Posted on 06/30/2007 4:36:50 PM PDT by 1066AD
Oswald 'had no time to fire all Kennedy bullets' By Tim Shipman in Washington, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 12:30am BST 01/07/2007
Lee Harvey Oswald could not have acted alone in assassinating President John F Kennedy, according to a new study by Italian weapons experts of the type of rifle Oswald used in the shootings.
The new findings will encourage conspiracy theorists In fresh tests of the Mannlicher-Carcano bolt-action weapon, supervised by the Italian army, it was found to be impossible for even an accomplished marksman to fire the shots quickly enough.
The findings will fuel continuing theories that Oswald was part of a larger conspiracy to murder the 35th American president on 22 November 1963.
The official Warren Commission inquiry into the shooting concluded the following year that Oswald was a lone gunman who fired three shots with a Carcano M91/38 bolt-action rifle in 8.3 seconds.
But when the Italian team test-fired the identical model of gun, they were unable to load and fire three shots in less than 19 seconds - suggesting that a second gunman must have been present in Dealey Plaza, central Dallas, that day.
Two of the bullets hit Kennedy, with the first - the so called "magic bullet", ridiculed by conspiracy theorists - also wounding the governor of Texas, John B Connally, after it had struck the president.
In a further challenge to the official conclusions, the Italian team conducted two other tests at the former Carcano factory in Terni, north of Rome, where the murder weapon was made in 1940.
They fired bullets through two large pieces of meat, in an attempt to simulate the assumed path of the magic bullet. In their test, the bullet was deformed, unlike the first bullet in the Kennedy assassination, which remained largely intact.
The second bullet is thought to have missed its target. According to the commission, the third disintegrated when it hit Kennedy's head. The new research suggests, however, that this is incompatible with the fact that Oswald was only 80 yards away, in a book depository, when he fired. The Italian tests suggest that a bullet fired from that distance would have emerged intact from Kennedy's head, implying that the third shot must instead have come from a more distant location.
The findings will encourage conspiracy theorists who hold that Oswald could not have fired three shots in time. For each shot, he would have had to push up the gun's bolt handle, pull the bolt backwards to eject the spent cartridge case and then forward to slide the next round into the chamber, before turning down the bolt handle to lock it in place.
Nearly seven out of 10 Americans believe that Kennedy was murdered as a result of a plot. Depending on which theory they back, the participants supposedly included any or all of the CIA, the Mafia, the Cubans, the FBI chief J Edgar Hoover, the military-industrial complex and Vice-President Lyndon B Johnson.
It is the second challenge in two months to the view of the Warren Commission that Oswald acted alone. In May, researchers at Texas A&M University argued that the ballistics evidence used to rule out a second gunman had been misinterpreted.
The findings will be a frustration to Vincent Bugliosi, the author of a 1,600-page book, also published in May, which claimed to put to rest all the conspiracy theories of the past 44 years.
The Italian findings will be hotly contested by those who believe that Oswald was a lone gunman - not least because they contradict firing tests previously conducted, using Oswald's actual rifle, by the FBI and the US Marines, and another study by Washington police marksmen using an identical gun.
Oswald would only have needed to reload the weapon twice in the eight seconds to get off all three shots, since the time was measured only from the moment he fired the first shot. The FBI concluded that a marksman could have fired a shot at least every 2.3 seconds.
In his book, Mr Bugliosi details how after just two or three minutes' practice with the gun in 1979, three police marksmen aiming at three targets representing Kennedy at the same distance from Oswald, got away three shots in less than eight seconds.
One marksman hit the targets twice and missed the third shot by an inch. A second shooter scored a "kill" with his second shot.
Mr Bugliosi recounts three separate ballistics tests that found that the magic bullet could have wounded Kennedy and Connally and emerged in similar condition to the real bullet. But that is unlikely to stop the Italian research fuelling another generation of conspiracy writers.
There is a constant flow of articles, and new findings that are being discovered on JFK, they just aren’t being picked up by the mainstream media.
One thing I was thinking when the Senate & the President explained the logic of why they wanted the ‘Amnesty Bill’ passed.
Many of us kept thinking to ourselves, that doesn’t sound right. Their logic seems to be ‘double talk’. The Bill just doesn’t seem right.
Thats how I react to the govt’s explanation of the JFK assassination. It doesn’t seem right.
“Not to contradict myself, per se, but I don’t think we will ever really know what happened with JFK.”
Me, too. I just wanted to hear him say it.
I just watched Penn & Teller’s Bullshit and Penn was able to fire the same gun 3 times in about 4 seconds. And Penn isn’t even a trained marine.
Still won’t convince the conspiracy theorists.
OTOH, Did Teller try to catch the bullet with his teeth?
A couple of observations: 1) Maybe, just maybe Oswald practiced just a bit after he got out of the Marines. People act like he was this crappy shot and never picked up a rifle again until the day of the assassination 2)Connally was sitting much closer to the center of the front seat which makes the magic bullet theory less plausible. The shot makes almost a straight line through Kennedy into Connally when this is taken into account. 3) Kennedy's head moves backwards, but even if the "frontal shot" didn't happen, the acceleration of the car would have made him slump back anyway. 4) They have done studies that the head WOULD have moved backwards from a rear shot because of the momentum of the brain material being blasted forward 5) I've been to the grassy knoll and even though it was a train yard in 1963, the shooter would have been a sitting duck, completely exposed and very easily caught when he tried to make a getaway. 6) Dealy Plaza is a very cavernous space, surrounded by buildings. There would have been so many echoes that it would seem as if shots were coming from every which way. 7) Oswald had a motive. He was known as a Communist and JFK was very anti-communist (I know, imagine a pro-American democrat). What a grand way to strike a blow for his comrades. I used to believe in this conspiracy nonsense, but it's just an exercise in mental masturbation.
Several pix are shown with this article:
“...the night before the Kennedy assassination, Lyndon Baines Johnson met with Dallas tycoons, FBI moguls and organized crime kingpins - emerging from the conference to tell his mistress Madeleine Duncan Brown that “those SOB’s” would never embarrass him again.
“Though Brown first went public on her 21-year relationship with Johnson in the early 80’s, to this day her shocking revelations about how he had told her the Kennedy’s “would never embarrass me again” the night before the assassination are often ignored by the media who prefer to keep the debate focused on issues which can’t definitively be proven either way (or at least can be spun and whitewashed).
“George Herbert Walker Bush was also pictured at the scene of the crime in Dealy Plaza.
“In addition, Barr McClellan, father of former White House press secretary Scott McClellan and a partner in the Austin law firm that represented Johnson, wrote in his 2003 book that LBJ was a key player in the organization of the assassination and its cover-up.”
Photographs, and more, here; not that it resolves anything:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/april2007/300407deathbedconfession.htm
Very interesting, although I don’t think that fellow on the steps of the TSBD really looks like GHWB. I could be wrong. Thanks.
“You have not a single fact for your childish accusation. LBJ was riding in the motorcade. I don’t think his arms were long enough to reach up to the sixth floor.”
Right. Like he was an active participant.
I don’t have to prove what I believe. I believe LBJ had the motive, the means and guts to make it happen. You can’t prove he didn’t.
This was demonstrated in the 1970's. There is no way an expert using the gun Oswald did could get that many shot off and accurately.
But who ever believed the nonsense story anyhow.
Oswald was a consistant shooter.
From 200 yards he scored 48 for 50 and was scored as a sharp shooter and among the top of his class.
Kennedy’s car was 275 away (90 yards) which should have been an easy mark for him.
Also everyone makes a big deal about missing with the first shot which is bull. Whenever I go to the range to shoot, many times my first shot does not hit where I aimed and then I compensate the drift or rise with my next shot.
No, it will never go away. Not as long as the books get bought, tickets are purchased for the movies, advertisers buy commercial time for the documentaries, and magazines are snapped up once they hit the shelves.
It's a multi-million dollar business... and someone is laughing all the way to the bank.
Italian testers. It also speaks to 20th Century Italian military success, or lack thereof. They’re really good at pulling wine corks, though.
Short answer - BS!
Longer answer - It’s bolt action rifle and unless it has three extra steps and it doesn’t as it’s built on the Mauser design, getting three aimed shots off in 8 seconds is EASY!
I have a Savage 111F in 30-06 (7.62 x 63) which kicks a heck of a lot more than a 6.5 x 51 (Carcano Round) and I can do and have done it with no problem.
Yes. They were Italian. I think Churchill had some observations about their fighting men...
Yes, that’s what my little warbaby is. And it looks exactly like the advertisement pictures. The wood is birch without any cartouches except for the number 2 stamped into the bottom of the pistol grip. A friend had to soak the Cosmoline out on his but mine was dry. I sprayed some oil on it last night.
It’s an Inland Div. and the Underwoods will be next. I’m waiting for the IBM’s and maybe a Winchester.
That’s because they mught have been rifleman but they didn’t know a thing about history. They thought they had to shoot all three shots in 4 seconds.
Alvin York was not.
The three tramps were three tramps. That’s been reported over and over. The arrest records have been released and the relatives of the three tramps agree. The interview with one of the three tramps confirms it.
Your tinfoil hat is cutting off the circulation to your brain.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.