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 started checking this out when I was a kid. I WANTED to find a conspiracy. I couldn’t.
Excerpt from the book Regicide, and something to at least take a look at:
“”OPERATION ZIPPER” was the code name of the assassination plot of John F. Kennedy, President of the United States of America.
The 98 pages long paper entitled “OPERATION ZIPPER Conference Record” is a long list of decisions and activities of various U.S. authorities in a CIA-conducted project.
All major facts behind the Kennedy assassination are found in the “Zipper” Document. For the first time, the motives of those who organized and instigated the act are clearly and decisively exposed, as are the names and official positions of those who directed the killers.
This document was probably produced by the five CIA top officials mentioned in the distribution list (McCone, Angleton, Carter, Crowley, Harvey) in order to cover themselves, since this document clearly proves that the assassination of J. F. Kennedy was anything else but a private plot by a few CIA senior officers going rampant.”
You forgot the final step ... surrender
I may be wrong about this; but
The only thing the testing has going for it; is it seems some of the testing was performed at the very factory it was made at; Carcano.
Paging Cyril Wecht...Dr. Wecht, please pick up the white courtesy phone...
“Hardly the same as acurately hitting a moving target with every shot with one of the worst rifles ever made.”
I “hardly” know where to start with the tripe of this statement.
The Mannlicher-Carcano was not one of the “worst rifles ever made”!
Only 2 of the 3 shots hit.
Please back up your statement with SOME evidence.
Not so fast.
I always love the part in "Full Metal Jacket" where R. Lee Ermey is bragging that Lee Harvey Oswald and Charles Whitman were Marines!
There was a “video game” that recreated the assassination from Oswald’s view. It was supposed to be a very accurate representation, ballistics wise, etc. They had a contest and gave a prize for the person coming closest to the timing and wounds of the event. Having some experience with rifles it was pretty apparant that the shots wouldn’t have been as hard as one might think. What I wondered was why he didn’t take out the driver as the car came toward him and then pick off everyone else in the car. I did that scenario and it worked out really well.
According to my friend, Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock, the former senior instructor for the U.S. Marine Corps Sniper Instructor School at Quantico, Virginia, it could not be done as described by the FBI investigators. Gunny Hathcock, now retired, [since died] is the most famous American military sniper in history. In Vietnam he was credited with 93 confirmed kills—and a total of over 300 actual kills counting those unconfirmed. He now conducts police SWAT team sniper schools across the country. When I called him to ask if he had seen the Zapruder film, he chuckled and cut me off. “Let me tell you what we did at Quantico,” he began. “We reconstructed the whole thing: the angle, the range, the moving target, the time limit, the obstacles, everything. I don’t know how many times we tried it, but we couldn’t duplicate what the Warren Commission said Oswald did. Now if I can’t do it, how in the world could a guy who was a non-qual on the rifle range and later only qualified ‘marksman’ do it?”
The first test performed was performed primarily, primarily for accuracy but also for maintaining a rapid rate of fire. These tests were performed at 45 feet in the indoor range with artificial light firing at a target with the rifle and with the four-power telescopic sight mounted on it. The tests which I fired at that 45-foot distance consisted of three shots fired in a span of 5.9 seconds, that is from the time the first shot was fired until the third shot was fired. The tests consisted of firing, reloading and firing, reloading and firing the third time so that a total of three shots were fired. The tests conducted at the 75-foot distance consisted of two three-shot groups also fired for accuracy and speed. These consisted of a group fired in approximately a 2 inch circle at 75 feet in a period of 4.8 seconds, and a series of shots fired in a group which would be all-encompassed in a 5 inch circle which was fired in a time of 4.6 seconds.
I believe I left out the accuracy measurement for the first 45 foot target. In that target the three shots fired could be covered by a quarter. The third set of tests consisted of four targets situated at 300 feet in the outdoor range in daylight. In those four targets, first I’ll give you the time interval and then the size of the pattern formed by the three shots that were fired in each of those tests. These three shots in the first test were fired in 5.9 seconds and they landed in a 3 ½ inch circle; the second test was fired in 6.2 seconds, the three shots landed in a 4 inch circle and — I should say 4 ½ to 5 inch circle. The third test was fired in 5.6 seconds, the three shots landed in a 3 inch circle and these shots landed in a 3 ½ inch circle. This test also was conducted both for accuracy and for speed.
Oswald was obviously the lone gunman. But it has always seemed to me that he had a rather easy time of it as normal modes of defensive and protective conduct were notably absent.
Right, and Jack Ruby was simply an anomaly.
Please, go insult intelligence on a Democrat Site.
Q: Now, Mr. Frazier, what was the purpose of this examination and reenactment, what were you seeking to learn from it?
A: I was involved in this reenactment as an adviser or consultant to the Warren Commission in an effort to reconstruct the testimony of various witnesses according to the Commission’s records, to determine whether or not this testimony was feasible and possible and to determine whether it could have, that is the assassination could have occurred as these witnesses have advised.
Q: Could you tell us the mechanics of the reenactment that was conducted by you and Mr. Shaneyfelt and others?
A: In the first place the presidential limousine in which the President was shot was not available so therefore a Cadillac limousine was substituted and individuals were placed in this car as stand-ins for the President and Governor John Connally. The position of the people in the car were adjusted by the Commission according to information that developed from studying various movie films and still films, particularly one taken by Abraham Zapruder. The relative elevation of the President was adjusted by having him sit on blankets so that his position with reference to Governor Connally at the time of the assassination would be duplicated in the stand-ins. The position left and right, that is from side to side, was also positioned as nearly as possible as could be duplicated. The automobile itself was placed on the street as nearly as possible as could be duplicated from studying various films and also driven down this street as movies were taken. Then it was driven down the street and stopped at various places so additional photographs could be taken and certain measurements made and then finally a photograph was made of the entire process with the, with a movie camera attached to a rifle on which a telescopic sight was fixed, that is a movie was taken through a telescopic sight.
Q: What was your particular function in this reenactment, Mr. Frazier?
A: I was stationed in the southeast corner of the Texas School Book Depository Building on the sixth floor in a partially, at a partially open window and directed the position of the car with reference to a large tree which exists in front of this building, advising the men on the street when they should stop the car, at what time the President’s stand-in was visible through the foliage and had cleared the foliage and so forth.
Q: And you say you were in the window of the Book Depository?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: On the sixth floor?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: Now in connection with this reenactment, Mr. Frazier, did you use the Zapruder films?
A: Yes, sir, we did.
Q: Now with respect to frame 313 of the Zapruder film, which is the frame in which it is obvious from the film that the President was shot in the head, at the time when the reenactment vehicle was in the same spot as was the presidential vehicle according to the Zapruder film, at the time of frame 313, was there a clear shot from the sixth-floor depository window to the head of the stand-in for the president?
A: Yes, there was.
Q: Now by studying the Zapruder film are you able to tell with any certainty in what frame the President had been hit for the first time?
A: That could not be definitely established in my opinion for two reasons: One, it is not known what the reaction time of the President was after he was shot and it is not clear in the picture as to which frame he begins to show reaction and therefore you cannot determine exactly, you may be able to approximate the frame number.
Q: Let me ask you if prior to frame 313, that is the position the vehicle was in at that time, had there been any other clear shots established at the presidential stand-in?
A: From the sixth floor depository window, yes, sir, I would say that from frame 207 on the car had cleared the tree.
http://www.jfk-online.com/rfraziershaw.html
"I'm a patsy !"
Right now on “The History Channel” they are running “The Kennedy Assassination:Beyond Conspiracy” that includes computer recreations. Unfortunately, it will not air again in the next two weeks (the limit of my TiVO listings)
“Oswald was obviously the lone gunman. But it has always seemed to me that he had a rather easy time of it as normal modes of defensive and protective conduct were notably absent.”
Can you elaborate?
“Right, and Jack Ruby was simply an anomaly.”
Ruby was in the right place at the right time and had no intention of killing Oswald prior to actually doing it. Please remember that the CONSPIRACY THEORISTS populate the DU-clone websites. Logic reigns here. YOU are on the wrong site!
Yes to what you say. But those that believe there were more gunman there believe the evidence shows it. The others don’t want too believe it. What about the guy with the umbrella opening it as a marker to start shooting. So many things didn’t add up that day. How about Johnson’s executive order to push more troops to Viet Nam. Arlen Spector was the lawyer for the Warren Commission. Gerald Ford handled the FBI and all these guys got paid back in spades. Coincidences? No.
“Coincidences? No.”
Prove it!
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