Shooting To Live: Expanded Edition Review

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(More customer reviews)While the Fairbairn & Sykes' choice of weaponry is a bit antiquated, you have to keep in mind that the weaponry described was all they had. The Glock hadn't been invented yet. In the author's working career timeframe (the 1920s through the 1940s), that weaponry was the 1911 or 1911a1 .45 Automatic, or some sort of 4-inch barreled revolver. Fairbairn & Sykes preferred the 1911 platform. The descriptions of the weaponry, the described combat incidents, and the descriptions of Shanghai make it valuable from a historical standpoint.
However, don't dismiss most of Fairbairn & Sykes' advice as irrelevant. It worked against real people then and it'll work now. For example, their advice about using cover and concealment is still important today. I tried several of the combat techniques at the range (peripheral sight picture, no safety, finger outside trigger guard, muzzle down, one-armed firing stance) and, unbelievably, they worked!
If you read the their descriptions, you can tell that their writings had a profound influence on some of today's most popular gunwriters, including Mossad Ayoob. Fairbairn & Syke's peripheral aiming style isn't that different from Ayoob's stress point index. And Ayoob's stress point index works like a charm as well.
If you don't memorize anything else from this book, then memorize the fact that you should grip the pistol firmly! No target-style grip. And keep in mind the natural crouch when aiming. In summary, this is a text that is more important as a historical text. It's how our grandfathers and great-grandfathers were trained for fighting during WWII. But it also contains information that's relevant today.

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One of the most influential combat shooting books ever published, Shooting to Live is the product of Capt. W.E. Fairbairn's and Capt. E.A. Sykes' practical experience with the handgun from their many close-quarters gunfights while working for the Shanghai Municipal Police in the 1930s. This expanded edition contains a new foreword by British World War II combatives expert Phil Mathews, which sheds new light on the career of E.A. Sykes - the "forgotten hero" of the Fairbairn-Sykes duo - as well as previously unpublished photos.Hundreds of actual incidents provided the basis for this first true instruction manual on life-or-death shootouts with the pistol. In clear, concise terms, the book teaches the concepts, considerations and applications of combat pistolcraft. A foreword by Col. Rex Applegate explains how Fairbairn and Sykes introduced their groundbreaking methods into American military training circles at the height of World War II.

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