Oswald 'had no time to fire all Kennedy bullets'

The Sunday Telegraph (UK) ^ | 6/30/2007 | Tim Shipman

[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.

[ReignOfError]

The Warren Commission Report on the assassination of JFK was an abomination.

As far as I am concerned, anyone who is willing to buy that garbage, is seriously suspect when it comes to free thinking.

Okay, free thinker, who killed Kennedy? Provide evidence.

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.”

I have no control over what you believe, and no way to align it with facts. Not my problem.

[PAR35]

Where did they find the limo in a parade to do it?

My recollection is that they used the vintage limo from a JFK tour outfit in Dallas. I don't know if they still operate the tour.

[SampleMan]

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”

That is crap. There isn't a bolt action made, including single shots, that I can't fire three rounds accruately from in 9 seconds.

I once shot a large buck in a trot, he jumped in the air, and I shot him again as he was coming down with a Remington 700. Both shots hit within 1/2 inch of each other.

[Shooter 2.5]

Before anyone starts that grassy knoll crap. Here is Lee Bowers sworn testimony based on the actual photographs:

When asked by the Warren Commission, "Now, were there any people standing on the high side — high ground between your tower and where Elm Street goes down under the underpass toward the mouth of the underpass?" Bowers testified that at the time the motorcade went by on Elm Street, two men were in the area, standing 10 to 15 feet (3 to 5 m) apart near the Triple Underpass, and did not appear to know each other. One was "middle-aged, or slightly older, fairly heavy-set, in a white shirt, fairly dark trousers" and the other was "younger man, about midtwenties, in either a plaid shirt or plaid coat or jacket." One or both were still there when the first police officer arrived "immediately" after the shooting. Many assumed that Bowers meant that these men were standing behind the stockade fence at the top of the grassy knoll.

However, two years later when Bowers was interviewed by assassination researchers Mark Lane and Emile de Antonio for their documentary film Rush to Judgment, he clarified that these two men were on the opposite side of the fence, and that no one was behind the fence when the shots were fired.[1] Photographs of the grassy knoll during the assassination show heavy-set, middle-aged Dealey Plaza groundskeeper Emmett Hudson and a younger man, whom Hudson estimated was in his late twenties,[2] standing on the stairway leading from Elm Street up to the stockade fence (a third man stands a few steps below them).[3] Bowers was not sure if he could see the older man after the shootings, and a photograph show Hudson sitting down on the steps at that time.[4]

The switching tower as of last month looking from the corner of the picket fence.

[REDWOOD99]

Is that you Wild Bill Hickok?

[SampleMan]

Is that you Wild Bill Hickok?

I grew up shooting and learned to reload a bolt action without ever losing my sight picture. Most people dismount the weapon.

The first time I shot skeet with a pump shotgun I got a lot of stares too.

Truly, anyone that can't place a well aimed shot every two seconds with a bolt-action rifle isn't worth their salt.

The British Army's standard for the Enfield was an average of 10 aimed rounds per minute, and that's taking into account reloading.

[REDWOOD99]

Oswald’s range scores were 48/50 and 49/50 in rapid fire drills as a Marine. He obviously could have accomplished the deed.

Your feats are downright spooky! Count me as a friend.

[SampleMan]

By the way. I got to walk the sight in Dallas when I was 16. I remember thinking that the shooting involved was fairly simplistic stuff.

[REDWOOD99]

Above and behind w/ a target moving in a straight line slowly away from you. As a shooter, is there an easier shot?

[spanalot]

“It’s the returning to aimpoint 3 times and hitting a moving target that would be the challenge.”

Yea - all these gun experts here have no experience with cheap vintage bolt actions that had incredible creep and pull in their triggers.

A marksman trained to squeeze these triggers for 4 or 5 minutes of accuracy would take 10 to 15 seconds for one shot.

[Ciexyz]

Most interesting.

[SampleMan]

Above and behind w/ a target moving in a straight line slowly away from you. As a shooter, is there an easier shot?

Not really. People want it to be impossible, but it was really simplistic shooting.

[REDWOOD99]

I don’t think you’ve read the posts of the gun experts on this thread. Do you need the post #’s?

[Freedom4US]

Well I think the equivalent today might be $150 or something. Not a top-shelf item, but entirely capable of what it is designed to do. NOw I don’t want to be misunderstood in that I don’t necessarily think there was any kind of organized thing with this Oswald guy, but the appearance of same could have led to all sorts of repurcussions. The effect could have been the same. On the other hand it’s not productive to blame everyone else on the planet either.

[investigateworld]

The Mannlicher-Caranco Model 91/38 doesn't have a 'clip' per se. It has an internal magazine that is feed through the top when the bolt is pulled back. They are not bad little shooters, and considering many were never fired and only dropped once, they are a bargain at $39.00. Sometimes you will see them in the Shotgun News for just $59.99 for three.

Their contemporaries, Brit, Nip, German and Russian from that era run between $85 to $199 or so. Of course if you can find a Garand (US M-1) for less than $600 grab it quick.

[Shooter 2.5]

The NRA HighPower Matches are like that. 10 rounds at 200 yards from the sitting or kneeling position in one minute. 10 rounds at 300 yards from the prone with 70 seconds. During the 1960’s, the only gun worth using was an accurized 03A3 bolt action Springfield. Too many people today forget we didn’t start with semi-autmatics.

Some people still use bolt guns because of the accuracy.

[editor-surveyor]

"My recollection is that they used the vintage limo from a JFK tour outfit in Dallas."

Wow! exciting, I hope that they didn't use live ammo ;o)

[TN4Liberty]

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.

This doesn't make sense to me. A closer shot would have a higher velocity (more energy), hence more likely to be damaged when it stuck tissue. Am I mission something?

[msnpatriot]

Because I am so unimpressed by the Warren Commission investigation, and sloppy coverup...That Simple...

The worse evidence of what happened in Dealy Plaza is the govt’s. There’s NO Chain of evidence, or logical explanation they provide.

You have to have ‘blind faith’ in the govt’s evidence to accept it.....

“Why are some people so easily impressed by arguments, and even evidence, that something “could not have happened”?”

[REDWOOD99]

Thanks for the clarification. BTW, “Only dropped once,” LOL!!!