My Father had one firearm, a Browning A5 shotgun........no pictures of him with it, but the backstory is extremely interesting.
As young kids we tagged along with Dad and a group of neighbors for the opening day of Pheasant season. This was a big event each year and the entire neighborhood turned out for it. Everyone had pumps or side-by-sides except my Dad.....he was the only one that carried a semi-automatic. He was known by all the group as the best shot and never missed a bird. Of course we were quite proud of that distinction but it was years later we found out why he was so good.
After High School (1944) Dad enlisted in the Navy and was sent to gunnery school in Florida where he trained as an aerial gunner. He flew behind the pilot on a Navy SBD dive bomber and manned the twin thirty caliber machine guns. For his training the Navy had Browning Auto 5 shotguns mounted on pedestals in the back of trucks, these were driven down a long road lined with trap houses. As the truck sped down the road the trap house clay targets were thrown, the gunnery students manned the shotgun version of a machine gun and learned to lead and destroy clay targets. This simulated the same process aerial gunners would need in air-to-air combat without the expense of costly machine gun ammo. After training he was sent to the Marianas in the Pacific but the war had ended by the time he got there and he never saw combat. But the training the Navy provided proved to be more than a match for Iowa Pheasants.
Here's a photo of what Dad trained for and where he got his shotgun skills.
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