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.
“2) Carrying a scope that was mounted for a left-handed person (Oswald was right-handed).[11] “ - post540
Someone said LHO was a Southpaw; I have no idea of this.
KG9 Kid:
Yep. Busts your theory tpaine. Thanks for bringing that non-issue up, however.
Dream on that any theory of mine is 'busted' fellas. - Read the cited article above on how clips affected feed reliability.
Also, there is no such thing as a 'left-handed scope', even though the FBI indeed makes mention of it in the WC report. The Carcano's design forced a atypical side mount system to allow the clip to be charged into the magazine, which was a European concept that they were evidently unfamiliar with even though a similar method was used on the M1-D and M14 rifle for the same reason the Carcano needed it.
The FBI just didn't know what the hell they were talking about in some parts of their testimony, which is the part of the Warren Report that even I disagree with. Sure, like the FBI hasn't ever said stupid shit before in an investigation. Believe it or not, even today they're not very philosophical about firearms. Back then they were just atrocious.
At the time of the Kennedy assassination, the FBI had for decades been training their agents to enter a gunfight with their issued revolvers held in their right hand (even if the agent was left-handed) at waist level with their left arm crossing their chest as if they were reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in a mirror image. They taught this awful 'instinct point shooting' method that got several agents killed and falsely led the rest to believe that an arm covering their center mass area might help keep a criminal's bullet from piercing their heart. It was the work of civilian instructors and shooters in about 1970 who changed all of that wrong headed thinking.
So easy anyone with a camcorder and YouTube seem to be making those shots. Don’t forget the two coworkers on the fifth floor even heard the three empty cartridges hitting the floor. Howard Brennon saw Oswald firing from the window plus Oswald’s fingerprints on everything, palm print on the underside of the barrel since the wood was too rough for prints. Thread from his shirt was found stuck to the buttplate. Plus the little girl on camera stopping and watching Oswald in the window. Even the guy who took the picture of Ruby killing Oswald watched Oswald in the window.
One Dallas cop said they executed killers with a lot less evidence than they had against Oswald.
Makes you wonder why so called conservatives defend the little Marxist.
How about in the vicinity of the grassy knoll?
Which ones. If there are lies, let me know, because I’m happy for the education. I’ve researched this for years, and value the truth. Enlighten me, please.
Oswald was a shooter or at least an accomplice on the sixth floor and what I consider to be hard photographic evidence of him at the window proves it imo. But I agree with you about a possible second gunman and it’s mainly because of not only the Zapruder film but the eyewitness account of Ed Hoffman, whom I consider to be a credible witness. Long before the Moorman photo was blown up to reveal badgeman he claimed to have seen someone dressed in a police uniform fire a gun behind the fence along with a railroad man who assisted him and who’s also seen in the picture. It gave credibility to his story.
I dont’ care to stir up the debate again; this is a story though that might be significant that I did not readily find on FR.
I think, the fact that this was probably posted over a long Independence Day weekend and that the discussion concerned a National historical issue added on to the conversation.
You’re probably right. But you’d think that after forty four years we’d have run out of things to debate.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/january2007/150107ciaman.htm
E Howard Hunt felt Johnson was behind it. See the link to his book before he died.
Thank you. Cannot believe it took 12 posts to show up.
This will never end. Anyone with an agenda can bring up things that can’t be proved or disproved. It sells books.
Now that Lady Bird has passed, truths will start to be revealed. There are many who have written that she was being protected because she was the last of the living.
Also, these "tests" start by setting "time zero" with an independent event (i.e. "start... NOW!"). Oswald's elapsed time started at the moment he fired his first shot -- he could have taken as long as he liked before then.
Thus, the "tests" compare how long it takes someone else to load and fire three bullets with how long it took Oswald to load and fire two bullets -- Oswald got the first shot free because the clock didn't start running for him until he fired it.
Yep. It's just like the 9/11 conspiracy idiots who think "Occam's Razor" is the brand name of box cutter used by the hijackers.
the definitive study of what happened and who participated.
I moved to Dallas in 1975 and in 1978 (I believe that was the year) the Dallas Morning News ran a story about how the Secret Service had to come to Dallas and inspect part of the curbing along the street by the "grassy knoll" because the city wanted to install a storm drain. The city got their okay and installed the new storm drain.
In less than a year, a British production company was peddling a new theory about how a gunman was hiding in the storm drain and actually fired the kill shot. Oh well, why let 15 years get in the way of your story.
Interesting idea. There was a story about Hunt in Rolling Stone Magazine (of all places). If I remember it right, I think he confirmed that he is one of the three tramps in the infamous photo. He says the gunman was a Corsican or Frenchman.
‘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. ‘
Which is why nobody thats looked into this takes Bugliosi seriously on this topic.
Oswald was hardly a ‘marksman’ folks. Far from it.
Then consider the odds of this type of accuracy, against this particular target.
The Warren Commission Report remains a whitewash to me. I don’t know what happened that day, nor do I know who was behind it. But I’ll never buy the ‘lone gunman’ theory.
Because the guy charged with being the ‘lone gunman’ simply didn’t have the skill set required.
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