"so I'm sort of curious regarding mention of that 5%"
That came from an report (Army?) published sometime in the early 1920s regarding training levels of troops as they were entering basic.
Teddy Roosevelt had been appalled at the lack of marksmanship ability shown by troops during the Spanish American War. Many troops coming out of basic training couldn't shoot any better than when they had gone in simply because of time constraints, bad training programs, and incredibly unrealistic expectations (every American is a natural born sniper!).
Roosevelt was instrumental in creation of the Civilian Marksmanship Program (and the National Matches as we now know them) to help correct that.
Unfortunately, when World War I rolled around, the situation wasn't much better, and once again the United States was under huge time constraints that really ate into training and proficiency development.
When World War II rolled around, we were facing the exact same issue.
The US was going to need literally MILLIONS of trained men, all stemming from a pre-war Army of roughly 100,000 men.
The situation was looking to be dire, until someone in the military got a bright idea... Enlist the National Rifle Association's resources to help train soldiers how to shoot.
NRA helped develop new and improved training programs (which really hadn't been updated since the 1890s and the adoption of the magazine rifle!!!) and provided staff to physically train recruits, freeing up a very limited number of non commissioned instructors for other activities.
I can't remember the total number, but I THINK NRA instructors helped train something like 5 to 7 million new soldiers, and gave them a much better grounding for marksmanship proficiency.
__________________
"The gift which I am sending you is called a dog, and is in fact the most precious and valuable possession of mankind" -Theodorus Gaza
Baby Jesus cries when the fat redneck doesn't have military-grade firepower.
|