COLT <:^|> .22 The Colt Ace By Maj. J. S. Hatcher IN THE past year or two, beginning with the production of the Colt Super .38 Auto matic. followed by the now famous Colt Officers' Model .22 and the Official Police .22, we seem to have begun a new era of progress in pistol design. The latest arrival in this field is the new Colt Ace .22 Automatic on the .45 Government Model frame. This gun was an nounced by the Colt Company in February, but the first production models are just arriv ing on the market, and after having had an opportunity to shoot one of these guns for about two weeks, I am endeavoring in this article to give the readers of The American Rifleman the benefit of my observations. The adoption of the Colt .45 Automatic by the U. S. Government in 1911 immediately made this pistol of paramount interest to mili tary target shots because the Government's adoption of the automatic meant that this gun would of necessity have to be used in all official militarc' matches, such as the National Individ u a l M a t c h . T h e n a t u r a l r e s u l t w a s t h a t t h e great body of military pistol shots who had previously been using the revolver started in to practice with the automatic pistol. It was soon found that there was a need for a method of obtaining proficiency with the Government .45 that did not involve shooting the very expensive and powerful cartridge which was adapted to this arm. Of course a cer tain amount of skill in slow fire can be obtained by dry shooting; that is, by snapping the gun carefully at a target with no cartridge in the chamber. This will teach the user to hold the gun steadily and squeeze without deranging the aim, but it does not give him any chance to practice rapid fire. With a revolver rapid fire can be practiced without cartridges by cocking and snapping the gun against time in the same manner as it would have to be done in actual firing; but with the automatic, where the gun cocks itself, this is not practicable, or at least if it is done it does not give the kind of practice that is necessary. One of the com mon methods adopted among military pistol shots in an attempt to overcome this difficulty, is to tie a string to the hammer of the pistol, and then, holding the end of the string in the left hand, jerk the hammer back after each time it is snapped. This gives valuable prac tice but it is still quite different from being able to fire the gun rapidly against a time limit. E d i t o r ' s N o t e : T h i s a r t i c l e w a s schedided to appear in our August issue, but at the request of the Colt Company it was held until the present issue. The Need for a .22-45 -liii HI \ These considerations soon led to the wish by users of the .45 Automatic that they could have a cheap way of actually firing the gun without using a cartridge worth from two to four cents each time the trigger is pulled. This wish obviously pointed to the desir ability of a gun similar to the .45 that would operate with .22-caliber cartridges, and it was not long after the adoption of the .45 that attempts were made to design such a gun. A n a d d i t i o n a l n e e d f o r t h i s s u b c a l i b e r a r m f o r t h e . 4 5 w a s f o u n d i n t h e f a c t t h a t i t i s much easier to train a novice in shooting a gun if the recoil, noise and other disturbances ac companying the shooting are reduced to a minimum. The .45 Colt Automatic Pistol, Government Model, is about the most power ful side arm in existence, and when the trigger is pulled there is a noise and recoil that is rather startling to one who is not very well u s e d t o fi r e a r m s , a n y w a y. A s A 1 Wo o d - worth, ballistic expert at Springfield, used to say, when a novice with a .45 automatic pistol is trying to learn to shoot he frequently lets the noise and recoil disturb his aim to such an extent that he "shuts both eyes and takes both feet off the ground each time he pulls the trigger." In other words, with a novice in the pistol- shooting game the noise and recoil of a very heavy caliber gun frequently masks the errors of the shooter to such an extent that he cannot recognize the causes of any wild shots he may get. Even if he flinches violently the recoil will cover up this flinching and he will never know it. On the other hand, if you give him exactly the same kind of gun, which will func tion and fire in exactly the same manner, but which makes a very mild report and gives very little recoil, he will learn to shoot it without being afraid of the noise and the jump of the gun, and, consequently, he is far less likely to acquire the bad habit of flinching than he would be if he tried at first to use the full- powered gun. Moreover, he will be able to recognize his faults in shooting, and correct ilili:' them. Then, too, the low price of the am munition will enable unlimited shooting to be done, which will greatly increase his profi ciency. The amount of shooting that can be done is further increased by the fact that the .22 is comparatively so low powered that it can be shot in many places where it would be impossible to shoot the .45. It has been found by experience that when a man once acquires proficiency in aiming, hold ing and squeezing in actual firing with one caliber of cartridge, his proficiency will be retained when he changes to another caliber. If a man learns to shoot well with a .22 re volver he can usually shoot just about equally as well with a larger caliber. Springfield Attacks the Problem All these considerations led the Government to undertake the development of a subcaliber weapon for the .45 automatic as long as fifteen years ago. The .22 adapter to go on the .45 frame was constructed at Springfield Armory to shoot the .22-caliber shorts. This worked fairly well, and soon after it was made the writer of this article had occasion to show the gun to Mr. John Browning, the inventor of the .45 Automatic Pistol, who expressed him self as very much surprised that we had been able to get a gun to work with the shorts. After playing with these models for several years and sending them out for test, it was decided that it was preferable to change over to the long-rifle cartridge, as the .22 short which had formerly been used for gallery practice by the Army was being abandoned for that use and it was recognized that the use of the .22 long-rifle would give a very much greater cer tainty of action in the .22-45. 18 T H E A M E R I C A N R I F L E M A N WWW.RIFLEMAN.ORG.UKAccordingly, a new .22 was constructed at Springfield on exactly the same pattern but this time it was made for the long-rifle car tridge. Twenty-five of these guns were made and a number of them were sent out for serv ice test. The model seemed to work fairly well in the factory, but in the service there was always difficulty from feeding in the magazines. The .45 automatic cartridge is a rimless cartridge made especially to feed out of the automatic pistol magazine, whereas the .22 long-rifle cartridge has a rim, and it is very difficult to make it work successfully in a magazine that will fit into the handle of the .45 automatic pistol. During the several years of trial and occa sional redesigns of this .22-45 by the Govern ment, the Colt's Patent Fire Arms Manufactur ing Company, of Hartford, Connecticut, had been an interested observer of the work. From time to time these designs were discussed with the officials of the Colt Company, who gave helpful suggestions. Finally the Colt Company decided to take a hand in this development themselves, and they got out a design which differed radically from the one the Govern ment had, though it accomplished the same object. In the Government .22-45 the slide of the pistol was a solid forging with a hole bored in it to form the barrel, and with a recess milled out in the back to take a sliding breech block. This adapter mounted on the .45 receiver gave the .22-caliber automatic very much the same size and shape as the .45, and with the same handle, but differing considerably in appear ance and also differing in action, in that the slide did not move back with each shot, the only moving part being the small breech block and the spring rod attached to it. When the Colt Company took up this prob lem they attacked it in an entirely different way. They made the gun very much more like the automatic pistol in appearance and action. The Colt .22-45 was constructed with the same kind of slide, barrel, recoil spring, and other parts as are used in the .45 model, except that the moving parts were made lighter in order to operate with the comparatively low- powered .22 long-rifle cartridge. This Colt adapter was a great improvement over the one made by Springfield, and after numerous trials of this device by the Govern ment, ten samples were ordered in 1927 and sent out to the various Army boards for test, -•^s a result of these tests, many changes were found necessary and numerous recommenda tions were made. After these changes were made by Colt, the devices were again tested by the Army, and further changes were found desirable. As a result of the various designs and redesigns made by Colt, and of the ex tended test made by the Army, the .22-45 was finally perfected; and when it reached the point where it was apparent that all the difficulties had been overcome, the Colt Com pany decided to place the gun on the market, and the result is the Ace Target Pistol. From the above it will be seen that this new Colt gun is not an untried experiment, but is the result of years of careful, expensive and painstaking development in which the en gineering organization of the Colt Company has had the benefit of a large amount of actual shooting under service conditions in Govern ment trials. D e t a i l s o f t h e A c e Upon examination the Ace will be found to be an automatic pistol almost exactly resem bling the Government .45 or the Super .38 in outside appearance, weight and balance. On disassembling the gun numerous changes in construction will be found in the slide and parts attached to it and the barrel, and in the magazine; the receiver and the parts contained in it are the same as those used on the .45 Automatic. If you disassemble an Ace and a .45 Automatic at the same time, you will note just one difference in the receiver, and that is that in the Ace the ejector is not assembled to the receiver, as it is carried on the barrel. In the Ace receiver one of the little cross-holes for pinning the ejector in place is omitted. This is the only change that I can find between the .45 receiver and the Ace receiver. The slide is the same in outside appearance as that of the .45, but it is cut away inside as much as possi ble in order to make it light enough to recoil under the action of the .22 cartridge. The locking lugs in the slide which hold the barrel and receiver locked together are omitted, as they are not necessary in the .22-caliber gun. The firing pin in the Ace has been specially REAR VIEW OF PIST OL, SHOWING DE T A I L S O F R E A R S I G H T . constructed in two pieces instead of being in one piece as in the .45. " This is made neces sary in order to prevent the firing pin from striking the back end of the barrel when snap ping the gun empty. Much of the accuracy of a .22 is dependent upon the way in which the rim of the cartridge is struck, and after exhaus tive e.xperiments a certain form of wedge shape was found by the Colt Company to be best.adapted to give accurate ignition, and this form is used on the Ace firing pin. In order to insure that the wedge-shaped point strikes the cartridge correctly a small lug is formed on the bottom of the firing pin to prevent it from rotating in its seat. In constructing the firing pin so as to pre vent it from striking the back end of the chamber, it was found necessar>' to discard one of the well-known safety features of the .45 Automatic. In the .45 the firing pin is made shorter than the breech block. Should the hammer be lowered all the way down on to the firing pin, it pushes the firing pin inside the breech block but not far enough to make it touch the primer. The only way the firing pin can touch the primer is to be struck a sharp blow on the part that projects through the back of the breech block when the hammer is cocked. The hammer is arrested by striking the breech block before the firing pin has struck the primer, but the inertia of the firing pin carries it on away from the hammer, through the breech block, and against the primer. In other words, the hammer prac tically throws the firing pin at the primer, and, as mentioned above, when the hammer is lowered slowly on to the firing pin, the firing pin is pushed inside the breech block where it is housed away safely so that it can neither project enough in front to touch the primer nor project enough behind to be struck a sharp blow and thrown through the breech block. Thus, with the hammer down and rest ing on the face of the breech, and the loaded cartridge in the chamber, the Government .45 is perfectly safe, and the best way to carry it is with the hammer down on the loaded car tridge. As mentioned above, in order to allow un limited snapping of the Ace Pistol empty with no danger of having the firing pin hit the back of the chamber and raise a burr, it was neces sary to put a solid stop inside the breech block to arrest the firing pin at just the right depth of blow to make the cartridge go off. This means that the flying firing pin as used on the .45 could not be employed, and as a con sequence an Ace Pistol must not be carried with the hammer down on a loaded cartridge. It can be carried with the hammer at full cock and the safety on, or with the hammer at half- cock and a loaded cartridge in the chamber. This is the only difference between the Ace and the .45 Government Model that requires any different handling on the part of the user. The New Adjustable Rear Sight The most important improvement which is found in this gun and not in its companions, the .45 Government Model and the .38 Super, is the provision of adjustable target sights of entirely new design. SEPTEMBER, 1931 19 WWW.RIFLEMAN.ORG.UKOn any pistol or revolver which is to be used for target practice of any kind, or for general "outdoor use," adjustable target sights are almost a necessity. Without adjustable sights the usefulness of a gun is severely l i m i t e d . T h e v a r i a t i o n s i n i n d i v i d u a l h o l d and eyesight are such that it is never possible to be sure that a gun which shoots center for o n e u s e r w i U d o t h e s a m e f o r a n o t h e r. I n target shooting with pistols and revolvers it is impossible to make the best scores unless your gun does shoot so that you can take the same definite point of air each time. On a target you should be able to aim exactly at 6 o'clock, and the guns whose sights are too high or two l o w s o t h a t t h e u s e r m u s t a i m a n i n d e fi n i t e amount above or below the 6 o'clock point, will always spread the group in elevation; and if the sights are off in deflection so that the user cannot aim exactly under the center of the buUseye, the chances are that the group will be ruined. When a revolver or pistol has fixed sights it is a matter of great difficulty to adjust the gun so that it will shoot properly with any one user for any one range and under one set of conditions; and when once it is so adjusted it will be incorrect for another user, and for another range or set of conditions for the same user. Only recently I was called on to shoot in a match without any previous notice, and the only gun I had at hand was a .38 Special re volver with fixed sights that I had not shot for several years. As soon as I started in the match I found that the gun was shooting slightly low and to the left so that I had to correct the aim and hold off the bullseye. I found this to be a handicap in the match, and it undoubtedly resulted in quite a few points off my score even though I was using my own gun and one that I was fairly well used to. There is no substitute for adjustable sights. The adjustable sight on the Ace is of an entirely new design which was produced by the Colt Company especially for this model. It has a lateral adjustment which is obtained by means of a cross-screw, and there is a clamp ing screw to hold the lateral adjustment after it is made, very much the same as is used on the Woodsman, the Officers Model and other Colt target guns at the present time. Vertical adjustment on the Ace is not made on the front sight, however, as is the case on other Colt target guns. Instead, the central and rear part of the rear sight is dovetailed on the main part, and slides up and down. The vertical movement is given by means of a screw in the top of the sight body, and there is an index for reference to show just what adjust ment is being used. There is no clamping screw on the elevation adjustment. Instead, the elevation screw is split and spring-tem pered, and it has a snug spring fit in the hole so that the sight will retain its elevation ad justment at any point at which the elevation screw is set. As a safety precaution the ele vating slide and elevating screw are so arranged that they cannot be removed entirely from the rear sight, and there is no danger of losing them. The rear sight has a movement of 1/ 10-inch in the vertical direction, which is amply suf- T H E A C E , S I T T I N G P O S I T I O N , ELBOW ON KNEE. GROUP EX ACT SIZE. ficient for any adjustment that may be re quired, with some to spare. The front sight i s o f t h e r o u n d f o r m f o u n d o n t h e . 4 5 A u t o matic, but is considerably higher in order to match the rear sight whose elevation adjust ment brings it higher over the line of the slide than a fixed sight would be. The front sight is 1/10-inch wide, and when viewed through the rear sight notch it gives the effect of a square or Patridge-type sight, which is ideal for target shooting. Hidden Refinements A n e x a m i n a t i o n o f t h e i n s i d e w o r k s o f t h e Ace Target Pistol reveals a surprising amount of painstaking work that the average user never sees. The sear, hammer, disconnector, sear spring, trigger, mainspring housing and grip safety are all hand-finished, giving the action of the Ace Pistol a velvety smoothness which cannot help appealing highly to the lovers of fi n e fi r e a r m s a n d t o t h o s e w h o a d m i r e fi n e workmanship. After the nose of the sear is made the exact thickness for the required trig ger pull, the front and back of the sear, and the slot for the disconnector, are polished, and at assembly the corner and top of the sear nose are very carefully honed to give additional smoothness to the pull. The full-cock notch of the hammer is made dead smooth and just the proper depth for the required trigger pull, after which the circular section of the sides, as well as the lower outline including the half- cock notch, are hand-polished, and the hole for the hammer pin is burnished. At assem bly the full-cock notch is honed to give an extremely smooth surface across which the nose of the sear swings. Even the sear spring is hand-polished all over. The inside surface of the grip safety on which the right leg of the sear spring operates is also hand-polished, giv- T H E S A M E G R O U P A S I T W O U L D A P P E A R C E N T E R E D I N T H E 2 0 - YA R D B U L L S E Y E . ing additional smoothness to the operation. As a result of the special care taken with these guns, the smoothness of the action is such that the trigger can be pulled without the slightest tendency of the front sight to jerk or deviate f r o m t h e l i n e o f a i m . One of the greatest problems in this gun was the design of the magazine. As mentioned be fore, the .22-caliber long-rifle cartridge was never designed to be fed from a magazine which had to be fitted into the handle of the .45 Automatic Pistol, and magazine difficulties were one of the stumbling blocks that the Gov ernment encountered on its early designs of this nature. It would take up too much space here to tell of all the different expedients that were found necessary in order to get perfectly satisfactory, reliable, smooth-operating feeding with the .22-caliber cartridges in the Ace, but just among other things it may be mentioned that the filler used in the back of the magazine is built on a scientifically constructed curve that guides the cartridges to the proper feed ing angle in the magazine, and the under part of the breech block in the slide is also cut away at a certain slope which helps guide the car tridges up. A most difficult problem was successfully solved when a way was found to make the fol lower on this magazine operate the slide stop on the pistol, a thing that was not done on the Government Model or the early Colt models that the Government tested. The magazine has a pull-down to hold the follower for ease in loading, and the top part of the magazine, in cluding the magazine lip and the ears at the top which guide the cartridge in feeding, is made of sheet steel which is specially heat treated to withstand almost any conceivable rough use to which the magazine may be subjected. The capacity of the magazine is ten shots. The measure of success with which the Colt Company has met the difficult engineering problems in designing a magazine for this gun may be judged when it is stated that in two weeks' shooting, with many different makes of .22-caliber cartridges, some of them quite old, I have not yet encountered a single jam of any kind. Accuracy In attempting to obtain the very finest ac curacy for this gun, the Colt Company made numerous experiments and finally developed what they term the "super-precisioned barrel." There are six lands and grooves, with the grooves twice the width of the lands, left- hand, one turn in fourteen inches. It is absolutely certain that this barrel is highly accurate from a machine rest, but the question that the target shooter is most inter ested in is how accurate is the gun, including the barrel assembly, sights, grip, trigger, et cetera; in other words, "What results can I get by shooting it?" The fact that this gun has a 4^-mch barrel and a 6j4-inch sight radius adds interest to the speculation regarding the practical results as to accuracy. There are many novices in the shooting game who think the longer the barrel, the more accurate the gun. The barrel in itself is not so important in accuracy as many people think, for as soon as the bullet gets started in a 20 T H E A M E R I C A N R I F L E M A N WWW.RIFLEMAN.ORG.UKgiven direction it will continue to go in that same direction until something disturbs its line of flight. It does not take a long barrel to start a bullet toward the target. A 4}i-inch barrel is plenty long enough to get a bullet started in the right direction, and once the bul let starts in one direction it will keep right on going in that direction until something pushes i t t o o n e s i d e o r a n o t h e r . A matter of much more importance than the barrel length is the sight radius. For a good many years the maximum sight radius used on American target pistols has been 10 inches, but it has frequently been questioned that the long sight radius is always best. There are many shots who, much to their surprise, find that when they shoot with a short-barrel gun, with 6 or 8-inch barrel, they seem to make better s c o r e s t h a n w i t h t h e 1 0 - i n c h b a r r e l u n d e r certain conditions. At first this seemed to be a puzzler, but on further consideration of the subject it was found that the farther apart the sights are, the harder it is to see both the front and rear sights clearly. Also, the farther apart the sights are, the more apparent is the motion in the sights due to the failure of the user to hold perfectly. Shortening the sight radius not only clears up the sights to the vision, but it also makes the wabble seem less, and therefore it makes the holding seem easier, whether it is or not; and the result is that sometimes better scores are made with a short barrel and sight radius than with a longer barrel and sight radius under the same conditions. The very first target that I shot with the Colt Ace gave me a big surprise. It was shot recently at 20 yards distance, in the woods with flocks of mosquitoes flying around, a wind blowing, and a patch of sunlight through the leaves. I measured the distance with a steel tape, and when I found two trees 20 yards apart, I nailed a target on one tree and sat with my back against the other tree, resting my elbow on my knee so as to get as much steadiness as possible and still hold the gun in one hand, so as to get the true relation of the sighting to the group location. Owing to the condition of the light, I could not see the sights any too well. I fired a S-shot group with Remington Kleanbore, and when I went to look at the target, the group was about 3 inches low, as I had just had the rear sight off the gun exam_ining the construction, and had put it back on again so that the gun was not targeted in. But what gave me the real surprise was the fact that three of the shots touched each other and the other two were only an eighth of an inch away, one on one side and one on the other. The group measured Yz inch high and Y\ inch wide. That one group proved that the gun had all the accuracy that any shooter has any use for; if the gun does not hit it is the man behind the gun. While this could not be called an offhand group, still in shooting this group the gun was lined up with metallic sights and was held in the hand, and all the errors of sighting entered in, so that it certainly proves that the combina tion of gun and sights is an accurate one. The next two groups that I fired with this gun at fhe same time and under the same bad light conditions were strictly offhand groups shot from the standing position on rough ground, and these two groups scored 88 and 90, respectively, on the standard American target. Since then I have fired quite a few targets with the Ace, at the same time firing targets with the Officers Model Target and various other .22-caliber guns, including a 10-inch single- shot pistol, and in all this shooting the Ace averaged just about the same as the other target .22's, including the 10-inch. I believe t h a t u n d e r e x c e l l e n t c o n d i t i o n s t h e 1 0 - i n c h pistol would do a little better than the Ace, but under the conditions I have been shooting, I have been getting around 88 to 90 with all of these guns. As mentioned above, the barrel on the Ace pistol is inches long, whereas the barrel on the .45 Automatic is 5 inches long, and sev eral correspondents have written to me to ask why the difference in barrel length. As ex plained to me by the Colt people, this is due to the fact that in order to get this gun to accommodate every kind of the many different makes and varieties of .22 long-rifle cartridges on the market, it was necessary to have a cer tain minimum weight for the slide in order to insure certainty of functioning. After hollow ing the slide out as much as possible it was f o u n d t h a t i t w a s d e s i r a b l e t o m a k e i t s t i l l lighter, and this was done by cutting off inch at the front end. One of the very frequent questions that I have received on the Ace is as to whether or not the slide and barrel can be purchased sep arately and placed on a .45 or .38 Super re ceiver. The answer is that under present con d i t i o n s t h i s c a n n o t b e d o n e . W h e n t h e C o l t Company first started to get out this gun the original idea was to get a .22 adapter, consist ing of barrel, slide and magazine, to be placed on the frame of the .45. It was found, how ever, that in order to make this gun work with the comparatively low-powered and very variable .22-caliber ammunition, it was neces sary to have the fitting done with extreme c a r e . W h e n t h e C o l t . 4 5 w a s fi r s t m a n u factured it was made by the Colt Company and by Springfield Armory, but with a slight difference in the dimensions of the guns made at the two places. Then when the World War came on, a number of other factories were tooled up to make the Colt .45, and many of these ran into great difficulty in maintaining the very close dimensions that had been re quired on this job in the past, and there was consistent pressure brought to bear on the War Department to loosen up on the tolerances. The result is that there are many thousands of war-time Colt Automatics now on the mar ket whose dimensions are considerably beyond the limits required by the Colt Company. An attempt to fit the slide and barrel of the Colt Ace on one of these guns would undoubtedly result in frequent malfunctions. Moreover, in many of these guns there is a variation in the position of the magazine latch, and if the magazine is not held snugly up to the proper place, trouble will occur. For all these reasons the Colt Company foresaw an endless amount of trouble for them selves if they put on the market a .22 adapter. backed by their name and guarantee, that was likely to be used under all of these different conditions. In other words, they felt they did not want to risk their hard-earned reputation of many years by a proposition that would almost certainly give trouble, and for that reason they feel that they cannot, guarantee performance with the Ace unless the receiver and slide are assembled and fitted together at the factorj' so that all of the very critical points can be taken care of correctly. The weiglit of the Ace is 36 ounces, which is just 3 ounces less than that of the .45 Auto matic. The capacity of the magazine is 10 shots. A very important feature about the new pistol is that it is designed for the new Hi- Speed as well as the ordinary .22-caliber long- rifle cartridge. It was the desire of the Colt Company to test the gun out thoroughly with these new cartridges and to be sure that all possible causes of trouble had been discovered and removed, that led to the rather slow ap p e a r a n c e o f t h e A c e o n t h e m a r k e t a f t e r t h e original announcement. The retail price of the new gun is $40.75. The user of a .45 Automatic or Super .38 who does even a moderate amount of practice shooting would save the cost of the Colt Ace in a few months. The Ace appeals to me as a most important and desirable addition to the firearms world, and one that no serious user of the .38 Super A u t o m a t i c o r t h e . 4 5 A u t o m a t i c c a n a ff o r d t o be without; and, moreover, even if we leave the large-caliber guns out of consideration entirely, the Ace is an outdoorsman's gun that deserves a high measure of popularity on its own account. Brigadier General Bird W. Spencer T TNDER circumstances and surroundings U that he would probably have selected himself. Brigadier General Bird W. Spencer, of New Jersey, died on July 28. Bird Spencer was one of the "grand old men" of the shoot ing game. It was under his supervision that the lawnlike ranges of Seagirt were developed a n d r e t a i n e d f o r t h e r i fl e m e n o f t h e S t a t e i n the face of persistent efforts on the part of real-estate operators to persuade the State to sell the range for resort development pur poses. Seagirt was his hobby. It might almost be said that Seagirt was his passion. When the Great Scorer wrote in his book "Bird W. Spencer died in the clubhouse at Seagirt," he wrote exactly the closing sen tence that Bird Spencer would himself have chosen. The civil and military authorities of the State showed a splendid appreciation of Bird Spencer's ideals when they arranged for funeral ceremonies in the living room of the clubhouse. A guard of honor was drawn up on the 200-yard firing line, over which Bird Spencer had exercised such vigilant care for many years. Following the brief services the {Continued on page 42) SEPTEMBER, 1931 21 WWW.RIFLEMAN.ORG.UKNext >