have to be within about 3 MPH. So if you have a relatively consistent wind direction go with your lowest guess, put that on your rear sight, and lay the sight on the edge of the target into the wind. Unless your guess for the low end of the wind was off, or the gusts exceed 6 mph, you will hit.

 

[herrwalther]

Yeah, but, in order to be a CO he was promoted twice.

I acknowledge that my experience is anecdotal, but I never knew anyone who didn’t meet STRAC and get promoted, let alone become a CO.

Yep, he was. My last CO was also the only infantry commander I ever seen that didn't go to Ranger school. While not a requirement to be a company commander, it is pretty unusual not to be "tabbed" as an infantry CO. I get the feeling he slipped through quite a few cracks in his move up.