THE OK CORRAL PLUS 144

 

The 26^th of this month was the 144^th anniversary of the classic Old West Gunfight, the Shootout at the OK Corral.

 

What follows is a pistoliferous author’s take on the subject.

 

But first, my immodest credentials:

 

I’ve shot thousands of rounds from single-action Colts and clones in .44-40 and .45 Long Colt, on the clock.  Got tolerably good at it back in the day as a life member of the Single Action Shooting Society (SASS).  During the late 90s when I was in my prime (yeahright) I led the national championship team/posse and finished in the top 10 percent individually.

 

The OK Corral shootists used various modes of carry.  Some—notably the Clanton gang’s Cowboys—wore holsters while the Earps mostly carried hoglegs in a pocket or waistband.  The latter methods do not enhance speed, as hammer spurs and front sights can snag.

 

I just mention the foregoing to establish my bona fides.

 

Nowthen:

 

As per Prof. Bill O’Neal’s essential Encyclopedia of Western Gunfighters, from 1857 to 1924 there were a few hundred dustups over those 60 years.  (The last year is significant to me because it was when my distant kinsman and SASS alias Marshal William “Billy” Tilghman was murdered by a drunken federal prohibition agent.)

 

Arizona logged 60 shootouts in the study period, obviously averaging one a year.  Texas won going away with 160, followed by Kansas and New Mexico with about 70 each.

 

In 1881 Arizona was second overall with seven gunfights, barely behind New Mexico and just ahead of Texas.       

 

The political-economic dispute between the Clanton-McLaury faction and the Earp faction needn’t divert us.  We’re concerned with the immediate factors attending the Shootout at the OK Corral.  (Which, incidentally, was a fur piece from the corral/stable, but editors decided that The Shootout at the OK Corral sounded a lot juicier than The Shootout Behind C.S. Fly’s Photo Studio.)

 

A sidebar:

 

Folks wonder how the corral got its name.  Some clever Googling showed that it stood for “Old Kindersley,” though how owner John Montgomery arrived at that decision seems unknown. The shooting venue was a narrow, vacant lot reported at 15 to 18 feet wide.  Call it six yards; maybe seven or eight paces. Which bears upon our story.

 

Back to the event:

 

The Tombstone lawdogs--Wyatt, Morgan, and Virgil Earp with Dr. John Holliday bearing a shotgun—confronted miscreant Ike Clanton and some of his Cowboys who were carrying in violation of civic ordinance.  (Apparently Second Amendment concerns did not arise.)  Ike had said repeatedly that he intended to kill some Earps.

 

Originally the four lawmen faced six Cowboys.  After some back-and-forthing at a reputed six feet, Wyatt and Billy Clanton simultaneously opened the ball, and the fight was on.

 

When the Earps began firing, Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury were hit immediately.  Morgan shot Billy point-blank, knocking him down.  Seconds later Billy’s right wrist was broken so he gamely shifted to his left hand, firing from the ground.

 

Billy Clanton missed Wyatt, who prioritized Frank McLaury, considered a dangerous shooter.

 

Ike Clanton rushed up to Wyatt, pleading for an end to the violence.  According to most accounts, Wyatt pushed him back saying, approximately, “The fight’s started, get to fightin’ or get away!”  Ike fled, as did Billy Claiborne and Wes Fuller, leaving three against four.

 

In the flurry of shooting, Morgan took a hit and went down but his blood was up.  He rebounded, remaining in the fight.

 

Tom McLaury, who possibly was unarmed, stood behind his horse with a rifle in the scabbard.  He tried to unlimber the Winchester but when the horse spooked, Doc unloaded his shotgun into him, sending Frank reeling into Fremont Street where he died.

 

Doc dropped his scattergun and pulled his revolver, shooting at Ike who hastily followed Wyatt’s advice.

                                                                                                  

As per Wyatt’s concern, Frank McLaury (and probably with the fatally wounded Billy Clanton) shot Doc and Morgan.  Then, pulling his horse by the reins, Frank staggered into the street, still shooting, then was killed by a head shot, likely from Doc.

 

By most accounts, in about 30 seconds the three Cowboys were dead or dying while Virgil, Morgan, and Doc were wounded. 

 

Hits and Misses

 

Doctors examined the three Cowboys’ bodies, finding that

 

Billy Clanton was hit three times.  He lingered awhile, reportedly asking that his boots be removed, as he had promised his mother he would not die with his boots on.

 

Frank McLaury was hit in the torso and killed by a round near the right ear, the most difficult shot of the fight although the distance is uncertain.

 

Tom McLaury’s 12 buckshot wounds measured four inches across, indicating that Doc fired from 12 to 15 feet. (Modern buckshot spreads an inch per yard.)

 

The Tombstone Epitaph headlined: “Three men hurled into Eternity in Duration of a Moment.”  But the incident did not gain public traction until 1931 with Stuart Edward Lake’s biography of Wyatt, who died in 1929.

 

Otherwise:

 

So: how many rounds were loaded in seven shootists’ revolvers?  (There’s some question whether Tom McLaury was heeled but let’s assume he was.)  Frontier wisdom held that you carried a six-shooter with five rounds loaded, hammer down on the empty sixth chamber for safety reasons.

 

So, let’s assume at least 35 loaded pistol rounds plus Doc’s double-barrel.  We know that of the reputed 30-plus rounds fired, the Earps scored five pistol hits plus the shotgun blast to Tom McLaury.

 

The Cowboys—probably limited to Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton—hit three lawmen once each.

 

That’s a combined total of eight hits among the reputed thirty, a 26 percent ratio.  The ranges largely were at conversational distances, from near muzzle contact to no greater than 15 of the 18-foot-wide lot.

 

Actually, 26 percent isn’t bad within the broader context.  Start with an adrenaline spike, in-your-face lethal stress, some marginal marksmanship skills, plus a cloud of black powder smoke, and you have some idea of the factors.  In the 1880s hardly anyone shot pistols two-handed, as do most SASS competitors who can cock a Colt really fast with the thumb of the support hand.

 

In recent years police gunfight hit rates vary considerably, though there’s no national database.  New York for instance stopped reporting misses around 2006 but NYPD’s figure from 1998 until then ran from 18 to 37 percent, including incidents with no return gunfire.

THE ROUND-UP PLUS 80

  

Following August’s reprise of the August 1945 atomic bombings that ended World War II, I’m devoting this month’s retrospective to the sudden onset of peace.  With a very personal view.  It's excerpted from my 2023 history August 1945: When the Shooting Stopped.  Far as I know, it's the only one-volume account of global events in that world-shaping month.

 

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Beverly Jean Barrett was a princess on the Pendleton, Oregon, Round-Up court in September 1945. A 25-year-old green-eyed brunette, she rode a large sorrel horse called Jimmy who enjoyed ice cream cones and the occasional hamburger. During the week-long rodeo, she and her friends became acquainted with some naval aviators who attended the event with all the innovative enthusiasm of Frederick Wakeman’s wartime novel, Shore Leave.

 

Beverly explained, “The ’45 event was the first full-scale rodeo since the war, and a lot of boys were home from the service. It was and is the major event in Umatilla County every year, and my family had been involved since it began in 1910.”

 

On the first day – Wednesday, September 12 – the queen and court rode into the arena, waving to the crowd in the grandstand, and went to the box seats. Beverly recalled, “We were just sitting down when I heard a sudden, loud noise. I turned around just in time to see a fighter plane swooping down into the arena and pulling up on the other side. There were American flags all around the top row, so I don’t know how the pilot missed any of the poles. He was very low.”

 

That was just the beginning. The miscreant aviator was about 50 air miles off track from NAS Pasco, Washington, across the Columbia River. Pasco was home to part of a light carrier air group and Composite Squadron 82, which had completed a combat tour aboard the escort carrier USS Anzio (CVE-57) in March. Lieutenant Commander F.A. Green’s unit, with FM-2 Wildcats and TBM-3 Avengers, was recycling for another deployment when the war ended. But flying continued with instrument practice and rocket firing.

 

Aside from their end-of-war exuberance, the Navy fliers probably relished the opportunity to upstage their khaki counterparts. Pendleton Army Airfield was home of the B-25 group that provided the Doolittle Raiders in 1942 and continued as an operational training and maintenance facility. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, then-Major Curtis LeMay briefly flew from Pendleton.

 

The blue intruders made themselves known to Umatilla County. Wildcats buzzed tractors in fields and cars on highways– allegedly running an Oregon State trooper off the road. Local legend related the tale of an Avenger that executed a mock torpedo attack against fishing boats on the reservoir south of town–with bomb bay doors open. Finally enough was enough. Some high-decibel phone calls were made, and Pasco grounded the errant tailhookers.

 

Nobody complained–the Navy men were stranded for the duration of Round-Up. Beverly Barrett explained, “They were definitely ready to party. They sort of attached themselves to us, though the court had escorts as well as a chaperone. I had already met Jack Tillman when he was a flight cadet. I had seen him in his dress uniform, leaning against a light pole, and I remember thinking, ‘Hmmm…how did I miss that?’”

 

Tillman had already encountered the Pasco fliers downtown, where they carried a 20mm ammunition case filled with ice and beer.

 

Beverly continued, “One evening the Round-Up court was at the country club for an event. The fliers from Pasco were there in dress blues,

because some of them had met other local girls. It got to be late and we decided to go to dinner, and I got up to leave. Then somebody asked, ‘Where’s Mac?’

 

“Mack was a short, stocky young man. I never did know the full names 

of any of the fliers because they came and went so much. But we all knew Mack. Finally somebody found him out behind the club house, asleep under a tree with the club’s big Saint Bernard. Mack had drunk about 12 Alexander cocktails and apparently crawled through the sprinklers on the green, because his blues were ruined from water and grass stains.

 

I’ve often wondered if Mack or any of those other fliers remember that night. But I certainly do!

THE NUKE SEASON REVISITED

 Because this month marks the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ending the Second World War, I am reprinting the 2009 original with minor updates.

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What does baseball have to do with atom bombs?

A whimsical baseball movie was the 1949 Ray Milland offering, It Happens Every Spring. It’s an enjoyable tale about a college professor who invents a formula that repels wood, making it impossible for a batter to hit a ball coated with the stuff. The title refers to the annual onset of spring training.

That’s a lot like The Nuke Season. It happens every August with the anniversaries of the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since we’re now into this year’s Nuke Season, I’ll address the matter.

(Caution: if facts do not matter to you, skip this Rant. Some people prefer emotion to facts.)

Inevitably The Nuke Season features the following:

The bombs were unnecessary since Japan was about to surrender.
Truman only wanted to impress the Soviets.
Racist America used nukes against Asians but not against Germans.
A demonstration should have been made before destroying a city.
Blockade was preferable to bombing.

None of the foregoing assertions bear examination, to wit:

As British historian Max Hastings noted in Retribution (2008), "The myth that the Japanese were ready to surrender anyway has been so completely discredited by modern research that it is astonishing some writers continue to give it credence.” In researching Whirlwind, my volume on air operations over Japan, I found a wealth of Japanese testimony supporting Hastings’ conclusion. In 1943 Prime Minister Tojo admitted there was no viable plan to win the war, but hostilities continued. Admiral Onishi, the kamikaze master, asserted in March 1945 that the war had just begun. And a general staff officer told POWs that the war would last at least until 1948. 

Furthermore, the war cabinet’s actions give 0.00 credence to the notion that Japan was about to surrender. Tokyo rebuffed the allies’ Potsdam declaration calling for capitulation, and then sought intervention by the Soviets, who already planned to invade the Kurile Islands! There is no documentation that any of the eight men ruling Japan (including the emperor) stated before Hiroshima that they would have surrendered under any circumstances—not even when some were on trial for their lives. None stated that Soviet entry--plus some guarantee of the imperial system--would have moved them individually, much less triggered the necessary set of actions within the cabinet, that would have ended the war before the atoms were loosed. Two weeks before Hiroshima, Tokyo’s ambassador to Moscow said the best possible outcome was capitulation, perhaps with some guarantee of the emperor’s status—a situation rejected by the foreign minister and known by U.S. intelligence at the time.

So: if Tokyo was “about to surrender anyway” why did Hirohito have to over-ride his warlords? 

Harry Truman’s presumed intention to cow the Soviets with the nukes is another unsupportable contention. As commander in chief his first obligation was to the American forces facing a horrific invasion. Forcing Japan to surrender soonest was Job One, and any geopolitical fallout (!) was a tertiary concern if it was ever discussed at all. 

I encountered the “racism” mantra in college, and it still arises from the moldy PC pond. No less an authority than Malcolm X (!) stated that America would not use nukes against whites—a bald lie when the entire Manhattan Project was spurred by the German nuclear program. Colonel Paul Tibbets’ 509th Composite Group originally was instructed to conduct a dual strike: Germany and Japan. But “the weapon” was not available until July 1945, over two months after Germany surrendered. (When I noted that fact, the tweedy prof merely scrawled, “Are you sure?” and gave me a B+.)

Dropping a demonstration bomb was considered but rejected on at least two counts: it might be a dud, which would only reinforce Tokyo’s resolve; and there existed material for only two weapons at the time. Besides, there were in fact two demonstrations before Japan surrendered: at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

That leaves blockade which, short of invasion, was the only option other than declaring peace and going home. But as my colleague Rich Frank has observed in Downfall (1999), blockade would have killed far more people than the two A-bombs. Precious time would have passed, with at least hundreds of thousands of Japanese starving to death, plus millions more dead in Asia. As it was, perhaps 100,000 died there every month from famine, disease, and Japanese brutality. I have yet to see any critic even mention that fact. And it does not count the American KIAs sustaining a blockade—a cost that nuke critics seem willing to ignore.

So, here’s the deal:

You are Harry Truman in early August 1945. You have responsibility for ending a war that has killed nearly 400,000 Americans, with many thousands more to die in an invasion. Your military is divided on the subject: the Army under the megalomaniacal General Douglas MacArthur favors invasion while the Navy, which understands the human cost, opposes it. You know from intelligence sources that Tokyo is nowhere near capitulation. The daily cost of hostilities runs in the thousands 

You face an enemy unlike any in American history. You have seen the films of mothers throwing their infants off Saipan’s cliffs and jumping after them. You know that Tokyo is impervious to civilian suffering: after Curt LeMay’s B-29s burned down one-seventh of the city and killed at least 85,000 people one night in March, the war cabinet never flinched. You know that the government has closed schools and conscripted most of the civilian population into “volunteer” resistance units.

Now your scientists present you with the ultimate weapon bearing the potential for convincing the samurai zealots in Tokyo to “bear the unbearable.” If you decline that option and the invasion proceeds, eventually the parents of tens of thousands of GIs, Marines, and sailors will demand to know why you sent their sons to their deaths. You may or may not be lynched, but you definitely will be impeached.

What do you do?

It’s the lingering question whenever The Nuke Season rolls around.