[EVA] Misato the crack shot

[Harold Ancell]

Note: if I've watched this sequence, I've forgotten the details.

At 04:04 AM 8/20/2007, Carl Gustav Horn wrote:

>Shooting a pistol well on a target range, and shooting it well in  
>running combat against people with better weapons

The latter is quite debatable, but I will grant a long gun is
easier to point in the right direction.

>and body armor  
>firing back (ask any soldier if they'd prefer a pistol to an assault  
>rifle if they had the choice), may be two slightly different things.  
>Not that Evangelion is known for making the strictest sense, but  
>Misato appears to shoot the first soldier in the back of the head  
>(the one about to shoot Shinji) from several yards away, even though  
>he's wearing a helmet.

.40 S&W, depending on the ammo, that's not out of the question
(penetrating the helmet).  Especially when EVA was made, body
armor was more designed for fragmentation than projectile
protection, the latter is expensive and HEAVY.  We only outfitted
our troops with the Interceptor 2 armor in time for the 2nd Iraq
War, and that is only reliable against projectiles against the
trauma plates, although anti-fragmentation armor, while not rated
for it, is thought to be good against normal pistol ammo.

But if Misato is a good enough shot under stress---and you can
simulate this quite well yourself in training, if you know to do
it---she will know to shoot them in exposed locations.  Hard but
hardly impossible, given the canon info gathering mode she's been
in, she well may have anticipated this day, and time in a range
can be a great general stress reliever. 

>She then charges the two other soldiers while under automatic fire,

Bingo!  Right there is her great advantage after surprise.  Unless
the opponent is very well trained in full auto, I'll take one in
"spray and pray" mode over aimed fire any day.  While it opens
several questions, there's reasons the USArmy switched from full
auto to 3 round burst in the standard service rifles/carbines.

>and is not only not hit, but manages to kill  
>one and disable the other with a kick before shooting him under the  
>chin. It doesn't exactly scream beginners' luck.

Combat is unusual in being so random, and the odds that all
parties involved are true beginners---in the sense this was
the first seriously opposed combat they engaged in---that
"beginners luck" on her side aided by the element of surprise
is quite sufficient to explain the outcome.

Many a US solider facing a full-auto AK-47 wielding opponent
in a surprise encounter (generally for both) has come out on
top using just a handgun (e.g. he went to take a leak and
there was mutual surprise).

I've never myself "fired a shot in anger", but I've trained a
lot for it, including just reading, and while I'd have to review
the sequence, from what I remember and the descriptions it's
entirely plausible.  I ask, is there any evidence the JSSDF
troops are genuinely experienced in *opposed* combat?

No one in disarmed since 1588 Japan is going to be giving them
a serious "blooding" before this action, and unless someone
realized they needed this, I don't see them being sent out on
expeditionary missions for all the usual reasons.

                                        - Harold