Drama at Blair House: the attempted assassination of Harry Truman

American Handgunner, March-April, 2006 by Massad Ayoob

"Unfortunately, those target rounds--characteristically smaller amounts of powder pushing lighter drum-shaped bullets called wadcutters--will always strike lower than a full-power round of the sort Floyd fired at Oscar. That's because the heavier, more powerful cartridge has a more significant recoil and in the microworld of the firing handgun--measured in milliseconds--the amount of recoil causes the barrel to rise even before the bullet has left the muzzle. The more powerful load, recoiling more stoutly, causes the barrel to rise faster and higher; therefore, the bullet strikes higher, even at twenty-five [sic] feet. This tendency is exacerbated by the light, one-handed grip he'd been trained to employ, which liberates the small revolver to recoil even more aggressively. What this means is if he aims at Oscar's forehead, he grooves Oscar's scalp; if he had aimed at Oscar's nose, he would have hit Oscar between the eyes. It's not a thing he could have known because it's not a thing his agency had thought out carefully."

There are other lessons, and many of them have less to do with the weapons in play than with their wielders. Collazo was a klutz compared to Torresola. He was unfamiliar with the P38, and had never fired one before, being trained only with an hour of dry fire with Torresola shortly before the incident. His initial fumbling with the pistol saved Birdzell's life. Told by Torresola to carry it off-safe and fire the first shot double action, Collazo is believed by Hunter to have initially cocked the pistol, then decocked it and accidentally put it onsafe, then fumbled until he finally got off the shot that only wounded the first officer engaged. Furthermore, the authors of "American Gunfight" speculate since none of Collazo's wounds were life threatening, he simply fainted after completing his reload of the Walther. He saw bloodstains on his shirt and realized he had been shot in the chest, not understanding the wound was superficial and Davidson's bullet, which had probably ricocheted off the wrought iron fence before hitting him, had never actually entered his thoracic cavity.

We note the competitive marksmen, the serious gun enthusiasts in the President's protective contingent, did the best shooting on the defenders' side. The hero Les Coffelt was a life-long gun collector, a recreational shooter and a pistol team member. The values as well as the skills and the habits this "gun culture" had ingrained in him were with him when Coffelt all but rose from the dead to fire the final shot ending the threat to the President.

Been There, Done That

Floyd Boring had been in a shooting before. As a state trooper he was slashed by a man with a butcher knife who would have finished the job if Boring hadn't quick-drawn his 6" Colt and put a .38 slug through the man's brain. Like Mroz and Birdzell, he was a competitive shooter with a Distinguished medal. He was capable of shooting a 280 out of 300 on the demanding bulls-eye course with a 2" Detective Special--no mean feat. He also remained calm throughout the incident, thinking as he shot Collazo in the head, "I'm going to finish this baby right here." Hunter and Bainbridge say of that shot, "Today, the Secret Service carries SIG-Sauer semiautos in a flat shooting caliber called .357 SIG. a .40-caliber necked down to .357-bore width, which is one of the best calibers for ending a gunfight fast by applying extreme shock to the opponent, irrespective of lethality. A .357 SIG round grooving Oscar's skull may well have put him to the pavement in a nanosecond with a very bad headache."