Thanks for the info.

Thanks for that.
So, had money not been a limitation (the Carcanno was, what, sub-$20 in 1963?), Oswald (or his handlers, which is what I'm discussing elsewhere) could have got an M1. Actually, it was the M1 I was wondering about...thanks!

You answered another question I had...thanks!
I suspected it was bought by Oswald because it was cheap, and the rifle itself was pretty decent for the job he intended it for.

We'd covered the type of bullet and how it didn't tumble.
I found some data from a site covering firearms wounds that said the Carcanno required something in the region of 50cm of flesh before it would start tumbling.

This did bring up a question about the head hit, though, with someone else saying the bullet would not have caused the damage or broken up. Am I right in assuming that the skull would have been rather effective at blunting the bullet? I mean, there's a photo from the Warren Commission showing several Carcanno rounds that had been tested, with the "pristine" one by them for comparison. The one on the far right had been shot direct into a cadavers wrist and its front had clearly shattered...presumably the skull would have had an even worse effect on one?

Anyway...thanks for the info everyone!

There were several defects in the FBI investigation of the case. The shooting of the cadaver’s wrists was one of their mistakes. Their tests produced dented noses on the bullets and round holes in the wrists, because the bullets weren’t fired through anything before they hit the wrists, therefore they did not tumble before they hit the wrists. There were round holes in the cadaver’s wrists, but Connally’s wrist didn’t have a round hole in it. It had a long crack/break in it, but no round hole, and the bullet that did it didn’t have a dented nose. That’s because the bullet hit his wrist traveling sideways.

What caused that particular FBI error was J. Edgar Hoover’s desire for the FBI to issue a “Final Report” on its investigation by mid-December of 1963. This caused the FBI agents to rush several of their tests. The FBI was given only 3 weeks to completely investigate the full case and issue their Final Report, which is just not enough time.

I imagine that later many FBI guys noticed that the X-rays of the cadaver’s wrists did not match the X-rays of Connally’s wrists, and they probably realized why, but they couldn’t say anything about it to the press.

Researchers didn’t learn that the Kennedy/Connally bullet had tumbled before hitting Connally’s wrist until Dr. John Lattimer wrote a medical article about it, nearly 10 years after the assassination.

It’s an odd fact of life, but I’ve seen it in other cases too. A mistake can be made by some law enforcement agency, and that goes into the official record. The mistake might be corrected a few weeks later by the cops or the feds, but by then it’s too late to amend the official record, and the individual law enforcement guys can’t talk about it to the media because of restrictions their bosses place on them. The bosses don’t like to ever admit their department made some kind of mistake. So the errors can be reported in the media for years, until some independent researcher comes along and publishes an article that corrects the error. But in the meantime, the original error has generated a number of “conspiracy” stories that have been read by a lot of members of the general public. So a simple error in the beginning, can become part of the Great Conspiracy Myth for decades. It’s like the way some of the autopsy errors have been repeated over and over again for the past 40 years and have become part of the Great Conspiracy Myth.

The first major mistake with the autopsy was that it should have been conducted in Dallas by Dallas doctors. The body should have never been removed from Dallas until after a full professional autopsy, performed by doctors who had conducted many other gunshot-wound autopsies.

Oh right.
I didn't realise the wrist bullet was actually used as an example of what happened to Connallys wrist. I thought it was used to show that the bullet that struck his wrist had to have passed through something else in order to have caused the damage in the way it did, or to have looked as it did. That was a bit silly of them!

I only brought up that bullet because someone (elsewhere) had said that a Carcanno into the head would not have shattered, and I thought the bullet shown there seemed pretty conclusive to me that a Carcanno was not so strong after all.

I agree about the autopsy. Bloody silly decision that caused too many cracks into which daft theories can be squeezed.

I just bumped into this thread today, and while I don't have much to add, it is worth pointing out that just because most conspiracy theories we look at here are not very realistic doesn't mean that there aren't SOME conspiracies taking place. Aside from some possible price-fixing conspiracies, the JFK killing seems like the most visible unsolved one of the twentieth Century.

I'm sure it's all been covered above, but the single bullet doing all the reported damage seems pretty unlikely, and that's my first reason for having some suspicion about the Warren commission's conclusions.

No need to comment, I'm just giving my unsubstantiated opinion.

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Forming opinions as we speak

Personally, I suspect it was because he was poor, but it comes to roughly the same thing either way.

And those doubting the Single Bullet Theory would be well-served to actually look into the research done on same. I don't dispute that Oswald made one of the luckiest shots in the history of ballistics, but it was very much possible for that lone bullet to make all seven wounds.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I agree with you. And by the way, no one is going to “plant” a “fake” bullet 399 with no dent of the nose, when everyone was expecting a dent to the nose of any bullet that hit anything. At the time 399 was found on the hospital stretcher, no one knew that it had tumbled while going through Governor Connally and hit bone while going sideways and backwards. Anyone planting a fake bullet at that time (trying to tie it to Oswald’s rifle) would have planted one with a dented nose.

Sam5, I just have to commend you on that excellent observation. Give yourself a gold star.

That complements quite nicely the observation (by John McAdams, IIRC) that planting the bullet would have been a huge risk--what if all the real bullets had shown up?

[edit: another point occurs to me--what was the contingency plan in case the grassy knoll shooter missed and hit one of the other occupants of the limo, or struck the windshield? How could that possibly have been explained away?]

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--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor

Which, in fact, is currently the argument I'm having.
I can't seem to get through that planting the bullet before anyone knew what wounds Connally had suffered (which would have had to be the case) meant that in all likelihood there would be a bullet inside of Connally as well, or in the car.

In addition, presuming multiple shooters with different weapons, how on earth can you be sure to prevent any of the pieces falling into the hands of the forensics people, who would quickly identify something that was not from a Carcanno bullet?

Speaking of which, can anyone tell me what other bullet bits were found? I think there was a bit from the one that missed, and part of one in the car?

Quite. I mean how much was he on at the time?

To be honest, it wasn't all that lucky. I mean, he wasn't trying to hit Connally, and he was trying to kill Kennedy which, I'm guessing a bit here, I don't think the shot would have done.

Speaking from experience here, shots that are incredibly lucky happen a lot more often that it seems they should.

I once hit a 1 inch wide steel target at 250 yards with a .22 with pen sights. No spotting shot, just set the elevation and fired. Everyone heard the faint clang from the hit and no one could believe it. I felt really good about it for about an hour, then I tried it again. Everything was the same but I hit 15 feet low, right next to a little, flat rock. Best guess is the first shot hit that rock and bounced the bullet up into the target.

My dad once aimed at the cap a 1 gallon milk jug only to graze the side of it, unscrewing the cap.

I've also hit a pumpkin at 100 yards with a .22 derringer pistol. This is gun so small that my girlfriend can't shoot it. Her index finger (which lays down the side of the barrels while the trigger is pulled with the middle finger) is longer than the barrels. The pumpkin shot was the first try as well.

In Bowling Pin Shoots, competitions where the goal is to clear 5 bowling pins off of a sheet of plywood at 7.5 yards as fast as possible, I've seen many people get 2 pins with one shot when the bullet sticks in the side of one pin, then it flies out when after the pin rotates a bit. Yes, the bullets sometimes come back at the shooters. One guy hit himself in the forehead. It had slowed down a lot, but it still hit pretty hard.

All of this has taught me two things. It is possible for some incredibly farfetched thigs to happen, so no single example of a difficult shot should ever be taken as standard. And if such a shot ever happens, smile like you meant for it to happen, set the gun down and never, ever try it again. At least not in front of witnesses

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I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

Can you point me to the reliable branch of this research?

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Forming opinions as we speak

This is a good place to start:

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/sbt.htm

Bloody good point old boy, this of course begs the question, why was the Presidents body stolen, at gun point, from Dallas jurisdiction? like it or not, where some see a "mistake"others see something far more sinister.If only certain agents zeal for reclaiming their dead president had been replicated both on the night before, and during the assassination, these tragic events may have been prevented.FWIW.

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"Ah go on Ted they have a spider baby"

"How do you know its a baby, does it gurgle or something"

"Er no, they keep it in a pram"

And as I've mentioned (repeatedly), I actually saw the shot duplicated on the Discovery Channel. Unfortunately, I've no idea how you'd find the episode, but it was on a show called Unsolved History.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Thanks, that was good. Up till now, I'd only seen a pretty one sided look.

This page didn't say anything about the placement of the third bullet, or the umbrella man that seems to have pumped his umbrella up and down just before the shooting. Do you have some things to clear that up?

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Forming opinions as we speak

The umbrella man (sorry cant remember his name) appeared before the HSCA in the late 70,s He claimed to be taunting JFK with the umbrella representing chamberlins appeasement of Hitler, JFK's crime, in his eyes, was the abandonment of anti Castro personel at the Bay of Pigs FWIW>

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"I am Bender, please insert girder"

Does no one check out the site I linked to??

http://www.jfk-online.com/jfk100tum.html

From http://www.jfk-online.com/jfk100menu.html

As far as I can see, there is no viable reason to think there was any conspiracy at all. All the evidence I've ever seen has more pointed towards people being able to make a conspiracy theory based on ignorance more than anything else. You have to be pretty familiar with the assassination to know all the facts surrounding it; but once you know the facts, the conspiracy theory seems rather strange and ignorant.

Edit: I'll also add that I talked to an expert on firearms and ammunition, and he saw nothing wrong with the "single bullet theory". He says that, yes, bullets can do that. He's about as much an expert I'd call anyone an expert, even if he doesn't have any license that claims him as one. I'd stand by any of the statements he makes when it comes to... well, almost anything, but especially anything remotely related to firearms, whether in development or already developed.

Saying, "It's strange, thus it should make us question the scenario" is to basically say, "It's strange to me..." And if you aren't an expert on firearms, that really doesn't matter much.

__________________
There are few left who
Stare at the skies with wonder
Wishing to know more;
The clouds still drift by above
But the eyes below are blind.
--Laura Lundberg

Check out my writing, maybe.

**waves hand*** I do!

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All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

When I was in the Army in 1968, I was assigned to guard the LBJ ranch...It was not a vast conspiracy....just incompetant government idiots ex post facto.....

However one possibility not ever considered is this...Oswalds Carcano fired into cotton, 6.5mm bullets recovered, slipped into nylon sabots, and loaded into 7.65 mm Argentine, so that all the people shooting at JFK, had the same bullets, all of which would come back to Oswalds gun....

Unfortunately for the Conspiracy Monomaniacs, the logistics are a bit hard to arrange, somehow the conspriators would have to get the gun and its ammo out of Ruth Payne's Garage, fire the ammo, recover from the wet cotton enough UNDISTORTED projectiles to use, and make sure that LHO uses the right gun and the right ammo, make sure he goes to work, and brings the gun, have your assassins in place, etc etc....Why not just go with the simplest answer.....Sometimes I am amazed at the CT'ers swallowing of Camels and straining at gnats.....

Dale

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"Ad astra per aspera"

By the way, for those of you who are science and physics minded, there was a report issued late last year by a group of top physicists, regarding the JFK case. They were:

R Linsker and RL Garwin
IBM T. J. Watson Research Center

H Chernoff
Statistics Department, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

P Horowitz and NF Ramsey
Physics Department, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

Their article was published in a high-tech forensic science journal known as Science & Justice. It costs a small fortune to subscribe to this magazine.

Back in 1979, the House Committee on Assassinations issued a report that said the Dallas Police Department accidentally recorded the gunshots in Dealey Plaza, and there were 4 gunshots on the recording. Since Oswald fired only 3 shots, this suggested that he had a co-conspirator who also fired a shot.

But the two sound labs hired by the House Committee were challenged by some guys at the National Academy of Sciences, and about three years later they issued a report saying there were no gunshots at all recorded on the Police recordings.

In 2001 a bug professor wrote a report on the acoustics evidence saying the House Committee labs were correct and the NAS scientists were wrong. Well, some of the old NAS scientists were still alive, and Dr. Ramsey had received a Nobel Prize in Physics in the meantime, so they got together and studied the recordings again and issued a report last year saying the bug professor was wrong, that the House Committee sound labs were wrong, and that the NAS was correct in their report. There are no gunshots on the Dallas Police recordings.

So this case continues to go on and on and on, with some scientists still working on it.

For the most part, there seems to only be speculation on these points. The actual evidence of a shallow wound with no exit point was dismissed at Bethesda, and replaced with the spurious, unfounded claims of a single bullet which entered and exited the body. So what follows are simply a few of the theories I know have been debated over...

Some contend the bullet simply "fell back out" of the body. Even though the wound was only a few inches deep, this seems unlikely imo. Another argument has suggested the bullet was removed after the body had been "sequestered" (forcefully and illegally removed) from Parkland Hospital, before the autopsy was later performed at Bethesda. This cannot be proven, obviously, but I find it to be the most logical hypothesis - it would provide enough time to alter or tamper with the body in a private, restricted area.

As to the type of bullet, again there has been much debate. Certainly a bullet fired from a pistol would be a low velocity bullet, and would cause a small and shallow wound. But it seems unlikely that any sniper would ever use a pistol to shoot at a target from the distance required. A case has been made for the use of a saboted bullet. A sabot is a plastic carrier that grips a bullet within it. A small caliber bullet is placed within a sabot to enable it to be fired from a larger caliber weapon. I'm not sure of the veracity of the following story, but in 1975, a maintenance man reportedly found a 30.06 shell on the roof of the County Records Building in Dealy Plaza. The casing had an unusual crimp in its neck, which has led some to believe it may have been fired from a sabot. His son is said to still have the shell in his possession. I haven't looked into this theory enough to form an opinion either way.

Another theory suggests a low velocity dissolving projectile that would leave no bullet in the body, leaving only a small diameter, shallow wound. I personally have found the argument for this theory to be weak.

At any rate, the important issue is that the back wound had no exit point. That alone debunks the Warren Report's SBT, which means Oswald was not the only shooter, and raises serious doubts that he was even a shooter at all.

What range would we be talking here? In the early 70's there was a target shooting organisation called the IHMSA. International Handgun, Metallic Sillouhette Assocition. The rules were simple enough. Target were placed at 50, 100 150, and 200 meters. THey were metal plates the size and shape of a chicken, pig, turkey, and ram and weigted from 16 to 42 pounds. The pistol had to be used with opene sights (no telescopic sights) and th shooter could not use an atrificial rest, including the ground. Standing, if your non firing hand held the firing hand in front of the wrist, it was okay, if was behind the wrist, is was an artifical rest and not allowed. I used a 9mm in a break action Contender sigle shot pistol, and could hit the rams pretty well, but it did not have the power to knock them over. Other shooters could call shots, giving the target and 'eye'. This was with an open sight pistol at 200 meters. A well made pistol would be an ideal sniper weapon because is could easlily fit in a bag or case that was far too small to even hold a rifle.

Bolding mine. The casing is the spend brass cartride that remains in the gun after the round is fired. The bullet would be the only part encased in a sabot. There is a flaw in the terminology there somewhere.

The .30-06 fires a bullet of .308 inch diameter, the same as the 7.62 nato round. The difference is the .30-06 has a large case and goes faster. The largest sabot rounds I've ever seen in a .308 were .224, or 5.56 mm. Oswald's gun fired a 6.5 mm round which would leave just about 0.55mm for the sabot. While possible, it seems a little thin The other thing to consider is that the plastic or other bits from the sabot will be on the ground where they could be found.

Also, all military ammo is stamped with the year of manufacture on the bottom. In '63 the .30-06 was the main caliber used by the US military in both the M-1 and M-14. This means that pre-1967 ish, there was a very good schance that any .30-06 case found would have the year on the head stamp. That could be used quite easliy to disrove the thoery that that round was involved. Even if the round is stamped 63 or older, it could have been surplus sold off in the late 60's when the US changed to the 7.62 and 5.56mm rounds as the standards.

All rifle bullets are crimped. There is a groove in the bullet itself that is intended specifically for this. Some pistols, like .44 and .357 magnums are this way as well, This stops the bullet from slidig back and forth in the case due to recoil. For an odd crimp in the neck, the most likley cause is a round that failed to eject and got caught in the action; or was ejected with great forc and hit something that dented it There doesn't seem to be any benefit from having a round crimped on one side if the goal was to actually hit anything

There is some work being done on these in the form of powdered aluminum held in a epoxy base The theory is that the bullet will basically disolve on impact in to a fine dust, and transfer 100% of it's, very high, kinetic energy. The KE will be high, because the velocity of these rounds is much higher than with a standard round. This has been an ongoing debate for a long time among makers of self defense pistol ammunition. Slow and heavy, vs. fast and light. Fast and light has little penetration, whereas big and heavy will go through a target completely. The single best argument I've ever seen on this tips the scales toward big and heavy of you want to be absolutely positive that target will stay down.

__________________
I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

You know, just as an asside and totally OT, but up until last Monday I had never heard of a Sabot, I'm not much into guns. Then I was watching Mythbusters and they made one to blast poor Buster out of a pipe. Seems strange that since that was the first time I had heard of one, that now 3 posters start talking them.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

Heh heh, happens to me all the time. Usually with words. The GF used the word moldering once, I thought she made it up. I heard it three TV shows and read it in a book in the next two weeks.

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I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

Ditto. It isn't so much that it is the first time you've heard or read the word, but the first time you really noticed it and were able to associate it with something.

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Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Er, dependingly. The .45, for instance, is subsonic and is a little bit worse at penetrating armor than the 9mm round, which is supersonic. The 9mm is better at penetrating armor (being faster and lighter), but it deals less damage to the body (being lighter).

However, a .50 AE round would be much more likely to go through the person, but the kick on that thing is pretty dang bad. I would not rely on the Desert Eagle as a good sidearm; it's like a War Maul -- big and clumsy.

However, the ammunition for the PDW (Personal Defence Weapon) is smaller and lighter, but is also made more for armor penetration than actual damage. It was developed because of the uprising use of body armor.

This is based on my understanding. I'm sure about the first paragraph, not as sure about the second.

As for rifles, yeah, we're more into faster and lighter rounds (via the 5.56mm as opposed to the 7.62mm), sure. And yeah, the 5.56mm does less damage and is less likely to penetrate heavy armor. But then, that's why Man made .50 machineguns.

__________________
There are few left who
Stare at the skies with wonder
Wishing to know more;
The clouds still drift by above
But the eyes below are blind.
--Laura Lundberg

Check out my writing, maybe.

I actually meant for the same caliber. A .45 with a 155 grain bullet (Federal Hydrashock) will go 1050 fps, where military ball ammo is 230 grains at 830 fps. The energy from the light one is 379 foot pounds, and the heavy is 350. But the wounding effects are vastly different. The light bullet will leave a shallow wound that is very wide. The heavy may pass clear through. That is the raging debate. For me it was settles when someone pointed out hunting rounds. An animal will run util it can't. A person may keep going after a serious wound, or drop to the ground and die of shock after something superficial, simply becasue they know they've been shot and have a pre -conceived notion about what that means. For hunting, heavy bullets have proven to be more reliable overall than light ones on all size of game.

As for the Desert Eagle, depending on how you meant it, I'd have to either agree or disagree. As far as drawing it and getting it on a target, yes, it's heavy and clumsy. After getting it on target, it can be fired very quickly since it's gas operated and kicks less than most .45's.

I think the main reason for going with the 5.56 was so that more rounds could be carried. Quantity of fire over quality of marksmanship. But that may be just a personal predjudice. Everything I was ever taught about shooting included aiming.

Edit to add, the 50 AE version of the Desert Eagle proved inferior to the .44 version in every test we made with them. Plus the shells are really expensive

__________________
I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

The casing had an unusual crimp in its neck, which has led some to believe it may have been fired from a sabot.

Several owners of Carcano's have noticed that they will get similarly dented shell casings when they rapidly eject the shell. Here is Chad Zimmerman's web page on the matter:

http://www.zimmermanjfk.com/frontmenu_000009.htm

I'm dubious on this. I'll have to fire them to know first-hand, though.

No, that's definitely not it. In fact, assault rifles have lost the full-auto feature, and soldiers are being taught to fire accurately instead of wasting ammunition.

Machine Guns are still being used as they're still good support weapons, however.

Eh, maybe so, maybe so. "Inferior" in what way, though? Armor penetration, direct damage, or what?

__________________
There are few left who
Stare at the skies with wonder
Wishing to know more;
The clouds still drift by above
But the eyes below are blind.
--Laura Lundberg

Check out my writing, maybe.