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.
I’m a reasonable person. From the Zapruder film shows them getting hit at nearly the same time (since they are emerging from behind the road sign, exact point of impact isn’t possible to determine) by the same bullet.
Therefore your hypothesis holds no water.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACT0aKWEAow
FACT: It’s easy and can be done with almost no prior experience.
FACT: Oswald qualified as a sharpshooter in the Marines.
My opinion: A Boy Scout can fire that many shots in that amount of time with the same size target and range. Only the Boy Scout wouldn’t miss on the first shot. Where the issue starts is it’s impossible to recreate an exact shot and have a bullet richochet or break apart EXACTLY like another bullet.
I think the argument is the time and accuracy. Oswald was not a “crack shot” sniper. The first shot misses, the second two hit their mark, farther down range and with better accuracy? This, I believe is where the line of questions should go. IMO of course.
Yeah, plus Jackie scrambling out on the trunk to grab his skull? On every forensic show I have seen the bullet makes a smaller entry wound and then blows out the other side. Conolly should have had skull on him not the trunk?
There they go again! Leaving out Ron Paul!
:o)
Oswald had the same training that I have had.
I suspect that most folks who are into this conspiracy stuff just don't want to admit that their demi-god Kennedy was killed by a loser with a cheap rifle.
Staggering, but true. A loser with a cheap rifle changed history.
Oswald’s Rifle:
6.5 x 52 mm Italian Mannlicher-Carcano M91/38 bolt-action rifle with a six-round magazine
Serial number C2766
Western Cartridge Co. ammunition with a 160 grain (10.37 g) round nose bullet
Side-mounted Ordnance Optics 4 x 18 telescopic sight
That particular rifle - the 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano - has a fairly stiff bolt and a badly placed bolt handle which limits its ability to be used in rapid fire
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.
Now if you’re even remotely serious, explain just how the assassination happened. Where were the shooters, how many shots, what were the trajectories and which wounds were caused by which bullet.
FACT: You can’t do it. All you have is worthless accusations.
Italians take four hour lunches. Is anyone suprised they can’t do anything fast?
Yeah, so Government workers are less efficient, and Union workers are even more than less efficient.
Why don't we let you prove that the Warren Commission was right about Oswald's capacity to fire three shots in 19 seconds.
Then we'll all know the truth.
I don’t think there was a shooter #2 or a shooter #3.
But a shooter 2.5? Hmm, interesting....
Reminds me of the old joke:
Q. Who put the 3 bullets in Mussolini?
A. 15 Italian marksmen.
It is difficult to fire a rifle three times when you are trained to put up both hands after the first shot.
“I saw a 70 year old man fire the same number of shots in that timeframe using the same rifle”.
I don’t think so (not that you’re reasonable—that I don’t know). But as they emerge from the sign Connally is still holding his hat, turning to look at JFK, who has clearly been hit. Connally partially turns one way, then the other, before he reacts to the impact of the bullet. Not a simultaneous or near-simultaneous hit, as would be the case with a bullet moving at several hundred feet per second.
As far as I am concerned, anyone who is willing to buy that garbage, is seriously suspect when it comes to free thinking.
If Oswald even had a real part in the slaying at all, he certainly did not act alone. I believe that he was indeed a “Patsy.”
Do you prefer Gore or Hillary in 2008?
Get you a high powered rifle and shoot a watermellon, it goes in every direction.
He said that the car was going down hill at that stretch, so, Oswald just had to chamber rounds and make very minor elevation adjustments.
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