The purpose of this short commentary is to record what was perhaps the most memorable chapter of my Air Force career. I was fortunate to have received my advanced prosthodontic training at Wilford Hall USAF Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, which arguably was and still is the strongest prosthodontic program in the country. That residency was followed by an Air Force-sponsored fellowship in maxillofacial prosthetics at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston—the largest cancer treatment center in the world. I was the last Air Force-sponsored person to train there before the Air Force launched its own maxillofacial program.
For the remainder of my Air Force career, fortune favored me with duty assignments where I could use my training to rehabilitate maxillofacial prosthodontic and prosthetic patients. However, beyond my professional career—which has absolutely defined me—the Air Force also afforded me a unique opportunity, unrelated to dentistry, that provided me with some of my best military friends and memories.
That opportunity was my nine-year tenure as a member of the U.S. Air Force National Pistol Team.
BEGINNINGS
In the summer of 1987, after returning from an appointment at David Grant USAF Hospital, my wife presented me with a somewhat worn “waiting room” copy of Airman magazine, which featured an article announcing the resurrection of an Air Force shooting program to replace the former legendary teams terminated more than a decade earlier due to severe defunding.
The new program would be meagerly funded as an MWR (Morale, Welfare and Recreation) activity, comparable to other minimally funded Air Force sports programs. Competitors were expected to provide their own firearms and ammunition and to train during their personal off-duty time. Some limited funds were available for team members to travel to important events as the National, Interservice and Olympic matches. The article also announced a search for interested service members to apply for an invitation to the upcoming selection camp where the coming year’s team would be chosen.
Though I had competed intermittently at local clubs throughout most of my adult life, I never believed that I was up to the task of competing at a national level. However, after reading the article and considerable urging by my wife, I called the MWR office at Randolph Air Force Base the next day. I managed to wrangle an invitation to the upcoming tryouts, but I humbly admit that their gracious invitation was certainly based on my rank of Colonel, rather than any personal shooting accomplishments.
At the time, all team members and tryout competitors were enlisted personnel serving as instructors. That year’s weeklong camp was conducted at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. The intention of the camp was to identify a 10-person team for the coming year (a five-member primary team and a five-member developmental team). Of the 20-odd contenders who reported to the camp, nearly half had been on the previous year’s team and had recently returned from Camp Perry.
Needless to say, my only goal was to not embarrass myself.
Much to my surprise, after completing the selection process, I qualified. I finished in sixth place—the top scorer on the second-string team.
That 1987 training camp was conducted by the team’s coach, Ralph Talbot, a retired member of the U.S. Army National Shooting Team and holder of several national records. After observing my ability at the National Match Course, firing my personal hardball gun, the coach asked me to complete it again using his ball gun. My groupings immediately improved. Apparently, my gun had “shot loose” over the years.
As a result, he authorized me to be issued an AFPG ball gun for the 1988 season, while the Lackland Air Force Base gunsmith shop rebuilt my personal ball gun to a level of precision suitable for national competition. I had acquired my gun from Paul Mazerov, a lifelong friend who had taught me how to shoot.
A decorated Korean War combat Marine, Paul was a retired Colonel and one of the prime movers in my life. That National Match gun was originally built for him by USMC gunsmiths at Quantico two decades earlier. It was stamped with his service number, and is still one of my most prized possessions.
I competed with Paul’s team in the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Police Revolver League during my final two years of Dental School. In 1987, I located what would become my “Magic Ball Gun” at a pawn shop in Reno, Nev. It was comprised of an excellent Colt M-1911A1 receiver and a mint Union Switch and Signal slide. After removing that rare slide, I gave the pistol to the Gunsmith Shop at Lackland AFB to build me a premium-grade gun.
Master Gunsmith Bill Moore replaced all the partsm except the original receiver with carefully fitted National Match parts. Upon completion, he stamped the gun with “AFPG” and his “XX” mark. The AFPG guns that were issued to the original Air Force team members had to be returned when that member left the team or retired. The latter-day team members already owned their guns and so did not have to return them upon leaving the team, despite any accuracy efforts invested in them by the Air Force Gunsmith Shop.
Consequently, I still have my “Magic Hardball Gun.” I competed with it from the 1989 season until I retired from the Air Force. This pistol was responsible for all my significant accomplishments with the team.
Above: AFPG Hardball gun built in 1988 by USAF Master Gunsmith Bill Moore specifically for the author, Dr. Robert “Doc” Engelmeier, which he used in Air Force Pistol Team competitions through 1995.
U.S. AIR FORCE SHOOTING TEAM HISTORY
Kimpo Air Force Base in South Korea served as a major evacuation site for Seoul stationed diplomats in 1950 when the Korean conflict began. It was overrun by communists on September 15, 1950, but was reoccupied two days later. It fell again on January 4, 1951, but retaken a month later for the final time.
While viewing the devastation of the original September invasion, Gen. Curtis LeMay was appalled as he surveyed all the dead airmen who had perished defending their base. They died hopelessly clutching their .30-cal. M-2 Carbines while futilely trying to reload them with M-1911 .45 Auto magazines.
At that moment, he vowed to train all airmen to a level of proficiency with their issued firearms so that a travesty like that could never happen again.
Once he had been appointed Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force, LeMay was finally in a position to fulfill his vow of marksmanship training for all Air Force members. In 1959, he appointed Col. Thomas Kelly to establish a marksmanship school for the purpose of developing master gunsmiths and marksmanship instructors who would focus on training air crews and security forces.
The school was also commissioned to develop and field national and world-class competitive teams in smallbore and high power rifle, trap and skeet shotgun, national and international pistol and running boar tournaments. The school’s training program for small arms instructors was 12 weeks in duration. That marked the origin of the U.S. Air Force “Red Hat” career field.
The gunsmith shop not only built and maintained service firearms, but also evolved to a level of producing precision firearms fit for world-class competition. The custom pistol section of the shop was headed by master gunsmith Bob Day, who built match-grade .45 “Hardball guns” for the team. Only guns that met his high standard of being capable of 50-yard groups less than two inches were acceptable for competition. Those guns were stamped “AFPG,” which stood for Air Force Premium Grade. There was even a section in the shop devoted to testing and developing new systems.
From 1958 through 1969, the program produced legendary teams that far surpassed Gen. LeMay’s expectations. Once selected for team membership, marksmanship became that member’s career field of assignment. All 15 members of that original, legendary team were Distinguished Pistol shots. More than half were 2650 shooters.
Besides winning individual and team championships at the Interservice and National Matches, the team set a few records at those events that have continued to stand decades later. They also brought home international medals from the Olympic and Pan-American Games.
Unfortunately, the team was discontinued after drastic program defunding in 1969 following Gen.LeMay’s retirement. Articles by Charles Petty and T/Sgt. Arnold Vitarbo (USAF, ret.) provide a more comprehensive history of the pistol team from its 1959 origins through its resurrection as a modestly funded MWR activity years later.
After the 1969 budget cuts, a new process was established to extend the existence of an Air Force pistol team a bit longer. Each year, the team consisted of competitors who began their marksmanship journey by achieving membership on their base pistol teams, which usually competed locally. The next step was selection for a position on an Air Command Team following base team competitions at annual Air Command Matches.
Each spring, members of the Air Command Teams reported to the annual All-Air Force Matches at Lackland Air Force Base, where an Air Force National Pistol Team was assembled for the purpose of competing at the upcoming Interservice and National Matches. The primary responsibility of the final team members was not marksmanship, but rather their assigned military career field.
Training was accomplished during off-duty time. They were expected to furnish their own gear. However, the Air Force did provide gunsmith services and travel reimbursement to key national and international events. Unfortunately, all funding was discontinued in 1973. A few unsupported former team members did continue to compete as individuals over the next few years.
One such shooter was Steve Richards, who served as a lieutenant on the original Air Force National Team in the 1960s. He continued to compete on his own for two decades following the severe 1969 defunding of the program. By the 1980s, Col. Richards had become a Pentagon officer. He and a few other marksmanship supporters established that some Olympic events were shooting sports, and thereby qualified for funds allocated to train Olympic athletes under Public Law 84-11.
Consequently, the Air Force Sports and MWR office at Randolph Air Force Base began to set aside sufficient non-appropriated funds to resurrect a team. Shooters had to provide their own guns, ammunition and equipment. They had to train during their off-duty time. However, travel and per diem funds were available for major national and international competitions. A team member could only attend such events with his or her commander’s permission.
Their primary Air Force responsibility was to their assigned career field. This new program was designed to identify airmen who had developed to a competitive level on their own. Team try-outs were set up to occur each year at Lackland AFB. Most candidates at those trials had been well trained instructors or members of the security police.
That trip from the Florida panhandle to Cape Cod ended up taking three days. A Greyhound bus would have been faster. I have no complaints though—we arrived home safely. Further, that adventure was a preview of the great times to come.
The General Curtis LeMay Trophy won at the Camp Perry NTI Match on July 23, 1992.
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Oh Hell NO!!!!!!!
Luck. Now that’s a difficult concept to get your head around. Even this deep into the Information Age when most modern folks worship at the exalted altar of science, you can still find people who refuse to walk under a ladder, won’t open an umbrella indoors, or say “Bless you” when someone nearby sneezes. We humans are pretty darn strange.
However, what do you expect? Random chance is indeed a fickle mistress. In the superb book Bravo Two Zero by Andy McNab, two SAS operators are sitting side by side in a stolen car stopped at a roadblock on a black rainy night in the Iraqi desert during the First Gulf War. The two men are oriented shoulder-to-shoulder, and the car is stopped in a long line of vehicles rendered immobile by an Iraqi checkpoint.
When discovery was inevitable the two men bailed out of the car, one on the left and the other on the right. One man escaped to freedom, while the other was killed. They began in the same spot, yet each man’s ultimate fate was driven by the side of the car he exited. It’s hard not to get a little weirded out over stuff like that.
Personally, I attribute such stuff to Divine Providence. My faith that an all-powerful God loves and watches over me is a source of great comfort when life is going pear-shaped. God and I have gotten through some remarkable scrapes together. However, in the case of SSG Alan Magee, we find a tale that strains credulity. His story would be impossible to believe had it not been reliably verified.
The Man
Alan Eugene Magee was born on January 13, 1919, the youngest of six children. He grew up in Plainfield, New Jersey. When the war broke out Magee enlisted in the US Army Air Corps and trained to be a gunner on a heavy bomber. The heavies—the B17 Flying Fortress and the B24 Liberator—promised to revolutionize warfare. Through these expensive strategic assets, the Allies hoped to break the will of the German people to fight. Victory, however, would come at a terrible cost.
SSG Magee’s mount, a B17F christened “Snap! Crackle Pop!,” carried a crew of ten. WW2-era fliers had a good deal more latitude to personalize their aircraft than we did when I flew for Uncle Sam. Part of that was because so many of these old planes were destroyed so quickly. Tactical aircraft fighting in WW2 frequently did not survive very long in combat. By contrast, our mounts operating without anybody actively shooting at us were expected to last essentially indefinitely.
For a time I flew an entirely different Boeing product. In my day the flight engineer and crew chief owned the airplane. It was their names that rightfully got stenciled on the sides. The pilots just borrowed them from time to time. We typically drew specific tail numbers for specific missions at the whim of the maintenance officers. When we deployed to some austere spaces we’d typically personalize our aircraft with chalk intending to wash it off when we got home.
One of my flight engineers returned from a desert deployment with something quite risqué scrawled on the belly of his aircraft. I never crawled underneath them, so I had no idea it was there. Apparently his pornographic expression was intended to entertain the infantry guys with whom we operated. That was all fine until we got back to home station and did a demo for the local press. The belly of his airplane replete with graphic anatomical references made the front page of the local newspaper. Steve, I bet you thought I had forgotten that. Those were some epically great times.
The Plane
The B17G was the definitive late-war Fortress. The G-model included such upgrades as a motorized chin turret up front to help dissuade attacking enemy fighters from trying nose-on attacks. SSG Magee’s B17F lacked this particular system in favor of a brace of free fifties in ball mounts in the front Plexiglas.
“Snap! Crackle! Pop!” was one of 12,726 of the heavy bombers that rolled out of two plants during World War 2. These planes were powered by four Wright R-1820-97 Cyclone supercharged radial engines each producing 1,200 horsepower. The Wright Cyclone was an iconic design also used in the P36 Hawk, the Douglas DC-3, the SBD Dauntless dive bomber, the Sikorsky H34 helicopter, and, in slightly modified form, certain variants of the M4 Sherman tank.
The B17’s bomb load ranged from 4,500 to 8,000 pounds depending upon the required range and environmental conditions. The maximum takeoff weight was a whopping 65,500 pounds, and the plane cruised at 158 knots or 182 miles per hour. The B17’s service ceiling was 35,600 feet.
SSG Magee’s B17F packed eleven AN/M2 .50-caliber machineguns in a variety of handheld and powered mountings. These weapons and mounts were meticulously designed to provide optimal coverage all around the plane, particularly when flown as part of an extensive and coordinated formation with multiple aircraft. SSG Magee was a relatively short man, so he got tagged for the ball turret.
The Sperry Ball Turret
Sperry and Emerson Electric both developed examples of powered ball turrets for use in ventral mounts on combat aircraft during World War 2. The Sperry design was deemed superior and placed into mass production. While the mounts were radically different, both the B17 and the B24 used the same gun turret.
The tricycle landing gear design of the B24 necessitated a retractable mount for the ball turret. Were it not for the retractable mount the turret would strike the ground when the pilot rotated the aircraft for takeoff. By contrast, the conventional landing gear layout of the B17 allowed the ball turret to remain in place through all modes of flight.
The ball turret was unimaginably cramped. As a result, this position was typically relegated to the smallest member of the crew. To enter the turret the guns were swiveled straight down, and the gunner entered through a small metal hatch in the back. Once in place, the gunner sat in the fetal position flanked on each side by the ample breaches of his twin Browning fifty-caliber machineguns. There was an electronic reflex sight mounted between the gunner’s feet. Charging these weapons and clearing stoppages were incredible chores within the cramped confines of the ball turret. Ammunition fed from the belly of the plane through a pair of articulated feed chutes.
Because of the dearth of usable space, ball turret gunners flew without parachutes. Their chutes were stowed in the crew compartment nearby. However, to bail out, the ball turret gunner had to swivel the guns straight down, unlock and open the access panel, crawl backward out of the turret, attach the parachute, and exit the aircraft. As you might imagine, in a plane that might be gyrating wildly or on fire this could be quite the impressive feat.
The Event
On January 3, 1943, SSG Magee strapped into “Snap! Crackle! Pop!” for his seventh combat mission while assigned to the 350th Bomb Squadron of the 303d Bomb Group. Their objective this fateful day was a daylight run over Saint-Nazaire, France. The submarines that sortied out of Saint-Nazaire caused no end of frustration to trans-Atlantic convoys. As a result, Allied planners invested tremendous effort in trying to take out the sub pens that housed and serviced them.
Once near the target, SSG Magee’s aircraft encountered murderously thick flak. A nearby shell burst from a high-velocity 88mm flak gun disabled his ball turret and liberally ventilated both the fuselage of the airplane as well as SSG Magee. SSG Magee clambered out of the turret with difficulty only to find that his parachute had been shredded by the flak hit. As he tried to get his head around that revelation a second shell tore off part of the right-wing. Now uncontrollable, “Snap! Crackle! Pop!” entered a vicious spin.
SSG Magee’s plane was at cruising altitude, and his quick egress from the ball turret left him without access to the plane’s oxygen supply. He somehow made it to the radio compartment before losing consciousness due to hypoxia. Soon thereafter his B17 disintegrated.
SSG Magee was miraculously thrown free of the crippled airplane and fell some four miles toward the French ground below. He ultimately ended up crashing through the glass roof of the Saint-Nazaire train station. Passersby found him unconscious but alive on the floor of the terminal.
SSG Magee had 28 different shrapnel wounds from the original flak attack. In addition, he suffered multiple broken bones, severe facial trauma, and damage to both his lungs and kidneys. His right arm was also nearly severed from tearing through the glass of the train station. However, he was inexplicably still alive.
The Rest of the Story
Terminal velocity for a limp human is about 120 miles per hour. Nothing about SSG Magee’s ordeal should have been survivable. However, he was taken prisoner by the Germans and eventually recovered after some decent medical care. He spent more than two years in a German POW camp before being liberated in May of 1945. Once he was repatriated he was awarded the Air Medal along with a well-deserved Purple Heart.
After the war, Alan Magee earned his pilot’s license and worked in the airline industry. He retired in 1979 and moved to New Mexico. SSG Magee died in January of 2003 of a stroke and kidney failure at the ripe age of 84, arguably the luckiest man alive.