Read it. Learn it. Live it.
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.
With Oswald dead, not much we will find out from him. But it seems like Oswald was just a crazy guy. He seemed to be a real loner, which would make me think it was just him and him alone.
Testimony of Howard Brennan:
Mr. BELIN. Now, you say the window on the sixth floor. What building are you referring to there?
Mr. BRENNAN. That is the Texas Book Store.
Mr. BELIN. I am going to ask you to circle on Exhibit 477 the particular window that you said you saw a man leave and come back a couple of times.
Mr. BRENNAN. Well, I am confused here, the way this shows. But I believe this is the sixth floor, the way those windows are built there right at the present. I am confused whether this is the same window.
Mr. BELIN. You mean because some windows are open below it?
Mr. BRENNAN. No. The way the building is built, it seems like this is more or less a long window with a divider in the middle.
Mr. BELIN. Here is a marking pencil. Will you just mark the window that you believe you saw the man.
All right.
And do you want to put a letter “A”, if you would, by that.
All right, now you have marked on Commission Exhibit 477 a circle with the letter “A” to show the window that you saw a man in, I believe you said, at least two times come back and forth.
Mr. BRENNAN. Yes
Mr. BELIN. Did you see any other people in any other windows that you can recollect?
Mr. BRENNAN. Not on that floor.
There was no other person on that floor that ever came to the window that I noticed.
There were people on the next floor down, which is the fifth floor, colored guys. In particular, I only remember two that I identified.
Mr. BELIN. Do you want to mark the window with the circle that you believe you saw some Negro people on the fifth floor. Could you do that with this marking pencil on Exhibit 477, please?
Mr. BRENNAN. The two that I identified, I believe, was in this window.
Mr. BELIN. You want to put a “B” on that one?
Now, after you saw the man—well, just tell what else you saw during that afternoon.
Mr. BRENNAN. Well, as the parade came by, I watched it from a distance of Elm and Main Street, as it came on to Houston and turned the corner at Houston and Elm, going down the incline towards the railroad underpass. And after the President had passed my position, I really couldn’t say how many feet or how far, a short distance I would say, I heard this crack that I positively thought was a backfire.
Mr. BELIN. You thought it was backfire?
Mr. BRENNAN. Of a motorcycle.
Mr. BELIN. Then what did you observe or hear?
Mr. BRENNAN. Well, then something, just right after this explosion, made me think that it was a firecracker being thrown from the Texas Book Store. And
143
I glanced up. And this man that I saw previous was aiming for his last shot.
Mr. BELIN. This man you saw previous? Which man are you talking about now?
Mr. BRENNAN. The man in the sixth story window.
Mr. BELIN. Would you describe just exactly what you saw when you saw him this last time?
Mr. BRENNAN. Well, as it appeared to me he was standing up and resting against the left window sill, with gun shouldered to his right shoulder, holding the gun with his left hand and taking positive aim and fired his last shot. As I calculate a couple of seconds. He drew the gun back from the window as though he was drawing it back to his side and maybe paused for another second as though to assure hisself that he hit his mark, and then he disappeared.
And, at the same moment, I was diving off of that firewall and to the right for bullet protection of this stone wall that is a little higher on the Houston side.
Mr. BELIN. Well, let me ask you. What kind of a gun did you see in that window?
Mr. BRENNAN. I am not an expert on guns. It was, as I could observe, some type of a high-powered rifle.
The thing that always impressed me was the statements of the railroad workers on the overpass who went down behind the grassy knoll because they saw or heard a shot come from there. I have seen their statements on You Tube. Other people thought the same thing. Was it an echo or mass hysteria that so many people looked or went to that area.
No matter what we believe today or tomorrow, there has been so much conspiracy theory, many would not believe a story now if the participants went on national TV and gave a blow by blow description. It's easier for our sanity to believe that one guy did this. But it was very difficult to believe the Warren Report, especially because it requires trusting LBJ, Hoover, and Spectre. Now that's a case that's hard to close.
As far as the timing of the shots, I say it took 52 seconds to load and take three shots. The first loading and shot took 43 seconds because there was no hurry. Then the rest took 8.3. I agree with those who point out the first load is not part of the time frame. The info on the Italian test doesn't address the first load issue.
Lastly, there was show on Discovery or History which traced Oswalds steps from the building to the theatre. Many have said he couldn't have made it. But the demonstrations proved that he could have. Whether or not he killed the cop, he could have travelled the route. So it looks like no car or pick up by another person.
Read it. Learn it. Live it.
We know that Oswald was present in the Book Depository, that he owned the rifle that killed the president, and that he killed a cop in making his getaway. There's not a lot of heavy lifting there. The folks arguing for Oswald's innocence -- or for a wider conspiracy -- must prove that he could not have done it, and this they have failed to do.
True.
Woody Harrelson's father was a professional Mob hit man who died in prison. His involvement in the Kennedy assassination is much-debated. My personal theory is that he was pulling the interviewer's leg; when you're serving life and don't get many visitors, you have to make your own entertainment.
Jimmy James did killed Kennedy. I thought everybody knew that... best kept secret in New York radio.
>>Some bolt actions are very fast indeed, I don’t know about this one.<<
We got curious so I just timed my husband (Marine expert rifleman) doing the same stunt with our Enfield Ishapore 2A1, which has a similar action, and is not incredibly smooth, having not been kept up to the fullest extent before he bought it.
We’d like to have tried it on a Carcano, but that would involve a lot of money we’d rather spend on handguns, ammo, and rent.
He got off the three shots in just under 3.5 seconds. Plenty of time.
I agree with Mrs. Kennedy, Oswald was a cruddy little commie loser who got a lucky shot.
You are correct; it is NOT GHWB in the photograph.
A couple of weeks ago, while trying to understand the mind of the current President, I found a four dollar book on a sale table about the Bush family by Kitty Kelly - (yeah, I know, but she never has lost a lawsuit brought against her.)
Page 212 of “The Family” states GHWB was scheduled to give a luncheon speech to the one hundred members Kiwanis Club in Tyler, Texas on November, 22, 1963.
He had just begun his speech when he was interrupted with the news of JFK’s assassination. GHWB stopped his speech, told the audience what had happened, and then he sat down without completing the speech.
Walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time.
LOL!!
“I don’t think you’ve read the posts of the gun experts”
As in Expert Marksman?
I am one and I do my own gunsmithing.
I have a Springfield 1903-A03 and its action and trigger are far better than the carbine that Oswald used. It takes me 5-6 seconds to get past the creep to squeeze off one accurate shot - meaning 5-6 minute accuracy which is about what Kennedy was hit with.
PS - and I do know what Im talking about - I do half minute with iron sites, small bore at 100yds prone.
Yes, I’ve seen that and it does not convince me. If the animation agreed with what I see in the Zapruder film then I probably would be convinced.
The problem is that the animation clearly does NOT agree with what one sees in the Zapruder film. Most notably that the animation puts Kennedy higher than Connelly than he actually is and it also puts Kennedy in a strange “hunched forward” position. It looks like the bodies (in the animation) are positioned to match the trajectory and not to match Zapruder.
jw
“The third set of tests consisted of four targets situated at 300 feet in the outdoor range in daylight.”
How can you possibley compare stationary targets with a moving one - bouncing up and down several inches and probably laterally several inches.
Au contrare, your “proof” testifies to just the opposite - that it was impossible for Oswald to do what was done.
ALL of the re-creations of the event have been flawed in crucial details.
- Garbage 're-creation' in, garbage info out.
BTW - you’ve got some excellent articles on your bio page.
You can lay the animation on top of the Zapruder film and it’s an exact match. Try it and you’ll see.
What the animation doesn’t show is any of the hits below the line of sight which the Zapruder film couldn’t show.
Your theory is a 161 grain bullet traveling 2000 feet a second hitting five inches of flesh and disapearing. That’s a magic bullet.
Especially since with the JFK assassination, it’s not a lone nut theory, but a 2 lone nuts theory; can’t argue with that!
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.