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In 1958 both the Air Force Marksmanship School and the Air Force Gunsmith Shop were created by General Curtis LeMay. The Marksmanship School trained weapons instructors and fostered the development of the Air Force Shooting Teams. The Gunsmith Shop took on the role of maintenance, modification and R&D for Air Force small arms, especially those associated with “the teams”. It is no secret that the AF Pistol Team, overall, was untouchable from the better part of the 60′s through the mid-80′s. Shooters like Frank Greene, Donald Rupp, Arnie Vitarbo and many others, filed through the AF Shooting program and owned the field for many years. Specific to their success was the Gunsmith Shop’s ability to accurize the favored handgun, the Colt 1911/A1. Up to the creation of the programs by General LeMay, the Army Marksmanship Unit (AMU) had great success in developing the ‘Match Grade’ .45 for its shooters. By, roughly 1960 however, the Air Force was well on it’s way to surpassing the AMU through a bevy of far more stringent requirements. From hand fitting all parts to mandatory 3″ groups at 50 yards for hardball guns (the very things which are so commonplace today), the AF turned out hundreds of the finest pistols ever made for competition. There are some ‘old timers’ around today; Army, Air Force and even Marines, who attribute the military’s present-day .45 configurations, for Conventional Pistol, to the Air Force of old. The Marine Corps shooting manual, often times called “The Red Book”, is used to instruct members of their shooting team. It is a rigorous manual of exercises which develops a shooter’s ability – rumors abound that the manual’s innards were stolen from the Air Force, ages ago. The famed “Officer’s Model” of the 1911 was created by the Air Force for it’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI); one of the original conversions is still in the USAF Gunsmith Shop to this day.

The Air Force has a rich history in Marksmanship, but these days it has gone severely astray. The Gunsmith Shop currently employs only 1 Gunsmith (civilian), 6 Combat Arms personnel, 3 Machinists (1 civilian and 2 military), 1 Logistics NCO and 3 Contractors who monitor logistics and finance. The shop’s compliment is a far cry from the (approx) 36 gunsmiths it employed more than two decades ago. The mission of the Gunsmith Shop has changed drastically as well, from sibling attachment to the Air Force Shooting Program in the beginning, to a complete and utter disassociation with it at present day, responsible for ‘miscellaneous small arms grunt work’. The Air Force’s shooting program is no longer a ‘full time’ program (or even close), it has virtually no funding and is being run by the same service members responsible for other Air Force sports; lumped, as it were, into the same group of people who pass out towels at the gym. The Air Force’s history of Marksmanship, and the chief maintainer – the Gunsmith Shop, are dead.

Of course, this is attributed to many causes – but the most poignant being the lack of a “Gunsmith” AFSC/Career Field and the Air Force’s overall lack of concern with Marksmanship. Combat Arms, which the AFSC is called today, is a sickeningly watered down version of ‘gunsmithing’. Most CA troops are bereft of the basic knowledge of firearms and only acquire that which they need to complete the most minimum of taskings. As instructors, they fare no better – most are completely unaware of how to instruct a shooter and are simply preoccupied with getting shooters to merely “qualify”. The downward spiral of the field hit rock bottom upon the merging of the Combat Arms AFSC with the Security Forces AFSC (latter 90′s). First, ‘gun guys’ were slopped into the same bucket as the ‘rivet counters’. Second, those ‘gun guys’ who reached the rank of E6 lose their “Combat Arms” AFSC and take on the generic AFSC of Security Forces. Third, Security Forces personnel can/may ‘re-train’ into Combat Arms (without any experience necessary) and pick up the CA AFSC until they make E6, at which point they revert back to being a ‘cop’. Most times these re-trains are done by individuals who no longer wish to be ‘cops’ and often possess no affinity for firearms or marksmanship. The Gunsmith AFSC had been killed long before that, as the Air Force’s interest in marksmanship began to die in the early 1990′s, and now the branch is left with a band of hammer-swingers and spray-n-prayers instead of artists and marksmen.

The whole scenario is quite disheartening. The International Team only has 3 members on it’s roster now. High Powered Rifle is making the best attempt it can and Action Pistol is right up there with their efforts. In the “Shotgun” Teams, one member went to the Olympics this year – and didn’t do that well, but not for lack of trying. The most historic of the teams, the National Pistol Team (who, in the past, made up both the National and International teams – Don Rupp says they used to carry two gun boxes, one for National and one for International competitions) finds it nearly impossible to get the whole team to any one match anymore. These days, they don’t even place – again, that’s not a knock on the shooters – but a result of the Air Force’s sheer lack of support. The Gunsmith Shop is a veritable joke, employed primarily with those type of ‘cops’ as mentioned above. It’s echelon has no desire to support the Air Force Shooting Program and most of them don’t even know what it is. It’s so bad, in fact, that members of the various shooting teams don’t even know that the Gunsmith Shop still exists – no matter in what capacity. The Marksmanship Program and the Gunsmith Shop are facing their 50th Anniversary this year – 50 years since their creation by General Curtis LeMay – and I’m not sure how to take it. It would seem to me that General LeMay is probably tossing in his grave; while the dying corpses of it all dry hump his tomb stone.