Wyatt Earp, Wyatt's Guns, Tombstone, Guns in the OK Corral
Fact..or Fiction? I'm getting too old to carry this around any longer, so here it is: in October 1981, during a cold, snowy afternoon, about 2:30 in the afternoon in Tombstone, Az, I stepped off into the OK Corral and started the RE-creation of the gunfight in the OK Corral.
It was 100 years to the second after the actual gunfight, on the same spot, using the same TYPE of pistols, wearing the same TYPE of clothes, we researched everything down to the last factoid. All the cowboys in the corral that day copied all we knew from the 27 eye witnesses who testified during the Wells Spicer trial after the shoot-out.
We didn't miss a trick. Due to a variety of actual threats, one of us was carrying a real loaded .38...just in case. Nothing happened, thank God. Guests had to go through an airport screener that day.
I digress. Note the pictures attached. What bothers most of us amateur historians who have littered the landscape with published stories on Earp, the corral, etc, is the bogus information out there about people who purport to know "all about" the above. Tons of self-styled "experts" have arisen from around the globe, even Hawaii, would you believe - all claiming the inside scoop on what actually happened. As someone who actually stepped into the O K Corral one hundred years to the minute, the first one into the corral, recorded by a half dozen TV cameras seen around the world, live, I can give you an impression of what those gunmen might have felt that day.
They were scared to death. A gunfight 8 feet apart? They were used to shooting at each other fifty feet maybe, but this close, even the blanks in our guns were dangerous.
See the picture below of what appears to be " Wyatt's guns" hanging in his gambling room in a hotel in San Diego. Plainly visible is a Remington revolver on the bottom of the display case.
Ddocumentation from countless sources, including descendants of the family that he never carried Remingtons.
He loved to bust bad guys over the head with his pistols, and, Remingtons are made of two pieces, and they break apart and become unreliable to shoot.
Colts are a one-piece handgun. Earp always used a long barreled pistol and are most reliable for clobbering some drunk with a pistol in his hand and a bottle in another.
Bang a miscreant on the head and you can still use the Colt for shooting-one piece. There exists a tape conversation with the head of a company executive that offered the Remington pistol reproduction as "Wyatt's gun." I have heard the tape.
When quizzed by a world famous author on the subject, he quietly admitted that they probably made a mistake, and in all probability, he agreed with the author, he never used it.
Fact or fiction? In the end, this will probably be filed away in the opinion drawer, like all else - with one major exception, I was there.
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It was 100 years to the second after the actual gunfight, on the same spot, using the same TYPE of pistols, wearing the same TYPE of clothes, we researched everything down to the last factoid. All the cowboys in the corral that day copied all we knew from the 27 eye witnesses who testified during the Wells Spicer trial after the shoot-out.
We didn't miss a trick. Due to a variety of actual threats, one of us was carrying a real loaded .38...just in case. Nothing happened, thank God. Guests had to go through an airport screener that day.
I digress. Note the pictures attached. What bothers most of us amateur historians who have littered the landscape with published stories on Earp, the corral, etc, is the bogus information out there about people who purport to know "all about" the above. Tons of self-styled "experts" have arisen from around the globe, even Hawaii, would you believe - all claiming the inside scoop on what actually happened. As someone who actually stepped into the O K Corral one hundred years to the minute, the first one into the corral, recorded by a half dozen TV cameras seen around the world, live, I can give you an impression of what those gunmen might have felt that day.
They were scared to death. A gunfight 8 feet apart? They were used to shooting at each other fifty feet maybe, but this close, even the blanks in our guns were dangerous.
See the picture below of what appears to be " Wyatt's guns" hanging in his gambling room in a hotel in San Diego. Plainly visible is a Remington revolver on the bottom of the display case.
Ddocumentation from countless sources, including descendants of the family that he never carried Remingtons.
He loved to bust bad guys over the head with his pistols, and, Remingtons are made of two pieces, and they break apart and become unreliable to shoot.
Colts are a one-piece handgun. Earp always used a long barreled pistol and are most reliable for clobbering some drunk with a pistol in his hand and a bottle in another.
Bang a miscreant on the head and you can still use the Colt for shooting-one piece. There exists a tape conversation with the head of a company executive that offered the Remington pistol reproduction as "Wyatt's gun." I have heard the tape.
When quizzed by a world famous author on the subject, he quietly admitted that they probably made a mistake, and in all probability, he agreed with the author, he never used it.
Fact or fiction? In the end, this will probably be filed away in the opinion drawer, like all else - with one major exception, I was there.
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