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.
Perhaps if they let the gun load from the magazine instead of inserting each round into the chamber by hand they might get that time down a bit.
I hate when I gotta splain ‘em.
LOL!!!
On his first attempt, Oswald barely qualified for “sharpshooter” — the second of three levels (below it is marksman, above it is expert). The qualifying score was 210, and he shot a 212. The second time, he just missed, and qualified at the top end of the marksman class (195).
He was below average for a Marine. Thats still well beyond the average civilian.
I can’t swallow it either. I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I don’t know what happened... the problem for me has always been the entry and exit wounds of the neck shot... based on the Zapruder film and the photos of the body there is no way to line that shot up. All the recreations end up “twisting” or “leaning” his body to line it up, but that doesn’t square with Zapruder.
jw
And too think Italy got their butts handed to them in WWII, how can this be! S/
Here’s what really happened based on the evidence and not an Oliver Stone movie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r51wZTaJ3AU&mode=related&search=
Frame 133 - Presidant’s car is clearly visible.
Frame 160 - First shot (missed). Connally looking left,
hears shot, turns right.
Frame 222 - Connally emerges from behind sign.
Frame 223 - 224 - Connally’s jacket changes as bullet strikes him.
Frame 225 - Kennedy emerges from behind sign, hands moving to throat, already hit.
The bullet was moving considerably faster than “several hundred feet per second.” It was, in fact, fired from a gun with a muzzle velocity of over 2000 ft/sec. That bullet could easily have pierced both bodies within a fraction of a second.
Your use of the “Any reasonable person...” scenario is not valid. I am now questioning your conclusion that a conspiracy was obvious.
Well you're both right. The error at 80 yards was about 2", up and to the right (good enough for the job)
The only question was did Oswald know about the error.
1. He did and tried to compensate - which for the shot taken would actaully mean no effort to compensate at all - LHO just aims where he wants the bullet to hit and allows the movement of the limo "forward and to the right" (Sorry Kevin Costner momemt) to carry the aim point to the bullet impact.
2. He did not know and tried to compensate. If he aimed at the base of the skull, compensated perfectly and made the best shot of his life, then bullet three would have hit Kennedy in the exact point of the actual final shot.
Either way it's a non-issue
(Remember, you're the one saying it, not me).
3. The sheetmetal scope mount was bent when Oswald threw it between the boxes on his way to the stairwell.
Look at the photo showing the officers pointing toward the rifle as it lays between the boxes. They had to climb over some of the boxes to point out where the rifle was. I don’t believe Oswald took the time to carefully hide the rifle there. I believe he threw it there. After all, he wasn’t coming back for it.
Either way you are correct. It’s a non-issue.
Some of the posters here have the exact character traits as the DU posters.
Bush’s fault becomes hillary’s fault or further back, LBJ.
AWESOME!!! Thanks for the link!
I've got a bolt action 20 gauge shotgun that's faster than that.
If he was by himself, why wouldn’t he have taken the shot as JFK was coming up the street AT him; its a far easier and logical course of action to ensure succuss for a single assailant.
It may have been. I think it has been proven doable several different ways from Sunday now.
Even the way the bullets behaved with ballistics gel bodies.
People just cant give up a good conspiricy, when they so much want to believe in it.
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