How to catch a jackal

The remake of Frederick Forysth’s ‘Day of the Jackal’, currently streaming on Peacock and Sky, starts with a very long shot. The Jackal makes the shot from a 30-story tower block in Munich, through a revolving door, and into the back of a politician’s head 4,210 yards away. The bullet takes six seconds to arrive. The target’s security detail turns around, scans the skyline, and settles on a 17th floor window with fluttering curtains. More than 2 miles away. It’s an expedient device for keeping the pressure on shooter Eddie Redmayne to skedaddle, but come on. What they really needed was ‘sound ranging’, a method first developed by a band of First World War physicists.

Eddie Redmayne in ‘The Day of the Jackal’ on Peacock and Sky

William Bragg was and is the youngest technical Nobel laureate. The team he brought to Vimy Ridge in support of the Canadian Corps' effort to take the high ground included the grandson of Charles Darwin and the expedition scientist from Shackleton's failed run at the South Pole on Endurance. They offered the Allies a technique that compared when the sound of a gun's boom arrived at microphones spread far apart to pinpoint the source. Within three to five minutes, they could provide the precise coordinates of the shooter. Their information helped the Allies' big gunners take out 80% of the German guns, including a deep-set monster11 miles behind the lines, and take the ridge.

There are millions of microphones out there now. It would take only a few and a bit of First World War trigonometry to figure out where the Jackal's shot came from.

Mind you, he was out of there in under three minutes so probably still would have gotten away with it.