This backyard picture of Oswald with the Carcano and his 38 on the hip has been the spawn of much speculation as to whether it is a real or composite.
By Paul Helinski, Editor
This November 22nd will be 50 years since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The shooting itself has been the subject of movies, documentaries and countless books and articles; the legitimacy of any of them, including the official government explanation, called the Warren Report, is not within our purview to say. But we thought it would be cool to try to find one of the rifles that came from the same batch as Oswarld’s supposed murder weapon, and see what it looks like close up, and how it actually shoots. The 6.5mm Carcano we were able to find is serial-numbered C4880, and Oswald’s was C2766. That puts it only a couple thousand rifles away in the production line, and our test rifle has the original scope mount and scope found on Oswald’s as well, almost exactly like the rifle/scope combo he bought out of the February 1963 American Rifleman ad from Kleins for $19.99. We don’t know if the parts were originally on this gun and that they were part of that small batch of imports for Kleins, but it sure is cool, albeit a bit morbid, to shoot a nearly exact replica of the gun that changed the course of America, a course that still reverberates with the assassination today.
You will find enormous inconsistencies in the language about Oswald’s rifle because few if any of the researchers were gun nuts apparently. For one, even the Warren Commission called the rifle a “Mannlicher-Carcano,” and you will find that repeated all over the bunkers and debunker websites today. The Mannlicher is a completely different rifle that has nothing to do with the Carcano except for the fact that both guns use a single stack “en-bloc” clip, kind of like the metal clip that M1 Garands use in doublestack form. The clip on the Carcano holds six rounds, and you push the loaded clip in from the top of the action. If you look in the pictures, you’ll see that ours is made of spring steel that is blued. Oswald’s, and others you’ll see for sale online, seems to be copper washed, or with some kind of brass plating. The Mannlicher uses almost the same clip, and the clip is called Mannlicher-Carcano sometimes, but not the rifle.
The six round en-bloc clip slides down into the action and clicks into place.
Our Carcano took the loaded en-bloc clip without incident, but we found that the bolt didn’t pick up a round hardly at all, and that even when it did, the bolt was very hard to close. The Carcano is not thought to be one of the great battle rifles overall. It was chambered in both the 6.5mm and 7.35mm, with the 6.5 being a very short run during 1940 in this carbine length configuration, called the 91/38. You don’t see a lot of sporterized Carcanos from the 1960s, when the US market was flooded with WWII surplus bolt guns.
The Carcano en-bloc clip is similar to the Mannlicher clip so the rifles are often confused. This clip holds six rounds securely for quick loading during battle. A button in the trigger guard ejects the clip
You’ll see tons of British Enfields, and tons of US Springfields, but Carcanos are kind of like the Japanese Arisaka guns. They are really rough-working and don’t function well. And while this rifle can’t be taken as an example of what Oswald experienced on the 6th floor of the book depository, especially 50 years later, it wouldn’t be surprising if he experienced at least some of the problems with his gun that this rifle has. During the 1960s, most gun shops had literally barrels filled with Carcanos selling for $10-$20. They aren’t good guns.
Most witnesses reported that they heard three shots on that fateful day in Dallas. There was one, followed by a pause, then two more in rapid succession. The shots were fired from approximately 60 feet up, at about an 18 degree angle at a distance of between 175 and 200 feet. In all, the time lapse between the three shots varies depending on whether you believe that it was two shots or three shots that hit JFK and Texas Governor Connolly. At the outside, the time for three shots is about eight seconds. Even with a little bit of bolt trouble this would be feasable, because Oswald had qualified twice at Marksman level in the Marines. That test is rapid fire, 50 rounds at 200 yards at a man-sized target. He scored 48 and 49. You would also have to assume that Oswald knew how to not only properly zero the firearm, but also make sure that it worked properly with the en-bloc clip that was found in the gun.
This is the exact mount that was on the Klein’s guns. It is drilled and tapped into the side of the loading port.
Experience with our test rifle aside, mechanically the rifle should work at that level of performance. For accuracy, our test rifle was well within the tolerances that were used by the Warren Commission. They judged that the rifle was “very accurate,” and could group three shots into 3-5 inches at 100 yards. Our test rifle did a little better than this with modern, recent-manufacture, factory ammo, about 1.4 inches at 50 yards. The problem with our ammo, though, is that it is different from Oswald’s. According to the official report, he used a 160 grain bullet in ammo made by Western, which no longer exists. We were able to find some Italian military ammo with the same 160 grain bullet, but the over 50-year-old ammo didn’t fire reliably enough for accuracy testing. The one shot that we got that didn’t “hang-fire” printed in the target at 50 yards at the same elevation as our 123 grain modern ammo. If anything was conclusive about our testing, it was that modern testing would be difficult to find conclusive at all. Too much time has passed, and the original ammo would not be the same as it was then, no matter what results you actually got.
This pictures shows the scope from the rear of the rifle. As you can see, like the side mount on a Garand, the open sights are still in view. There are opinions that because Oswald’s scope couldn’t be zeroed by the FBI that he used the iron sights on the gun to shoot so quickly.
The FBI reported to the Warren Commission that they actually could not zero the scope on Oswald’s gun without putting some kind of shims in it, but as you can see in the pictures, I don’t see where such shims would even go. Our scope is clearly a replica and not the same model as the Oswald scope, but it is the same power and the mount is identical. It was difficult to zero because of the very old and rudimentary design, but zero it we did. The recoil is very manageable on the Carcano, so there would be little worry of it affecting even a cheap scope. One thing I have never seen explained online is that the scope on the Oswald rifle is a side mount, like an M1 Garand sniper modesl. You can still use the open sights just as you would without a scope, and you don’t have to look under the mounts like you would with a modern see-thru mount. The open sights are zeroed for 200 yards and shoot about 8″ high at 50 yards. There are published theories that Oswald used the open sights on the gun, because the thinking is he could not zero the optics anyway, and that using the awkward side optic would take too long between shots to aim. Our open sights are not adjustable, but they were pretty close to point-of-aim horizontally, but would require about an 8″ hold under. Oswald’s rifle had the same non-adjustable sights as this test gun, and it is very possible that at that distance, only 58 yards or so, he used the iron sights.
Now we come to the “single bullet theory,” otherwise known as the “magic bullet theory.” Three brass casings were found in the 6th floor “sniper’s nest,” and witnesses heard three shots, so the official explanation had to revolve around three bullets. What nobody expected back in 1963, before camera phones, was that someone would actually have a video of the shooting. Turns out, this guy Zapruder was filming the motorcade just as the shots range out, so the official story had to match both the eyewitness accounts, and the Zapruder film. Without us drilling into the details that you can research yourself online very easily, the time in the car that both the President and Governor Connolly reacted physically to the gunfire was under six seconds.
The top picture is the path that many will say makes the magic bullet impossible, but the bottom is a composite drawing that shows that it could be possible based on other video besides the Zapruder film shot that day.
Three aimed shots are not probable in a Carcano within six seconds, so the Warren Commission concluded that the damage done to the car occupants had to be from the impacts of only two bullets. The first shot, they reported, missed, though no damage to the car, or divot in the ground, was ever found according to the official record. Of the two remaining, quickly fired bullets, one for sure hit the President’s head. The other bullet, they claimed, hit the President at the top of his back, exited his throat, entered Governor Connolly’s back, exited his chest, entered his wrist, exited his wrist, and lodged in his thigh. The bullet was later found by an orderly on the gurney upon which Governor Connolly was transported in the hospital. The 160gr. full metal jacket bullet was intact, showing almost no damage to the nose, and only minimal damage to the base. It weighed 158 of its original 160 grains.
This one bullet, known as CE399, is said to have gone through 15 layers of clothing, a necktie knot, 7 layers of skin, and 15 inches of tissue, shattering 4 inches of rib and a wrist bone. Do you think that is possible? Truth can of course be stranger than fiction, and everyone from the Discovery Channel to debunker bloggers have tried to prove and disprove the possibility of the magic bullet for two generations now, and if you Google around, there are interesting theories on both sides of the issue. One interesting detail is that same Warren Commission also found that the third bullet, the headshot, disintegrated entirely after going through two layers of skull, which is significantly thinner than a rib. Not everyone on the Warren Commission agreed with the magic bullet theory. There were three dissenters on the Commission, but with all the flak that “conspiracy theorists” get about the shooting, when you boil it right down, the explanation itself was just a theory, and a far-flung one that that.
Ballistically, our 123-grain lead-nosed factory ammo can’t be compared to the round-nose full-metal-jacket ammo that was said to be used by Oswald. But if anything, we were hoping to prove the positive a bit with a real world example. If a 123 grain 6.5mm hunting round could exit an animal after hitting hard bone, you could at least speculate that the heavier and more resistant 160 FMJ bullet would most definitely do that.
Oswald’s rounds were similar to these Italian military rounds from WWII. The bullet is 160gr. and made for the gain twist rifling of the Carcano, which Oswald’s rifle may or may not have. Toward the breech the rifling starts out around 1:30 and gets tighter as the bullet exits to about 1:12. Our modern 123gr. Prvi Partisan ammo is made more for a standard rifle twist.
To test the theory, we enlisted our resident Okeechobee Florida hunting guide Dwayne Powell. He likes to keep a good supply of pork sausage on hand to cook for clients, so it isn’t hard to convince Dwayne to go shoot a wild pig with just about anything more deadly than a slingshot. Dwayne is also an excellent offhand marksman, so if you need a headshot, you’ll get a headshot. As you can see in the accuracy pictures, if the Carcano doesn’t lack something, it is accuracy. Dwayne was able to take a small sow at about 40 yards with the Carcano with a head shot that dropped the pig with nary a movement. This is shy of the 58-66 yards of the JFK shots, so ballistically this would be an “at least” example, had the bullet exited. It did not. Shot in the side of the head, the hog dropped in her tracks from the fast, light bullet, and Dwayne felt like a heavier FMJ would probably have exited, so the test didn’t tell us much.
From this apples-to-oranges comparison, we proved little either way other than that the 6.5 Carcano is a deadly caliber, and again, the inconclusive nature of trying to do these things 50 years later is mostly unavoidable. Even if we pulled the 160gr. bullets from the old ammo we were able to get and replaced the primers and powder, you could not verifiably match the velocity of the bullet from the Oswald gun, because chronographs didn’t exist in the late 60s when the tests were done.
We mean no disrespect to President Kennedy or his memory by using a wild pig to simulate the ballistics. Kennedy was not a democrat in the way you think of the political parties today. He was a champion of individual freedom, wanted to abolish the Federal Reserve, spoke publicly about abolishing secret societies in government, and didn’t think we belonged in Vietnam. Abraham Lincoln most likely would not still be a Republican today, and John F. Kennedy, a practicing Catholic, would most definitely not be a Democrat. Without mixing into the details of all the inconsistencies of the death of John F. Kennedy, we have hoped with this article 50 years later would give us an idea of what the real gun found in the book depository looked, felt and shot like. The real one is in the national archives and will most likely never again see the light of day. Will the truth about JFK ever come out? Maybe it already did, and maybe it is one of several government stories that just don’t add up.
The markings on the Oswald gun are much cleaner than this example, but they are all the same.
This rifle is what is called a “C-Block.” The serial number is just over 2000 rifles away in the same letter block of numbers. The shape of that C is a point of contention among the various pictures of Oswald’s Carcano that have appeared over the years.
This C in the serial number in these pictures is shaped much more like the C on our test rifle than the Life or original evidence pictures.
This is the evidence photo of the serial number on Oswald’s Carcano. It is difficult to tell if the scope is blued steel or coated aluminum, like the scope on our rifle. Note the ding on the end of the scope.
The “magic bullet” that the Warren Commission determined caused the neck wounds on President Kennedy and the back, wrist and thigh wounds on Governor Connolly. The bullet is nearly pristine and lost only 2 grains of its weight.
Our 50 yard groups came in under 1.5 inches for three shots. This was with 123gr. ammo, much shorter and lighter than the 160 grain ammo found in the book depository. Because some Carcanos use gain twist rifling, you can’t really gauge performance between bullet types.
We only had one round of the old ammo fire normally, and the point of impact with the iron sights was the same elevation as the new 123 grain Prvi Partisan.
Our Carcano trigger is surprisingly light for a military arm. It has some serious creep though.
We fired most of these and the primers were either dead or hang fired. The bang seemed to be normal, so it would be interesting to pull the bullets, replace the primers, and re-seat the bullets. You’d never be able to reliably replicate the ballistics, but “the magic bullet” might bear further investigation.
These markings are correct for the scope, but we suspect that it is a replica and not one of the Klein’s scopes.
Our resident guide Dwayne Powell at Kissimee River Hunt & Fish shot this sow in the side of the head with the Carcano at 40 yards. The 123gr. bullet did not exit the other side of the skull.
This is the original ad from Klien’s that Oswald ordered the Carcano from. It is third from the top on the left.
I am a Marine Vet. Marksman in the Marines is the lowest numerical score when qualifying. We called the badges Toilet Seats. A Disgrace. Shooting skills are also not retained unless you range fire REGULARLY. Oswald didn’t have a car to take his cheap joke rifle to the range, much less afford the range and ammo. You couldn’t carry a rifle on a bus, even in the 60’s. Drop the “He was a Marine” BS! 99% of former Marines couldn’t hit the side of a barn anymore and haven’t fired a weapon in years. Oswald was a joke, his weapons were jokes, his ammo was a joke, his rope rifle sling was a joke, his “scope” was a joke, his old blanket “rifle case” was a joke. The whole thing is a joke made up by people who never use firearms or know a damn thing about them.
Thank you, Marcus, for telling the truth. The Warren Commission was as fraudulent as LBJ, who had the JFK limousine cleaned to destroy evidence. The experts I have spoken with over the years, echoed your statements. There was no magic bullet. The rifle was poorly made. Its street value was about $2.00. Oswald didn’t drive, and as you have stated, how he did get to the rifle range to practice shooting every day?Hoover knew where Oswald was working; Clint Murchison, a close partner of LBJ, owned the building. Chief Jessie Currie stated that Oswald “did not fire either weapon, the rilfe or the revolver.” The man who took Oswald to work on the day of the murder, said Oswald had a 2 foot package under his arm. It could not have been the rifle. Oswald’s extended questioning was not recording; he was not allowed legal counsel. Shooting such a long distance with a bolt action rifle, through heavy foliage, was not likely to produce results. A
I doubt Lee Harvey Oswald was a lefty. I agree, however, that these conspiracy theories are nonsense, and that an ex-Marine (Oswald is the ONLY ex-Marine) would easily be able to make those shots.
Warren Commission Hearings Vol. XXI page 699 &700 show the serial numbers of all 100 rifles that were shipped to Kleins in Feb. 1963. Have the owners of any of the other 99 rifles commented on their purchase? What model number Carcano did they receive?
One, and only one measurable fact either confirms or debunks the entire theory: the diameter of the entrance wound in the back of John Kennedy’s head. If it is 6 mm, it can not have been made by the 6.5 mm Carcano bullet, and a 5.56 mm AR bullet is a good candidate. If it is not, and is larger, then it measures the bullet that caused the wound, and the 6.5 mm bullet is a good candidate. The rest is either circumstantial, misremembered, or an artificial memory that is not definitive. If it does measure 6mm, and the AR was the only other gun in the vicinity, it lends credibility to the perception by witnesses that they smelled gunpowder, suggesting that the source of the bullet was nearby. Otherwise, the testimony that they smelled gunpowder is not credible.
8 home movie cameras recorded films that were recovered. Zapruder is the most informative.
Multiple people saw the rifle fired from the sixth floor window
The carcano is adequate for the incident. High probability two or more weapons fired that day. Solo the carcano and one shooter novice level is very adequate. Investigations tend to indicate multiple players. Crime scene isn’t the key, everyone knows he was shot in Dealey. The investigations are more significant than the surplus rifle issue. Have been to Dealey dozens and dozens of.times, it didn’t require advanced skills to commit the acts in Dealey. Concentrate on the events surrounding the case
Two women on the FOURTH floor Victoria Adams being one of them both said the shots came from BELOW them on the third floor.
Detective Day of the Dallas PD who was the fingerprint expert when first examining the Carcano pulled the bolt back and a live round fell out on the floor.
The secret service took a photograph of a bullet hole in the chrome moulding located 7 inches above the presidents head of the limo. Johnson ordered the limo to be destroyed . the presidential limo on display in the ford museum today is not the same limo that JFK was riding in
Dr Perry who examined the presidents body said there was a small 5mm hole in the presidents neck below the Adams apple.
That had to be an entrance wound coming from the grassy knoll area.
Autopsy photographs showing the back of the presidents neck show no visual wounds on the back of the Presidents neck.
TOO MANY PROBLEMS WITH THE OFFICIAL STORY
Everyone who ever saw Oswald fire a rifle said he was a poor shot. According to all the available evidence, Oswald rarely fired a rifle after he left the Marine Corps. The Warren Commission’s Master-rated riflemen were unable to duplicate Oswald’s alleged shooting feat. Howard Donahue was unable to do it in the 1967 CBS rifle test. He was finally able to score at least two hits, but only on his third attempt–Oswald would have had only one attempt.
Also, it is very doubtful that Oswald knew that he would need to adjust his aim because he was firing from an elevation of 60 feet.
The single-bullet theory has too many problems to even list in a comment. I’ll discuss just one: We now know from ARRB interviews and released documents that the autopsy doctors thoroughly probed the wound in Kennedy’s back and determined that it had no exit point. In fact, the doctors even removed the chest organs so they could see if the bullet entered the chest cavity, and they could clearly see that it did not. They could see the probe pushing against the chest cavity lining; they could see where the wound tract ended. So no bullet exited JFK’s throat and therefore Connally must have been hit by a separate bullet, which means there were two gunmen.
I must differ with the comment no evidence of a third round was ever found. There was a bullet strike noted on the curb to the left and behind JFK’s limo. A fragment of the curb or bullet did strike a bystander. A bullet strike to the grass in another area was seen by citizens, one of whom recovered the bullet only to have it promptly confiscated by a fake Federal agent. There may have been ballistic evidence either lost through mishandling, deliberate destruction of evidence or carelessness. Some witnesses reported a bullet holes in the windshield. Multiple bullet fragments were recovered from the limo despite it having been “cleaned up” by the driver.
Does the Carcano require its shooter to use the bolt action between rounds to reload? If so, the shooter must re-site the target after each reload. This action a distraction. After visiting the Dealy site on 6/9/19 my first and lingering question is: How does a nervous shooter aim 3X and reload 2X to hit a target in a car going 3-9 miles per hour in 6-8 seconds and be accurate in 2 of 3 shots. My thoughts grant that there was a loading clip involved. Either Oswald had a perfect shooting day or was very lucky. Or, it can be thought it was highly unlikely Oswald could have been successful in the assassination effort.
I’ve been doing considerable study on the JFK assinnation, and I have come to the firm conclusion that Oswald was a patsy, set up most likely by the CIA and others. There is just too much conflicting evidence and coincidences for this to have been anything other than a conspiracy.
Most people unknowingly used the .264 ammo with the 6.5mm Carcano Carbine, which was the wrong ammo. It would fire, but was too small, so it would rattle down the barrel, & who knew, where the bullet would go? That’s where it got the bad reputation for accuracy.
Oswald was using the correct 0.268 ammo, so the rifle was good enough for an easy 96 yard head shot. Especially for an ex-Marine. Oswald fired at least sharpshooter in boot camp but was penalized, because his web gear wasn’t buckled, but even if he’d only qualified as a marksman a 96 yard head shot isn’t difficult, especially since Kennedy’s limo was headed directly away from Oswald at 2 to 3 mph, since it’d just made a 90 degree turn, so JFK’s silhouette presented a virtually still, but slowly shrinking target. …In fact, 40 years later, some of JFK’s Secret Service detail, who were skeptical about the “official” story, went to the window in the School Book Depository, where Oswald shot from, for the first time, & when they looked out, the first thing, that they said was, “Damn, that was an easy shot”.
See, the pictutes of Dealy Plaza, which most people see, make it look kind of spread out or sprawling, but it’s more confined, than it appears. Most anyone with more than a little experience with a rifle, if they look out that infamous window, will be surprised how easy a shot it was. As far as riflery goes, it was “up close & personal”, so to speak.
Oswald did not drive. He had no way to get to the rifle range to practice shooting. A cheap bolt action rifle is certainly not the ideal weapon. Those skilled riflemen who tried to duplicate Oswald’s alleged shooting, were not successful. Hoover knew where Oswald worked. As an alleged defector to the Soviet Union, surely Oswald would have been under surveillance. Fletcher Prouty, of the Black Ops, stated that none of the safeguards were taken to protect JFK. LBJ was surrounded by agents: he was protected. JFK was a sitting duck. As 50 eye witnesses raced to the grassy knoll, despite the possibility of being harmed, they swore that the head shot came from there. No “magic bullet,” could have struck so much tissue & bone & ended-up in pristine condition. Amazingly, that perfect bullet was found on a gurney at Parkland. How convenient. In a matter of hours, after JFK was disposed of, LBJ ordered 50,000 troops to VIet Nam; JFK had insisted, to Walter Cronkite, that he would send no ground tropps there. LBJ got his war.
I would like to purchase a charango RIFLE for my son.
As a former Marine and Marksmaship Instructor at Paris Island your report that he shot 48 /49 bulls eye is incorrect.What he did was get 8 bulls eye and two out for a score of 48 on one day and nine out of 19 for a score of 49 on another day. Marksman is the lowest qualification designation in the Marines.I qualified as expert, I was a marksmanship instructor besides Paris Island,Quantico,and the US Naval Academy.I personally don’t think he had the skill to pull it off ,I was 19 in 1963 in the Marines and still feel that way today .
Correction: Oswald would have shot 9 out of 10 rounds rather than 9 out of 19. Furthermore, when firing rapid fire, you had a 50 second time limit to fire 10 rounds. You are not shooting at a bullseye but human sillouette from the shoulders up- a lot bigger target. There is nothing remarkable with a score of 48/49. In shooting , each round is worth max, 5 points, totaling 50 if he had gotten every shot in the sillouette. They do not fire 50 rounds rapid fire. They shoot 50 rounds per the whole course, which covers the the 200,300, and 500 yard lines in various positions (standing, sitting, kneeling and prone) . The maximum score you could attain is 250 points; 5 points for each of the 50 shots. As a marksman, Oswald would have shot 190 to 209 for the whole course. He struggled in various parts of the course, which verifies my conclusion that it is unlikely that he was capable of pulling it off. He would have had to have extensive rifle range practice on a range, to zero the rifle in, between the time he aquired the rifle and the assasination to be able to pull it off.
No one has mentioned that the target was moving away at 30 Miles pur hour as well!
Actually, much research using the photographs, video, witnesses, and even interviews with the special agents in the vehicle said the motorcade was only going between 10 and 15 miles per hour, more likely to have been going 9mph when turning the corner before turning elm street. These speed are not difficult to fire at with the experience Oswald had.
45 min after the shooting. No one could tell if it had been fired .
Smell, not tell.
“The top picture is the path that many will say makes the magic bullet impossible, but the bottom is a composite drawing that shows that it could be possible based on other video besides the Zapruder film shot that day.”
Complete garbage! What “other video” are you guys taking about? Show us if it exists. Don’t just say “other video.”
did LHO shoot that scope with his left eye?
You don’t use your left eye. You still use your right, but shift your head on your stock. My grandfather’s Winchester 100 was set up that way, and my nephew still uses it with that setup.
Your stats for Oswald don’t add up, because ‘Marksman’ is the lowest possible ranking that still qualifies in the Marines. Your use of the term indicates an expert level of expertise, when the opposite is true.
There were two rifles found in the TSBD. A Mauser and a Carcano (correctly pronounced Car-Kuh-No). One was found on the 6th floor, the other on the 5th floor. Two shooters in that building, Malcom Wallace shooting at JFK and Oswald shooting at Texas Governor John Connelly.
I know this is an old article, but why didn’t you use Hornady 160 grain round nose bullets and I-3031 powder? to more faithfully represent the original bullet? If He was left handed, I believe he would have had less problems with the iron sights or scope on this rifle, with the scope mounted on the left side, and he may have hand fed the bullets into the chamber to prevent feed problems. 8 seconds for two shots is a lot more time than I used to get having to take 3 shots in 5 seconds at the popup range. I believe the first shot was a sighting shot, with the second and third shots being the only ones made at the president. Some people speculate why the cheap rifle? Why did Hinkley use a saturday night special 22 cal. Rhom RG23? he got for $47.95 ,when for not much more he could have bought a 357? The conspiracy we may never know, like checking the lead particles in the brain to see if they match the lead in the in the other fragments. if they wee from different bullets, they would have different trace element compositions. But even as a crazy lone shooter there are some crazy things there.Russia? the CIA LBJ? we may never know.
I recently purchased a Carcano and the same scope Oswald had on his weapon. The only way to mount it is on the left side. There’s no other way to mount it.
A cartridge cannot be hand fed into the Carcano with any speed at all due to the way the bolt face is designed. It is called “controlled feed”. If it can be done at all, you’re looking at 6+ seconds per shot. I sincerely believe Oswald was indeed a patsy set up by the CIA and FBI, and perhaps more.
Where and when did Oswald “practice” with that rifle? No matter what he shot in the Marines (likely with a M-1), the Carcano is a different weapon. As for the hit, it was a call by the Mafia possibly with come collusion from the CIA.
“You would also have to assume that Oswald knew how to not only properly zero the firearm…”
Zeroing is the key that answers all the questions. He disassembled and reassembled his Carcano when bringing it to work in that paper gun sack. He knew he had to re-zero with his first shot. He aimed at and struck the south curb of Main Street, creating the “fresh bullet mark.” It then took him 9.5 seconds to note where the dust kicked up relative to the crosshairs, adjust the scope’s windage and elevation screws, operate the bolt and acquire the target. That first shot ‘missed’ because it wasn’t aimed at the limo.
Oswald used his re-zeroed scope for all three shots. The scope’s leaf spring was damaged in shipment afterwards. See The Final Truth: Solving the Mystery of the JFK Assassination: http://www.thefinaltruth.net
Actually, Oswald’s rifle was NOT zeroed. The FBI had to place shims under the scope to make it reasonably accurate. There’s no possible way Oswald or anyone else shooting that rifle could hit JFK with any precision. In addition, there was a tree blocking the way when JFK’s car was 70 feet away.
I have a couple of Carano rifles, I first found them hard feeding, and jamming. I started looking at the clips, and how they met the bolt face. I found the the wood stock would compress as the trigger guard was screwed in place and would change the angle of the clip with the bolt face. I installed shims to adjust this, after which it functioned as well as any Mauser action, and I could get 6 shots on body mass target in about 15 seconds at 100 yards.
In my experiments in getting it back to a functional rifle I creased a few cartridge cases, if I remember right, I thought I had read they found cases that looked as if they had been cycled a few times in Oswalds possession. He had probably done the same thing, and when they had taken his rifle apart and reassembled it they may have over looked any shims Oswald may have installed.
I believe the Warren commission just as much as I believe that a 747 hit Pentagon on 9/11. I trust the government, they are very honest and have never deceived us about anything. Shame on anybody not believing in the United States government, those bastions of truth, Justice and the American way!
Down with anybody who doesn’t believe or trust the government Version of things
It was a 757……not a 747.
JFK: The Smoking Gun
The 3rd shot was from a secret service agent in a follow up car from his AR15. He grabbed it, the car lunged forward and he fell back letting a shot go right into Kennedy’s head. And they have a photo of him grabbing it from that day.
That is why the bullet exploded out his head. Entered behind, went out the front exploding like an AR15 bullet would.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4p7DBomWYA
The entry wound in the back of the head, its circumference, was not that of a Carcano bullet. 3 cartridges at book depository, one away from other two. It was a dry cell bullet for the rifle and ejected prior to the 2 shots.
The 3rd shot was accidental.
The pristine bullet was not pristine on examination. Anything but. And it went through both men. The cars jumper seats (not regular seats for the Governor and his wife) line up as they were more centered and downward.
The first shot missed hitting the ground. Kennedy said “I have been hit.” probably from a fragment as the second shot went through his throat.
It was Oswald and the Mafia, in my opinion.
Even though the Secret Service agent George Hickey accidentally discharged his weapon, he didn’t shoot Kennedy.
You have to explain why, since 1963, the satanists who run and control the politics and the big business of the United States have been protecting Mafia when it comes to putting blame for the assassination. I had no idea that Mafia controls the military, the mass media, the academia and the government. All those entities have solidly been denying that Mafia was involved.
Please give proofs that Mafia has 100% control over the United States.
What you have to understand is back in 1963, the CIA and the Mob worked together on certain things. It is counterintuitive to the way we think today, but back then they made strange bed fellows. The Texas oil men provided the money, the Mob provided the shooters, the FBI and LBJ provided the cover-up, and the CIA helped with the planning and disinformation. Oswald was an informant for the FBI, receiving $200 each month to keep an eye on pro-Cuban groups and the Oswald was operational with the CIA. The CIA maintained a 201 file on Oswald which in intelligence parlay, means the spies were watching a “spy”. His CIA ID number was S-LA-XXXX. I’m purposely not providing the last digits of his ID number. That information is classified, but as a former CIA officer, I had access to it.
Conspiracy kooks are everywhere, even on Guns America. I get a chuckle out of people that say that Oswald could NOT have done it because of the ammunition, the short amount of time he had to fire 3 rounds, the so called magic bullet results, poorly made ammunition, etc. Whether you believe it or not, the FACT is that “someone” did it and killed JFK with that crappy rifle. As far as the ammunition was concerned, it was made by Western. That company was owned by Winchester at the time. The people that site the Paraffin test as evidence that Oswald could not have fired a rifle that day are all full of it. Those tests were a complete joke back in those days and anyone that accepts Paraffin tests as proof one way or the other need to read the FACTS about those worthless tests.
Oswald pulled it off despite what anyone wants to believe.
Here’s why Oswald couldn’t have done it. The parade route kept changing depending on whether you read the Dallas Times Herald or the Dallas Morning News. Oswald, if acting alone, would have had no idea what the final parade route would have been in time to get access to a location to shoot the president.
In addition, with the rifle Oswald was accused of using to shoot the president, you cannot recycle it quickly enough to make those three shots. With each round, the chamber of the rifle heats-up and the bolt action jams. It really is a junk rifle. I own one and I’ve had all sorts of issues with the mechanics of the rifle. The scope was side mounted, not zeroed and Oswald was a mediocre shot. He wanted to be an important person. He was terribly disappointed when he returned from Russia that there was no press coverage. The Russian community in Dallas loved his wife but hated Oswald. My cello teacher, Lev Aronson met Oswald at a cocktail party in the Russian community and said there was something seriously wrong with him. Oswald’s politics were way off.
Great article, Paul Helinski. Your hang shot results though, are not unlike what Oswald would have experienced way back when. It wasn’t due to primer age. That’s how the shells worked when new! (That’s per the gunsmith who mounted the scope on “oswald’s” gun and demonstrated its operation to the authorities when visited soon after. He thought oswald got very, very lucky due to the hang shot nature.) Even the gun shop that sold the gun didn’t believe there were many other places than Chicago that you could buy ammo for that gun. That’s a big part of why the gun was so “humane”. It wasn’t the gun, it was the ammo. It’s okay for stationary targets, but that gun was **terrible** for moving targets. It’s much like the hang on older digital cameras where you “pull the trigger”, but by the time the shutter goes off your subject has moved entirely and you got a great shot of “your dog looking at this tail” when he was looking straight at you when you actually pushed the shutter button. In retrospect, we know the Oswald component was a complete crock and that it looks like he never fired a rifle that day, though it could be possible he fired a pistol. (Of which, I doubt as well.) Awesome article though. Thank you! (As a constructive suggestion, if you decide to update this some time) It would have been nice if you had posted the **original** ad for the gun, you’d see what Oswald’s other choices were and why he likely would NOT have selected a Carcano vs the gun he trained with and shot with extensively. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.
Just to make a point, it is said that the three shots from the carcano could not be fired accurately in the 6.8 seconds. However, at time 0 the first shot was taken and then there were 6.8 seconds to fire the next two. So divide the time by 2 not 3.
ALL:
A problem that far too many people make in the time firing sequence in te Nov 22, 1963 assassination is that the rifle shots were fired consistently one after another as ffast as the rifle could be fired, however, witnesses stated repeatedly that there was a ‘pause’ between the first shot and the second and third shots, they noted that shots two and three came after in succession after one another. So if this is and was the case of the second and third shots, then there was not a possibility of the one person being able to fire these last two shots from a bolt action rifle with any accuracy! Also it was noted that the later shots ‘sounded differently’ from the fire loud shot(s), thus indicating one of two possibilities: 1) a silencer was used for the last shots; 2) the last two shots came from a different location from the first shot. Something does not add up here.
Keep in mind that if Oswald did fire 3 rounds, one of them missed. This is why Arlen Specter had to come up with the magic bullet theory. Five eye-witnesses saw the bullet strike a curb, kicking-up concrete which nicked James Teague on the cheek. If you study the Zapruder film closely, you will see that JFK’s head moves forward and almost instantly is blown back and to the left. Also, the bullets that were fired from behind were full metal jackets and the shots from the front were hallow point. Did Oswald kill JD Tippet? Absolutely not. Witnesses say there were two men present when Tippet was shot and their descriptions don’t match Oswald. One of the men ran into a church and the police had it surrounded when the call came in about someone entering a movie theatre without paying. It’s impressive that 30 police officers responded to a call where a customer ducked out on a 75 cent movie. Now, that’s high crime if you ask me. (wink)
The carcano was a 6.5mm bullet
The head shot entry wound was 6 mm
And seems to have been disintegrating ammo
While three cartridges were found the seperate location of one of them may suggest it was used as a barrel plug in the breach end
So Oswald may have fired only two shots
Yes, disintegrating ammo for the head shot would have been my suspicion as well. The autposy doctors only found small metal splinters in the President’s brain and cavity area, so this further supports a fragmentig bullet, however, this would be at odds with the Warren report and rasie questions about this being a professional vice ‘nit job’ assassination.
A while back someone was talking about shooting through the tree or not. If you GOOGLE “AltgensPhoto.jpg” you will get the photo of the moment JFK reached up to grab his throat. Conally is just beginning to turn around. Now, look at the two Secret Service members directly behind JFK…they are looking directly to their right (not up), back toward the entrance of the TSBD building. Then look at the people on the side of the street (hard hat guy, four black people) they are looking back at the front entrance of the TSBD. No one is even looking up at the tree. Even if you could see through it…. Like they say a picture is worth a thousand words.
That link doesn’t show anything about a tree. It was a Texas Live Oak. It sheds it’s leaves the first week of March. So think about it…the first shot, which is the easiest because it’s the closest would have to pass through the foliage of the tree, hitting a moving target at 88 yards with a cheat 13-dollar, the world’s worst shoulder weapon. The FBI tried two sets of tests and not one of their sharpshooters could match Oswald’s performance. Not one.
The head of the ballistics lab (Simmons) testified that Oswald’s scope had to be shimmed before it could be tested. I was a gun nut in 1963 and I’m familiar with these weapons. The original scope mount was for 20mm scope tubes but the scope that was on Oswald’s rifle was .750″ in dia. which is about a millimeter smaller requiring shims so that the scope would not rotate or slide when the gun was fired. That was common. When Oswald’s rifle was found those who found it (Jim Craig) noted that “7.65 Mauser” was stamped on the barrel. The old surplus rifle barrels of the Carcano were changed at the factory to 7.35 X 51 and some importers changed the barrels to the 7.65 (8mm) Mauser to accommodate the more available ammunition. A 7.65 Mauser barrel could be screwed into the 6.5 receiver without changing the original bolt and using round shims to find the proper headspace. Even Walter Crankcase the anchor for CBS told the world that the rifle was a 7.65 Mauser for the first two days. The original rifle has never been tested for operation or accuracy. Oswald’s friend while in the service said that Oswald was a poor shot even after the FBI repeatedly tried to change his story. The Money order from Kliens was never deposited into a bank and therefore lacked the proper stamps to prove that it paid for the rifle Oswald was said to have ordered. Also,they only found Oswald’s palm print on the rifle after he was dead. The facts surrounding the rifle should be enough to prove that the rifle said to be Oswald’s did not kill Kennedy which in itself proves there was a conspiracy.
You are Parroting old information that was misinformation and just wrong. People talk about shims being needed to sight in the scope on Oswald’s rifle. There was a SIDE MOUNT scope on that Carcano rifle and I would BET that Oswald used the open sights instead of the scope. The longest shot was 88 yards, the earlier shots were closer, No need for a scope at that short range. I routinely get excellent shot groups at 100 yards with open sights on several rifles I use for target practice. No big deal,
People try to throw up road blocks as to why “someone” could not have done it alone, and I say Oswald did it. He had more than enough time to fire three shots and apparently the kahunas to commit such a tragic crime.
So, everyone thinks Oswald used the open sights because he had difficulty sighting in the side mounted scope and because this toy scope had such a narrow field of view,making tracking a moving target very difficult.
Contrary to the majority of you, I have actually fired a rifle with a side mounted scope; a Winchester Model 94 30-30. It was necessary to mount the scope on the left side of the receiver, as the Model 94 ejects empty cartridges upward, and a scope mounted over top of the receiver would interfere with this.
Two things you should know about side mounted scopes. It is extremely difficult to sight in a side mounted scope. It is also extremely awkward to use the open sights on the rifle with the eyepiece of the scope right up against your forehead. It is so awkward, anyone wishing to do some real shooting with this rifle would simply remove the scope.
Oswald had never owned a scoped rifle before, and there is no evidence he had any experience with rifle scopes in the USMC or elsewhere.
I, for one, do not believe he was capable of sighting in the scope on C2766, as even the FBI’s firearms expert, SA Robert A. Frazier, reported great difficulty sighting in this rifle. Therefore, it is painfully obvious that Oswald would have been immediately aware of the uselessness of this scope the first time he ever shot the rifle, and would likely have made all of his shots with open sights.
My question is this. If Oswald was aware of how useless the scope was, why did he not remove the scope before bringing the rifle to the TSBD? For that matter, if he was unable to sight the scope in, wouldn’t he have removed the scope months before the assassination? It is a simple matter of unscrewing three small screws with a flat bladed screwdriver.
I hate to burst your bubble. I purchased the rifle Oswald used and a period accurate scope. The gunsmith had to remove the back sites in order to mount the side scope. You can’t have both. He gave me a bag with the left-over parts.
Sorry, you are mistaking the 7.65 Mauser cartridge for the 7.92×57 (8mm) round. The Germans did rebarrel some Carcano rifles to 8mm. These were regarded as dangerous as the chamber pressure of the 8mm and 7.65 Mauser is much higher than the 6.5 Carcano. They were not used by front line troops. No US gunsmith would have done such a dangerous hack job.
8mm Mauser (7.92) round is too long to use the Carcano clip for loading. Has to be single loaded. This risks breaking the extractor.
I have no desire to enter the fray on the JFK assassination. My point has to do with the assertion in the original article that the Japanese Arisaka is a “rough working” rifle that “doesn’t function well”, like the Carcano. That is utter nonsense. I have personally owned a number of Type 99 (7.7mm) and Type 38 (6.5 mm) Arisakas and have fired them all on numerous occasions. My rifles have always been quite accurate ( < 2 MOA at 100 yards, iron sights) and incredibly reliable. I have never, EVER had an issue with an Arisaka action; they are flawless, and were by far the strongest of all the military bolt action rifles. The rifles built in the waning months of the war (the so-called "last ditch" Arisakas) were a little rough in comparison to the earlier models, but they were a small percentage overall of the rifles built.
All it takes is a sniper rifle or electric airsoft guns and a weekend getaway with friends is off to a good
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with any product for making money online, if you don’t do any work
or quit after a few days, you will not generate profits.
Could this be that too many people are using Georges system.
there was a divot on the ground now paved over, but James Teagues facial wounds are evidence enough. the first shot simply missed.
The 1st shot deflected off of the traffic light standard just below the SBDB right above where the car made the turn onto Elm St. The deflected bullet hit a curb further on and disintegrated spraying James Teague. Since 2001, in the modern digital era, many forensic studies have been done using ultra high resolution cgi mapping and depiction, synched up with all available recorded sound and video data of Dealey Plaza that day. It all confirms. Plus, artificial cadaver models were constructed and shot at from the same geolocated dimensions and weather conditions. All confirmed. They were even able to reproduce the “magic bullet”. Some people may have said they heard 4 shots. High decibel rifle shots echoing off the buildings on Houston St. Most witnesses said..”yes, three shots..right from up there”. Oswald was just some crank who wanted to kill the president.
You are utterly wrong about Oswald. There have been reports that it was Elvis Presley himself who shot president Kennedy. It is more believable that it was Presley than Oswald.
Okay,,,,I didn’t want to say it but, the ‘real shooter was Lee Harvey Osmond’, Donnie and Marie’s demented uncle…
IF LHO was Left Handed as has been stated here, why is he wearing his revolver on the RIGHT in the picture published by ‘Life’? Hmmm?
The most ludicrous part of the faked photo is the contorted pose in the photo. Under what scenario would a person strike such a pose.
I shoot long gun exclusively left handed but handgun exclusively right handed.
In this test shooting pigs, did you happen to recover a spent round that went into and out of the pig and remained in near pristine condition without even a trace amount of pig blood on it?
There are many half-truths and outright falsehoods in many of the posts above. First, Oswald got the job at the depository 6 weeks before the assassination. He never at any time sought the job himself; rather, Ruth Paine, who was Marina Oswald’s roommate/landlady, advised Oswald that a job was available. (interestingly, Ruth Paine spoke fluent Russian and set Oswald up with oil millionaire-geologist George DeMorensheldt who befriended Oswald and took quite an interest in the minimum wage worker. George D. committed suicide when he was supposed to testify at the House Assassination Committee Hearing in the late 1970’s)…Oswald tested positive for nitrate on his hands; negative for nitrates on his cheek. Most all of the workers at the depos. would have tested positive for nitrates on their hands because the books they handled gave off this chemical …Are we supposed to believe that when the Dallas newspapers printed the motorcade route on Nov. 19, LHO, who never sought the job himself at the depository, suddenly decided, “Well, since the President is coming through, I might as well assassinate him.” (?)…But all this is just the tip of the iceberg. The linchpin for a conspiracy is the autopsy. It was corrupt from stem to stern. If you study it without any previous bias, you will be appalled.
Dennis, right on. So OZswald just happened to:
– Have gotten a job at the depository that just happened to be loacted along the motor route.
– He just ahppened to order a rifle and pistol for the express purpose of harming a top US official.
– He just happened to defect to the USSR and renounce his US citizenship and threaten to reveal US miltary sercetes at the height of the Cold War.
– He married a Russian lady, who said he spoke Russian with a fluency, although he had only studies Russian language recording while in the Marines.
– He got back into the USA with help from the US Embassy and State Dept and he was even loaned money back for the plane ticket and not monitored or arrested by US Feds after arriving back in the USA.
– He deliberatley gets himself noticed on TV filming a pro-Castro hand-out stunt.
– He is indigent, but has money to travel to Mexico and other US cities.
– He is found clam and he was not sweating immedialetly after the three shots are fired, a police officer found Oswald and a co-worker eating in the School Depository lunch room as if nothing had happened.
Edmund
Once again you are Posting incorrect information. For example, you said that Oswald was found eating lunch with another employee at the 2nd floor lunchroom..Do your home work man. Dallas Police Officer Marian Baker and Supervisor Roy Truly were making their way up the steps in the southwest corner of the School Book Depository when Baker saw Oswald through the glass window in the outside door of that lunch room as Oswald was walking INTO the room. There was no one else in the lunch room except Oswald, who was just walking in, when Baker came across Oswald. After Oswald was arrested, he claimed that he was eating lunch with two other workers in the first floor “domino room” when he decided to go to the 2nd floor lunch room and get a Coke. The other employees later denied that were having lunch with Oswald. By the way, Oswald preferred Dr. Pepper, which was available in the first floor Pepsi machine. Oswald was liar and a murderer.
Bit hesitant to print my comment regarding the Pevi Partizan ammunition? We both know your Carcano could not achieve a fraction of the accuracy you claim, shooting these under sized bullets.
They shoot just fine but we’ll do a followup article on it as well.
No, the Prvi Partizan ammo does not shoot “just fine” in a 6.5mm Carcano. The bullets are too small in diameter and too short compared to what the Carcano requires. Why are you telling us this nonsense?
Well geez that must’ve been another gun then. What do you think we faked the test results just to sell more Prvi Partizan ammo to unsuspecting Carcano owners? Oh no its maybe a conspiracy to get potential political assassins to use Carcanos with “faulty” ammo? Yea that’s it!
No, you are just another shill on an agenda. Yours is a somewhat unique approach, though.
Editor sir:
Correct me if I am wrong but, did you state that you used Prvi Partizan 6.5mm Carcano cartridges loaded with 123 grain soft point bullets for both sighting this rifle’s scope in and for shooting wild pigs?
yep
Wow. Unbelieveable as to the mis-information going on here. We all want believe a conspiracy existed because to believe otherwise, that Oswald was the lone gunman, is to accept that a total loser could take down the most powerful man in the world. Well, folks, sorry to say, be he did…………..Alone.
Fact; The gun was purchased by Oswald
Fact; Oswald’s rifle, the Carcano, was found on the 6th floor
Fact; Eye witnesses pointed him out in a line up as the person in the 6th story window, holding and firing a rifle.
Fact; 80% recall 3 shots
Fact; 3 workers below on the fifth floor heard 3 shell casings hitting the floor above them
Fact; 3 shell casings found
Fact; Oswald fled the scene
Fact; Eye witnesses identified Oswald as the killer of J.D. Tippet
Fact; The entry wound in Conally was oblong……….indicating the bullet was deflected.
Fact; The bullet was full metal jacket….tests proved this round will not distort after passing through human tissue
Fact; The relative positions of Kennedy and Conally support the second shot caused the neck wound in Kennedy and all wounds in Conally.
Fact; Most shooters, using the Carcano, did accomplish the same acuracy in 8 seconds
Fact; The Zapruder film shows Kennedy’s head moving forward prior to backward
Fact; Not one shred of tangible evidence exists for a second shooter. None.
I could go on and on…………..but both the Warren Commission and the HSCA concluded Oswald shot three times. The accoustic “evidence” that supported a second shooter has been repeatedly rebuked by better technology.
In summary, Oswald is gulty not just beyond reasonsable doubt, but beyond all doubt. Anything else is just fantasy. He, and he alone, killed President Kennedy. It’s just hard to accept, but most times, the simple answer is the truth.
Fact 3 workers heard three shell casings hit the floor above them. Fact. hmmm.. so how thick was the floor of the TSBD? 1/2 inch? 1/4 inch? I will bet you dollars to donuts that if you drop three full shells, the whole cartridge with powder and bullet from 4 feet up, that they cannot hear it in the apartment downstairs. Now add gunfire, and industrial floors with steel cross beams of 18 inches and 1.5 foot thick ceilings, insulation and wooden 3 by 6’s with plywood floors. You gonna hear those cases drop above gunfire, crowd noises, motorcycles and motorcade traffic? huh? That is all government made up stuff. Every time they trot out those black kids they say, now billy bob, you know what we do to communists don’t you? black communists? And you don’t want to see your family die in a nuclear war do you? How does this stack of 100’s look to you? Gollee Mr. Secret Service agent, yes I be loyal as alllll get out… my mother is sick though.. and yes that looks fine.. well I remember those shell casings yessireee! And we know he done it right. sure.. so no I never had lunch until 12:25 with no nigger hating cracker like Lee Oswald. I never knowed he wuz planning to start a revolution with all of us blacks going back to slavery, but he was clever yes.. why I would love a full time job at double the pay.. yes I heard them shells go clunk clunk clunk just like that. Clear as day.
Very good observation on this accord. So they were watching the President get shot and they also had the attention of mind to specifically recall three falling shell casing that fell upon a thick floor in a building which had open windows and a lot of noise emulating from outside and inside.
Chris——–When you refer to Oswald as a “total loser” you are tainting and destroying any credibility and unbiased reporting. Lets take a stroll down memory lane and look at Mr. Oswald.
Lee joined the Marine Corps when he was 17 and underage of normal induction. He was full of spirit and wanted to serve his country. Going through boot camp was his only downfall. He had a great deal of trouble passing the Marksmanship test. He had to take the test several times to pass, and even when he did, it was by only 1 point. Lee heard about a position in Air Traffic Control and thought that would be something he could do. Lee wasn’t a very physical guy, and tried to use his head rather than his hands. Part of the requirement of ATC was they wanted someone who could speak the Russian language. Lee practiced night and day. To accelerate his studies, the MC sent him to the Monterray School of Language. He later served at El Toro Marine Air Station in California. From here he was sent to Astugi Japan for work on the most secret program the military had. He would be guiding the U2 spy plane across Russia. Besides ATC skills, he also held Top Secret security clearance. Lee had a lot of responsibility ridding on his shoulders and he took his job with great seriousness.
Months went by and Lee grew tired of the work. He wanted something different. Something more challenging. It’s believed the CIA contacted him and talked him into taking a spy trip to the Russia. This would be a secret trip and he would be working as a spy. Obiviously not a job for a “loser.”
The CIA was trying to get a Russian Army officer to defect to the United States. The Russian solder was hesitant because if he decided to defect and move to America, he wanted to bring his niece with him. Enter: Lee Oswald. Lee and the Russian Officer’s neice were introduced. The two young people got married and both of them moved to the U.S.A. As did the Russian officer. Lee was being a good soldier and a good spy. The operation was a success. The young married couple left Russia for their new home in Dallas, Texas. The rest is history.
Lee Oswald was anything but a loser. While back in the states, Lee also worked as a FBI confidential agent. He and his FBI handler worked on an investigation of purchasing firearms through the mail. Lee purchased guns through the mail so the FBI could build a case against the practice. Once again, Lee was a good soldier. He followed instructions and did what he was told. He had a future working in the intelligence world. Hardly a “loser.”
Before condemning someone, try educating yourself.
The idea that a marine would be guiding a CIA aircraft across Russia is ridiculous. The U2 would not need anyone to guide it other than the pilot. The pilot knows exactly where he is going and no ground-pounding marine would have anything to say about it.
Oswald wasn’t a ground pounding marine, he was a radar op at Atsugi, which was an intelligence HQ since the end of WWII.
Oswald tracked U2s and other US aircraft, as well as Chinese and Russian flights within range of their state-of-the-art microwave radar system. You can look that all up by the way….There’s a little thing called the internet if you can pull yourself away from your can of Pabst….
Oswald was not “guiding” the U-2 across Russia. He was “plotting” the plane across Russia. “Plotting” is similar to tracking the plane so his superiors could see that the plane was, indeed, a spy plane, and it was traveling over Russia.
Rob
No PFC Marine gets sent to Monteray Language School for their first tour! Going to the DLI as it is called now, is a reward for doing a good first tour and showing promise to be a career Marine. If he was in fact assigned as a U2 ground guidance personnel, that job rrequires very high clearance levels and when he went to defect to Russia, that information would be worth a mint to them. Yet he does not divulge it and he gets accepted back to the USA after renouncing his citizenship and bring back a Russian wife whose in-laws were with the KGB. It does not add up!
Oswald held the highest security clearance in the Military. His assignment was that of an ATC. Air Traffic Controller. His training was that of an ATC. Oswald never “renounced” his citizenship. His trip to Russia was a secret assignment from the FBI. His job was to convince Marina’s uncle to emigrate to the USA. In order to get Marina to help in Lee’s asssignment, he befriended her and struck up a romantic relationship. She helped him to convince her uncle to defect from the Russian military and travel to the States. The plan worked. In fact, it worked so well, Marina and Lee ended up married to each other.
Bob:
Good points. Oswald and all of his former USSR history and his Fair Play for Cuba, made the perfect cover operation for Oshald to eventually make a defection to Cuba as the perfect undercover operative, yet there was a far bigger role for him to play in addition to this cover story, being a patsy.
Buddy, Get out of here! I lived right across the river from Nellie and Connally till 1989 and John knows who shot him! I could go on and on and on to about the director of the FBI his connections, Dennis is correct about the autopsy and photos, why ted never ran for president. a lot of stuff is sealed til their all dead and I am left handed, douche bag, beyond a reasonable doubt
The Zapruder film shows everybody in the car moving forward after the fatal shot momentarily. The driver may have applied the breaks momentarily. As JFK was already weak after the first shot he moves forward even more by comparison but everybody in the car move forward. The fatal shot had to come from the front.
I would like to further add that as JFK’s hands were raised up at the time of fatal final shot then at that time even the slightest application of breaks by the car would make his body move forward more than the other occupants in the car as his bodys center of gravity was higher at that time relative to the others.
Chris
Thank you for your most ACCURATE Post. Don’t pay attention to the people that are still beating the conspiracy drum after more than 52 years. No proof, no evidence, no smoking gun, no “Nuttin”. Give it up people, its way old.
Oswald was the assassin,period. No, I don’t like it either, but that is a FACT.
One shot hit Kennedy in the back, 2nd shot in the head, 3rd shot hit a motorcycle policeman, 4th shot remained in
Govenor Connellys body.
what about the eyewitnesses who saw puffs of smoke and even smelled gunpowder coming from the grassy knoll many were not called to tell their truth to the ill conceived warren commission
The witnesses, some extremely credible, weren’t called because the didn’t fit the WC lone gunman fiction.
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I found the article very informative but I also disagree with some points of the article.
one the design of the model 1891 carcano , is in fact based on a Ferdinand von Mannlicher design, the Italian government purchased the copy rights and blue prints for the German model 1888 Commission Rifle, this rifle and B lue Prints were given to an Italian Army officer, who used them as a guide line and inspiration , his name was Carcano to design his rifle.
While it is true that in that time period Mannlicher designed and worked on straight pull designs and he developed the enbloc clip system that carcano used, he had to meet certain requests for the commission so he designed a turn bolt , I think it was based on the Mauser model 1871 Design.
The reason the Mannlicher enbloc clip system held one fewer cartridge than the carcano was they used 7,92×57 i.e. 8mm rounds, the carcano used the 6,5×52 cartridge.
next the author stated that the Italians made a small batch of 6,5 caliber rifles instead of the 7,35 caliber. this is incorrect.
The 6,5×52 Carcano cartridge development most like started development in the 1880’s they were looking for a reduced felt recoil so the average solider could hit his mark, this cartridge was adopted by the Italian Army in 1891 along with the carano model 1891 rifle and carbine and saw service in a number of wars including world war 1 and up through the 1930’s if you will, it made use of a fmj 162 grain round nose bullet, in the 1930’s Italy made a decision to swap calibers and go to the 7,35 carcano cartridge, this cartridge makes use of spritzer bullets, the ball load was 128 grains, and I suspect the 7,35 carcano makes use of the older 6,5×52 cartridge case.
rifles chambered for the 7,35 were referred to as the model 38 carcano, in power they are between a 30-30 and a 300savage. because of major military activity breaking out, Italy stopped the switch over and retained the old 6,5×52 carcano cartridge instead.
I will also disagree with the assessment that this is a poor rifle that is not the case, it was designed to be rugged and reliable, it was designed for the infantryman to use, it was not meant to be a sniper rifle or a rifle to be used with a telescopic sight. and it served this function well when properly used as designed.
The same is also true of most Japanese army rifles, I have one that was designed to a sniper rifle it was drilled and tapped, the scope and mount was removed years ago and some one cut the barrel, but the action is smooth.
it just depends on model and year of production.
As per Oswald’s records on shooting with the USMC.
the author is also incorrect, he stated Oswald shot twice and was recorded a marksmen.
When he was in bootcamp he expanded 449 rounds of ball ammunition on the rifle range and was given a score of 219 but he was given the lower grade which I think is marksmen.
at the end of his stay in the marine corps he expanded around 229 rounds of ball ammunition and he received a score of around 119 if I remember correctly and was given the lower mark, of marks men, the higher mark is I believe (Expert).
The Warren Commission requested the Oswald scores from the Marine Corps and the officer who saw this recorded thought there was an incorrect mark given to Oswald for the bootcamp score, so he corrected it,
The question is out there what if Oswald’s numeric score from boot camp was the type -o ?
one of Oswald’s sergeants stated in an interview that Oswald was always being reprimanded about the condition of his piece and would always get Maggie drawers on the rifle range.
In 1957 Pfc Oswald accidently shot himself he had a loaded M1911 service side arm with a 22 caliber conversion kit installed the magazine was fully loaded and a round chambered, it was on the shelf in his locker, he stated he went to retrieve his shaving gear when he bumped the pistol, it fell out of his locker and hit the deck and discharged a projectile struck pfc Oswald in the upper left arm just above the elbow.
Pfc Oswald was court martialed for this offense and he was also court martialed two other times and was given a dishonorable discharge from the marine Corps and he was demoted.
April of 1963 Oswald attempts to murder one General Edward Walker means attempted sniping with said Carcano rifle distance 100 feet General walker usa forced retirement is sitting in a stationary position the bullets mark hits high just above General walkers head.
The Carcano will do te job. no question. If it doesn’t jam. If the ammo does not misfire. If shots are no more than 2.5 seconds apart. Now let’s see. If is a big word isn’t it. Now considering that Lee could have bought a Mark III 303 with Tasco scope for $44.95 or a SMLE 1917 30-06 for about the same price, mounted with a scope — two of the finest rifles and fastest firing [20 to 30 shots [accurate to 200 yards] — per minute].. EVER MADE. — From the SAME CATALOG the cheap and crappy Carcano — these fine rifles were advertised in Klein’s… he did choose rather wisely didn’t he. As a sniper the first time he shot that Modelo 91 at the Texas range he would have known his lone nut goose was overcooked. and someone showed him how to sight the scope. Uh huh. With a crescent wrench, + bore sighting and brass shims too? No probs. They had about 1 hour as skilled gunsmiths to lend their paid range time, being at the next shooting booth. Sure. No probs. Thanks CIA placed experts. And nice to have a record of it all that people would remember. Nice to have you there when a poor lone assassin needs you. But Lee Bowers and just about every other of the 31 ear witnesses heard 3 OR 4 shots with two of them coming about 1/2 a second apart. As Bowers said, like two closely spaced raps on a table. Tap, tap. He shows this in a televised interview. A few others said from different places at DEALEY PLAZA.. the same thing! the 2nd and 3rd or 3rd and 4th shots, came “right on top of each other”. Now if one of the shots were an echo, why didn’t the echo sound different for each ear witness. And why did not ALL the shots echo in the same way? No, there were 4 shots + alright. One missed and ricochet cause James McTeague to get hit, and one went into Kennedy’s back, one went into his throat in the front, one went into Connally, and one went into Kennedy’s skull, let’s say. But was it from the front or the back, or both? 5 or 6 shots. For a wild theory, Kennedy was killed by a Cabal of military personnel who thought his CIA dissolution policy would put the cold war into a losing position vis a vis disarmament, which they believed had to proceed with all deliberate speed and which Kennedy wanted to do tomorrow.
I found the article very informative but I also disagree with some points of the article.
one the design of the model 1891 carcano , is in fact based on a Ferdinand von Mannlicher design, the Italian government purchased the copy rights and blue prints for the German model 1888 Commission Rifle, this rifle and B lue Prints were given to an Italian Army officer, who used them as a guide line and inspiration , his name was Carcano to design his rifle.
While it is true that in that time period Mannlicher designed and worked on straight pull designs and he developed the enbloc clip system that carcano used, he had to meet certain requests for the commission so he designed a turn bolt , I think it was based on the Mauser model 1871 Design.
The reason the Mannlicher enbloc clip system held one fewer cartridge than the carcano was they used 7,92×57 i.e. 8mm rounds, the carcano used the 6,5×52 cartridge.
next the author stated that the Italians made a small batch of 6,5 caliber rifles instead of the 7,35 caliber. this is incorrect.
The 6,5×52 Carcano cartridge development most like started development in the 1880’s they were looking for a reduced felt recoil so the average solider could hit his mark, this cartridge was adopted by the Italian Army in 1891 along with the carano model 1891 rifle and carbine and saw service in a number of wars including world war 1 and up through the 1930’s if you will, it made use of a fmj 162 grain round nose bullet, in the 1930’s Italy made a decision to swap calibers and go to the 7,35 carcano cartridge, this cartridge makes use of spritzer bullets, the ball load was 128 grains, and I suspect the 7,35 carcano makes use of the older 6,5×52 cartridge case.
rifles chambered for the 7,35 were referred to as the model 38 carcano, in power they are between a 30-30 and a 300savage. because of major military activity breaking out, Italy stopped the switch over and retained the old 6,5×52 carcano cartridge instead.
I will also disagree with the assessment that this is a poor rifle that is not the case, it was designed to be rugged and reliable, it was designed for the infantryman to use, it was not meant to be a sniper rifle or a rifle to be used with a telescopic sight. and it served this function well when properly used as designed.
The same is also true of most Japanese army rifles, I have one that was designed to a sniper rifle it was drilled and tapped, the scope and mount was removed years ago and some one cut the barrel, but the action is smooth.
it just depends on model and year of production.
I have been following very much of the input in response to the question. The responses have covered a very wide range of concerns. I would like to make a few comments and these comments are observations that I have made and even some that I witnessed.
1. All of the members of the Warren Commission were not at any time assigned the task of finding out ‘who-dun-it’. Their ‘Charter’ only required that they provide evidence and a conclusion that Lee H. Oswald was the assassin. Therefore they were ‘honorable and patriotic men’. They did what they were told. Interesting that the head of the nations, crime network, J. Edgar Hover, was not selected; but the head of the banking community was.
2. I personally watched the ‘Senate Select Committee on Assassinations’ on public television. I was watching the night that the retired Director Richard Helms was asked if Lee Oswald worked for the CIA. His response was one of surprise. He said that that information had been passed on years earlier. When asked a second time, he said that Lee Oswald did work for the CIA. From that bit of information it is not practical to presume that there was an ‘agency’ involvement. If what I am saying is true, it only means ‘To some degree Lee Oswald had a relationship with the CIA’.
I BELIEVE that initially, Lee Oswald had been sent to Russia to create a trail of resentment toward the U.S.A.. Since this was after the Missile Crisis the Russian government played along and supplied Lee Oswald with a wife to further ‘complicate’ his American ties. He may have never known what he was on board to carry out, but he was probably being groomed to assassinate Fidel Castro or become a decoy. That would be, at the very least, possible. There was a plot in the works to carry out that mission. Lee Oswald may have been groomed and instructed to slowly work his way to Cuba. The problem is that while he was in Russia, the order came down from the White House to cancel any such project and suddenly the CIA has a loyal shooter, with nothing to do. Suddenly he finds himself back in the U.S.of A. with a wife and 2 kids and a neighbor that speaks Russian. I wonder how many Russian speaking women lived in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area in 1963. I wonder how Lee Oswald with NO money could afford to live in a neighborhood where his neighbor works for Bell Helicopter and has a Russian speaking wife.
3. Commission’s in this country work behind closed door’s. The current president said in public that he intends to use more ‘Commission’s’. When Richard Nixon realized that things were not going well for him and his administration, he requested that it be handled by a ‘Commission’. Commission’s operate without any media interference. After the Warren Commission report was completed one of the members publicly began to express disappointment with the Commission’s conclusion. On a late night T.V. show, where he appeared he stated, while I was watching, that the commission members rarely showed up for meetings and when they did, the conversation was generally focused around their vacation’s, family’s and golf games. He declared it a farce. He died in a plane crash a short time later. He, in my opinion was truly an American patriot.
4. An interesting observation that I have made over the years, is that all along the parade route traveled by the president while in Dallas, there are many people on the street. In some cases 3 to 5 rows deep along the parade route. I think that it is very unique that once the motorcade turns in front of the School Book Depository the crowd is abruptly thinned down to a few spectator’s. The spectator’s are lining the street along the path that the presidential motorcade did NOT take; and only a few realized that the course had changed just a short time before. The shooter or shooter’s were aiming into an area that presented minimal risk to citizen’s. This is visible on many many pictures. There’s no one in the line of fire. Incredible that Oswald could be so considerate. He picked a place to get a job that would not present a hazard to the crowds. But as it also turns out; there were that many fewer camera’s clicking and that was the best reason to keep the crowds away.
5.
There was not one top forensic expert on the Commission, all were politicians, judges, or lawyers- all professions that do no see things in the logic of black and white but only shades of gray.
He also got the job in the book warehouse BEFORE the White House even announced a fall Southern trip and, considering the route wasn’t even decided on until 2 days previous, he got his job a full month before anyone knew what the route would be. So he was also physic.
Now you guys knows about Lee Harvey Oswald did something else happened to them?…..yeah…..because he was out in the war in Vietnam as a sniper rifleman during the war…..but he was marked after he was recalled from the colonial office…..and he was acquitted from the US army after the war……but then after the war is end and he left it out on his way Russia to visited his first time ever seen a woman like this…..but he was married in Russia with his first wife and came out of Russia on their way to USA in 1961……but he was trying to killed the president of the united states in the first place……with that god damn rifle ever seen like this 6.5 mm Carcano rifle where he was already bought it from Kleins gunshop in the states else where……oh man he was really damn crazy…..because you know why he did??…..as a matter of fact that he killed the president kennedy 3 times shot at him in the black lincoln car with his wife Jackie and rush him to the hospital in Dallas Texas on November 22nd 1963……but connelly got shot wound after that……BUT there is something else that you DID not knows what is happening in the first place before Oswald got shot before that……it was George hickam shot at the president’s head when he turned around out of the second black car in the first place BEFORE Oswald shot at him the second time and the third and then rush it out of the way as soon as possible on their way to the Dallas Hospital and put him to the autopsy office during the investigations with the FBI involved……and then the FBI took him out of the autopsy room on their way back to the dallas air force base and flew it back to Washington D.C. then…….and they took his aluminum casket carried out of the plane on their way to morgue for another investigations again……but the FBI did a stupid thing to do when they refused to fixed it up for his wife to struggled it all out of him for good……but Jack ruby the next day he shot at Oswald 5 times and then Jack Ruby was arrested for 1st degree murder and then he went to prison for 25 years in jail after he was found guilty of murder of Lee Harvey Oswald after he was released from the Dallas police department just before that Jack shot at him in the underground parking lot before they leaves on his way prison for life term, but unfortunately he was killed in 5 mins……and this is NOOO BLOODY thing to do……:)
Now my comment is gong to be more to a single point. The damage done to then President John F. Kennedy, and then Governor Connoly. It has been stated here already that the bullet used from this weapon to shoot Kennedy would have made a more penetrating wound, such as the one that went through Kennedy’s neck and into then governor Connolly. It intrigues me that if the said kill shot came from the same weapon, using the same projectile,that the the damage caused is so much different. The right side of Kennedy’s head was blown completely out, along with anything contained just inside while the first projectile remained intact, slightly deformed, and left no explosive wound on either victim. The entrance holes were measured to be of a different diameter giving rise to a still debated question of a smaller caliber, more explosive round, say a hollow point boat tail round coming from a .223 weapon, and fired from a different angle than the first shot that hit both Kennedy and Connolly. Let’s just say for argument’s sake, from the FBI vehicle trailing the then President’s Limo. Conspiracy theories will abound forever. this is just one of many other plausible theories out there, and one that has been debated publicly and on the Television air waves.
The premise that the Secret Service Agent in the car behind JFK’s accidentally firing his AR-15 and making the head shot makes more sense then Oswald did it. The bullet that hit Kennedy in the head disintegrated – something that the 6.5 MM FMJ round that Oswald shot simply would not do. Also the hole in JFK’s head was 6mm in size – a bullet does not make a smaller whole then it’s size – but a smaller bullet would make a larger hole thus 5.56MM makes a 6MM hole. And since the Secret Service controlled the autopsy of JFK they could cover up the fact that their agent killed Kennedy ! We will never know the truth !
FAAQ2
Provide 1 single fact that supports the SS agent killed Kennedy. Any high speed bullet can and will cause disintegration of a skull. It’s a factor of hydrostatic pressure…….shockwave. It’s been emphatically proven in test after test. Provide the fact that states the entrance would was 6mm in size. The SS did not control the autopsy. The Navy doctor Humes did. I mean c’mon. Your claims have zero basis in FACT.
In a car traveling in the motorcade about two or three vehicles behind the President, a passenger reported that he definitely smelled gun smoke during the assassination. How could Oswald be the only shooter? Someone discharged a firearm from the Secret Service chase car, accidentally striking Kennedy. I believe this is why we have the strange behavior/ procedures from the Secret Service immediately after the ambush. When the motorcade came under fire, it reacted by speeding up to quickly attempt to leave the danger zone. An agent with the AR-15 fell backwards from the unexpected acceleration while having his finger on the trigger. A freak mishap led to a killing blow from behind that destroyed the brain of President Kennedy.
Differ. Brown organic material flows down hill. The CIA was pulling the strings of the SS, FBI, and some rogue military officers. I’ve seen in one or more of the books I’ve read witnesses stated the posterior head wound was around 6mm. And the only firearm know to be in that area that was in 5.56×45 was the SS AR15.
Never understood the criticisms of Oswalds Carcano. Mine is identical and with correct lube and minimal care they are very accurate, those that have never shot one can’t seem to believe the relatively light recoil and fast short barrel handling. Carcano bolts are notoriously sticky in unlubed unissued condition. But working that bolt for awhile solves this… don’t know if Oswald got any real fire practice time with his Carcano if he did, he could master excellent shot placement with the first few clips.
Don’t seem to matter much,if it took Oswald 2 seconds or 2 minutes, through leaves or not, perfect bullet after passing through clothes and body tissue. One thing is for sure Kennedy is dead and aint never coming back. All we will ever know is what we know today. Draw your own conclusions, like buttholes everybodys got one.
Thanks to topknife and his 11-17 post of the link below.
http://www.longislandfirearms.com/forum/index.php?app=core&module=attach§ion=attach&attach_id=20446
I was 23 at the time of JFK’s assassination and was en route home when I heard the news broadcast. I have read most of the books published over the years including Mortal Error. I believe all have something to contribute (even Garrison) however the encapsulation by Orr seems to me the best and most logical of all. I believe the answers to exactly what happened in Dallas that fate full day are in the physical evidence/forensics. Some interesting thoughts on jfklancer.com re/angles and blood spatter although she thinks the killing shot came from the right front quadrant as JFK was facing at that moment…. For those who think it’s old news//crap/give it a rest/–please find another blog. No one forces you to read it. You are entitled to your opinion though….
Fair winds to all….
I was 11yrs old when JFK was murdered in Dallas.The first rifle found was supposedly Oswald,s.A day or two later,another rifle was found on the roof of the Texas School Book Depository Bldg.I asked my Uncle when he came home from work about, How many guns do you need to shoot one man ? He said, Why do you ask ? I said, They have found two rifles at the School Book Depository.He said, You”re an amazing boy Charlie. I think Oswald was either framed or there was two shooters. This would mean that it may have been a conspiracy to kill the President.Today,You only hear about one rifle,Oswalds. What happened to the high powered German Mauser that was found ? I later found out that Officer Roger Craig found a German Mauser near the window. The name German Mauser was printed on the gun.
I heard that story too. The other rifle was the USA WW II 30.06 Johnson semi-auto rifle tthat had a removable barrel and it was noted to be super accurate. I never heard anthing else about that rifle and who was its owner. Rifles that the Johnson are not merely left lying atop the roof of a building in Dallas.
Thanks again for an excellent article… I just noticed the editor… Paul Helinski… thank you Paul and please continue your comparison work on these concerns.
I have heard enough of the reflect crap (you people are parrots) and the so called magic bullet (nonsense)…. Connally was holding his hat in his right hand..at his hospital interview he states he was turning left, when he was hit. Nellie tells us he turned right; she said this back then 1963 and now. Her husband years later says right. Well they are both right, because first he did turn right but couldn’t see…then he turned forward and attempted to turn to his left…Kennedy was already hit at this time…with arms raised and hands near his throat…then Connally was hit as he himself stated. I am not going to argue the sequence of shots (bullets had been coming from every direction as the live testimony states) So now you have to come with the bullet hole in the front window; the bullet which stuck the partition; the one that hit the curb; the crumbled up bullet found on the floor pad under the left jump seat (Nellie’s’ seat) and the pristine bullet found at the hospital (you know the one fully intact) Plus the bullet hole in Jacks neck, the bullet hole in his back and the one in his head. It was all so easy with only three bullets!.. In fact within 12 seconds ( and before the limo ever reached the Parkland Hospital) the “three bullet” attack on the motorcade had been made known across national news. Yes indeed 12.5 seconds to be exact; then 45 minutes later it was totally solved. No matter how brilliant the Dallas Police Department claims themselves to be, it simply is not that easy. Finally, the only fingerprint lifted on the six floor; does not belong to Oswald. So you might want to read the sworn affidavit regarding this finger print issue. Then we have the change of weapons from a 7.65 Mauser, changed to a 6.5 Cacano Italian Rifle. Here we have two rifles both identified by experts. We also have a dead Dallas Deputy Sheriff; who committed suicide; so let us not forget this poor soul, and his given testimony. “GUNS AMERICAN” …THANK YOU FOR YOUR ARTICLE HERE… I HOPE YOU WILL CONTINUE WITH THESE CONCERNS ABOUT THE RIFLES; GOVERNMENT EXHIBITS; AND related AMMO used…. WE NEED YOUR EXPERT ADVICE…some of the bullets just don’t fit the gun barrels…Nellie Connally said she does not care what the Warren Commission has said, she was in the car, and she knows what she had seen. It’s a cross-fire-assassination; therefore a known conspiracy; which are the conclusion results of the 1997 investigation. With no attempts for any possible arrests; no further investigations any other persons; who may well have been involved. Course there is Clay Shaw, who comes out NOT GUILTY and then can’t be held accountable for his perjury committed.
What I have wondered, is why a sniper, that has plans to kill the President of the US, would buy a $19 rifle, that he would have no background on. Would he not of at least bought a gun he was familiar with, from his military background? How did the Dallas police wrap the murder up so quickly? They had the gun and the suspect within hours. History well documents that Johnson the VP hated the Kennedys. They were Catholic, rich,popular, well educated and in a class he could only dream of, but more importantly he hated their social democratic views, as he was against the advance of communist, and wanted war. Within 4 days after Kennedys death he signed a referendum that changed the course of America.
If you want to find a conspiracy in the murder of President Kennedy, it was the Texan VP Johnson, who had connections to control the Dallas Police, and the outcome. Oswald was just a pawn.
In a criminal murder, the detectives always looks at: motive, ability/means and who will profit the most. LBJ fits all three criteria. However, it you instead call this an assassination, then you can easily focus on the lone nut case, which in America is the type of person who commits these acts. SO choose between LBJ or Oswald. Given the politics in te world today, it’s not hard to find the logical answer.
I’m far more inclined to go with the scenario presented in the movie “JFK” than anything the government says. We know how trustworthy they are, right? I’ve shot a 6.5 Carcano exactly once, and thought it was junk. I’d disagree with the writer’s comments on the Arisaka, however; the model 38’s (not the later ones) were excellent. P>O> Ackley tested every bolt-action rifle he could find (Enfield, Springfield, etc.) and the Arisaka was the only one he couldn’t blow up, no matter how hard he tried. He then offered Arisaka’s rebarreled to .308; I had one, and it was excellent in every way. Oh, I hear that there’s an old joke in the Marine Corps: “Who was the greatest marksman in history? Lee Harvey Oswald. He shot two people with one bullet, and didn’t even deform the bullet.”
Again look at the head wound. All witnesses ,doctors included mention a gaping huge hole in the right back side of Kennedy’s head. If the shot had come from the rear his face would be missing, the wounds tell the story. There is no doubt in my mind that there was a conspiracy here. Bobby Kennedy was also assassinated because he was a carbon copy of his brother and would have probably been elected president. The powers on high knew there would be big changes made to their powers and silenced him as well.
Back in the day ( Just Before Kennedy was Shot) these Rifles came into the Country by the Ship-Loads. My dad got one from K-marts for $12 or $13 dollars. What I always Questioned is this : Why would a man use on Old WW-2 Army Rifle to Take-out Kennedy ? I would want The Best Rifle Made! Not some WW2 rifle (Many of these 6.5mm were wore-out juke). Kennedy Was the Leader of the Most Powerful country on Earth, and I just have a Hard-time believing Any man would Try this with on old Army Rifle.
If you have interest and you get a chance, go to youtube check out the words Zapruder Film High Quality Slow Motion (Higher Quality). Download it and look at it frame by frame. Check out Fame 223 and 224. Go back and forth between those two frames. See Connelly Lapel flip as a bullet hit. Then check out Fame 225 and see expression on Kennedys face. Also, cervical reflex of Kennedys right arm starts to come up first cause bullet strike landed on his right side in between 2 transverse processes in upper thoracic region. Bullet does not transect the spinal cord but hits close to the cord so, right arm goes up first. Left arm follows and in frame 232 full effect of elbows above shoulders with clenched fists. He does not and is not holding the wound over his throat cause he cannot use his hands due to the reflex. Most people I would think would just grasp their throat and have elbows down if they wanted to hold the wound. This is what happens when you have a spinal cord injury. Spinal cord was not transected but hydrostatic shock wave at close to inch to the cord would cause have great effect. Further down the line frames 312 and 313 show strike from rear to back of head with head moving forward and flattening of back of head as bullet pushes to front. Confirmed on ray as one can see bones fragmented and overlapping as well as the whole right anterior lateral portion of the brain missing. Frame 324 shows 2 white lines which are the parietal sections of skull open like bombay doors on an airplane. Brain comes thru between those 2 white bone flaps. Frame 326 thru 329 show back of head with no large hole in back of the head. Only flattening from rear bullet impact. If you see his x ray you can see the skull cracked due to bullet shock wave with pieces overlapping. Fame 326 pink brain liquification due to high speed pressure and heat causing brain to come out between the parietal bone flaps. You can see it next to Mrs Kennedys chin. Frame 328 and 329 shows brain coming down and out as you can see the pink area in line with Mrs Kennedy. Bullet strike at at 313 shows head pushed forward in the same proportion that a rifle butt would kick backward when firing, and then massive shock reflex at 315 throwing head backward. Not a bullet strike from the front. No splay from any bullet coming from front to back. Anyway, those are some observations for you. Use them anyway you wish.
Kennedys X rays are real and they have been confirmed numerous times since 1963. Damage in the X rays is EXACTY damage as they relate to his injuries. Watch the frame by frame capture of Zapruder. Form your own conclusions. If you time the firing, you will see its 8.5 seconds and not 6.5 or 6.
Oswald shoots officer Tippet and attempted to shoot another officer inside the movie theater. He also took a shot at a General some time before. Put it all together and what have you got, 4 attempts at peoples lives with 2 successful out of the 4. With those odds, what is you conclusion if he shot Kennedy or not, given that this in only a small fraction of the evidence.
I suggest you read the testimony of the 1997 investigation; specifically the man and woman who both took the autopsy photos. You will be shocked to hear the truth.
Dr. JG, thank you sir. Some people just don’t understand real evidence and real facts. Some people really believe they are smarter than everyone on the scene that day… and smarter all doctors and attorneys and FBI and Secret Service and Texas State police and Dallas police and ad infinitum. They don’t understand the simple requirement of; “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” AND Occam’s razor. O. Stone’s movie JFK was one continuous lie. The only things he got right was location of assassination, and who was assassinated. I to was hypnotized by that movie lie when it came out…..but then I grew up, and read the Warren Report.
You are wrong Doc! Everrything you noted in the poor gain 8mm film has been elaborated upon in contrary detail by the Dallas emergency room doctors and the people who assisted in the autposy filming, as well as the undertakers. Read more, view less of the porr 8mm film.
The only person that Oswald hit was Connelly. The trajectory angle from his bullet is evident in the wounds that Connelly suffered. Look at those wounds, it tells the complete story. Entrance wound in the high back shoulder then out under the right breast then into the lower right wrist and then lower right leg. Shot from on high downward angle trajectory hitting a lot of bone in the process, this is common sense people. Kennedy’s wound on the other hand is through the back below the neck and exiting the throat is too “flat” to be made from a steep angle shot. It too would have exited from below his right breast. Like the “CSI” says the evidence doesn’t lie.
Yes a conspiracy with at least 3 shooters.
Just my two cents after being a coroner for over 35 years and participating in many thousands of medical-legal autopsies involving gunshot wounds inflicted by various weapons. First of all, you have it backwards. A rib bone is much thinner than skull bone. Also, I have seen numerous occasions where bullets emerged in “pristine” condition after going through multiple layers of clothing and tissue and even after striking bone. Never knew what you were going to get. I also believe there is research info out there which indicates that the time period for the shots was originally erroneous and that about 1.5 seconds could be added therefore making the firing of all three shots easily done.
You are correct, that a rib is thinner (somewhat, not “much”) than the occipital skull, but both are composed of a layer of dense cortical bone on each surface, with cancellous web-like bone matrix in between. Another factor is the missile velocity at the time of impact, since the “magic bullet” would have lost some velocity in passing thru JFK’s upper chest. However, X-Rays of the chest show a fracture of the transverse process of the first thoracic vertebra, at a time when the bullet would have been near maximal velocity, yet it did not explode like the one that struck his head. The magic bullet also produced a major fracture of Connally’s wrist, yet did not explode then either. The dis-similar behavior’s of the two projectiles is puzzling.
Another interesting observation is that the autopsy was attended by one Lt Col Pierre Finck, allegedly an Army “wound ballistics expert”. Finck probed the back wound with his finger, could not find a passage, and found no exit wound. He concluded that that bullet had penetrated only about 2 inches in soft tissue and then stopped! Yet he was looking at another bullet wound in the head, that penetrated the occipital skull, blew out a substantial portion of the right side of the cranium, and a major portion of the right cerebral hemisphere, and exploded (over 90 grains of bullet material ultimately were missing and presumably exploded out of the skull as dramatically demonstrated by the “lead snowstorm” effect on the skull X-Ray, and the explosion of the head on Zapruder frame 313. What an expert! A simple phone call to Dallas would have yielded the information regarding the exit wound, but apparently nobody in the room (about 20 people) thought of that strategy (my future chief of surgery, Gregory H. Cross, was a surgical resident attending the autopsy)
You’ll probably find the monograph by John Orr very interesting, given your background. Check out the link above.
Very interesting article regarding the Carcano rifle, and its possibilities. I’ve never had the misfortune to actually handle or shoot one.
The military-style 160 grain bullet has a heavy jacket, and is designed for deep penetration at long range (think Italian Alps).
I’m not a conspiracy buff, but as a physician and lifelong gun-nut, I have to wonder:
If the “magic bullet” did in fact penetrate JFK’s upper back, fracture the transverse process of his first thoracic vertebra, exit his throat, penetrate Connally’s chest, break a rib, exit his chest sideways (leaving a large exit wound), strike his wrist causing a comminuted compound fracture, and then wind up in his thigh, looking almost good enough to load up and shoot again, then
Why did the next similar bullet strike JFK in the back of the head (where the entry wound is clearly visible in an autopsy photo of his scalp), then disintegrate in his brain, blowing out most of the right side of his cranium and brain, and leaving several small fragments and numerous lead particles on the skull X-Rays, only to utterly disappear?
Why did the second bullet essentially vaporize (like a varmint bullet) after hitting just 1/4 inch of cranial bone?
Incidentally, JFK’s head was propelled backward by the extrusion of a mass of brain tissue out the front and top of his head, just like a rifle recoils from the ejection of the bullet and the gases from the barrel. Based upon the entry wound and the exit burst of the brain, the notion that he was shot from the front or side by a second shooter is absurd.
However, a second shooter from behind, firing a high velocity more frangible bullet for the head shot is at least plausible. This analysis by John Orr is certainly very intriguing:
http://www.longislandfirearms.com/forum/index.php?app=core&module=attach§ion=attach&attach_id=20446
The Orr paper is clear and well thought out. However, I am just not comfortable with the JFK back/throat bullet exiting at such an angle to have struck the windshield top frame. I think more likely that that bullet was the one that struck Connolly. And it appears the entrance angle was not as steep as it should have been to come from the 6th floor. Second floor of the TBD or adjacent buildings is more likely.
Kennedy wanted to END the CIA, which by the way had an established and ongoing assassination program that operated in other countries, because they screwed him in the Bay of Pigs operation. As a result, he fired the CIA director, Allen Dulles, and threatened to ” splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” Kennedy also had plans to end us involvement in Vietnam which greatly angered all of the many tentacles of the military industrial complex that profit so greatly from war. When Kennedy was killed, the CIA executed a false flag operation in the Gulf of Tonkin that resulted in Congress passing the Gulf of Tonkin resolution granting LBJ all the power he needed to start a full on war in Vietnam. The military industrial complex got just what they wanted, dropping more than three times the bombs, on a country only half the size of LBJ’s home state of Texas, as were dropped on Europe during the entirety of WWII. After all the only way to make money in the bomb making business is to drop them somewhere so you can then make more. Oh did I mention that Allen Dulles personally started the CIA’s MKUltra project in 1953, to develop mind-controlling drugs for use against the Soviet bloc AND US citizens, yes read that again…US citizens. Given that the CIA’s stock in trade is planning and executing coups, assassinations, disinformation, torture and forays into “mind control” of it’s own citizens and given Kennedy wanted to put an end to them..do you really think certain elements of CIA don’t at least make the short list of potential behind the scenes operators in the Kennedy assassination? Who do you think was inexplicably appointed to the Warren Commission, to take part in the official govt. investigation of this landmark event in American history…that’s right,..the man Kennedy fired, Mr Mind Control himself, Allen Dulles. The wormhole goes deep. For instance, did you know that the Quaker couple, Michael and Ruth Paine, that befriended the Oswalds in Dallas (in fact, got him the job at the Texas Book Depository) because they had an “interest in Russian culture”, Michael Paines mother was best friends since childhood with one Mary Bancroft. Mary Bancroft had been having a long standing affair with a powerful man who got her a job in the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor agency to the CIA, that man’s name should be familiar to you by now..Allen Dulles. The infamous picture of Oswald holding the gun in his backyard was subsequently discovered in the Paines garage after the Oswalds possessions were left here.
Right. Ruth Paine had NOTHING to do with the CIA. And Allen Dulles was supernumerary already so COULD NOT have acted against Kennedy. Everyone in the country and military LOVED the CRAP out of him so they would NEVER plot against the BASTARD. Unless it was really important of course. And for chrissakes don’t hit Jackie.
I got that from Gerald Ford hisself. Gerald would never lie because he couldn’t keep the lies straight for more than half a sentence. Sames as G. Herbert Walker Forest.
Just FYI, The Oswald rifle was originally brought in by Martin B. Retting, Inc, gunshop in Culver City, CA.
The scope and mount were installed there by the head gunsmith. The scoped rifles were then
ordered by Klein’s and then shipped there from California. I worked at Rettings for 12 years,
and know the parties involved. We would occasionally get in a 6.5 Carcano Carbine, and build
a replica rifle using the original parts.
The supply of original mounts and original scopes is now exhausted.
Other similar mounts and scopes such as pictured in this article are fully the equivalent of the
original parts.
Original Oswald era scoped Carcano’s have a small anomaly at the rear of the scope mount on the
left side. The mount was stamped steel, and would have to be roughly aligned with a crescent wrench
before the scope could be collimated.
Just FYI for the Oswald detail oriented.
Phil
Thank you for your insight. Actually, as of a month ago, original mounts and scopes were available for around $800 total. I wanted to build a replica for ballistics and firing testing, but not $800 worth.
owned one of those klein carcanos, and it shot 12 in. high at 50 yards. zeroed at 300yds. shooting kleins surplus ammo, in 1958, the short barrel shot out 18 inches of flame, and muzzle blast attrocious. after the fourth round, when chambering the next round, it would stand straight up in the action and jam. was slow , crude and inaccurate. mil ammo shot throught a 12 inch oak tree with no trouble. if oswald really did it, with that rifle, he was one amazing rifleman. I can see why the Italians surrendered so quickly, would have hated to defend myself with that rifle.
God will this crap ever stop ? Most of the posters here DNS about the prformance of long, heavy for caliber round nosed bullets. Go out and buy the new Handloader and learn. When JFK was killed, I was cutting college classes to spend time doing other things with a very nice young lady so I missed the news.
I know there are still idiots debating the Lincoln killing ….. odd that poor Garfield and McKinley have no martching band of kooks looking for anything but the obvious truth. Does anyone with a 90 I.Q. believe that a massive plan to kill the President would have picked a nutcase like Lee Harvey, equipped him with a junk rifle/scope ? Ray killed King with a garden variety Remington 760 pump in 30-06 with a Redfield 2-7 scope and factory softpoint ammo. There was no marching band of koolaid drinkers trying to make that an issue as the weapon was almost perfect for the job. (A semi-auto Remington would have been slightly better)
Had Oswald used either with 150 gr softpoint factory ammo, he could have landed 5 shots in the car and really made a mess of anyone in the way.
So (fill in the blank) sets up the killing. Reasonable to assume he/she was no dummy. Equips Lee with a plain old Reminton pump/semi auto, a decent scope and a box of factory ammo. The shots would be a piece of cake. Then the cop who confronted Lee on the stairs (he would be in on the plan) would have dropped Lee on the spot as Lee was “making a move”, and it would all be sewed up. Lee was a loon, Ruby was a loon and after all these years do you really believe the hoard of people involved could have kept their mouths shut. And please don’t talk about all the eye witnesses who have died. Look up the ages of these people and apply longevity tables 101. People die …. duh …. I was 22 when JFK was killed, now I’m 71 were it not for PSA tests and John Hopkins I would have been dead in 2007 of prostate cancer.
We as a nation have enough real problems today with Obama and his band of loons heading us into 1789, 1929 or 1932 (look it up as most of you are too young to have any real education).
This is VERY old news and more people are interested in Dancing with the the Stars than a murder that is older than 99% of our fine young men and women Obama hates and is sending on fools errands to be killed by a bunch of animals we should just do away with.
Thanks God Israel has at least 150 Jehrico I, II & III IRBMs many equipped with MIRVs and Neutron bombs. When they say
“never again” they mean it whereas Obama issues 50 clarifications most of which are outright lies.
As Bette Davis said: “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.” Again you can look it up as B&W movies w/o aliens probably never cross your vision.
You may want to check your facts. The USG picked a nutcase like Oswald to be a radar operator at Atsugi airbase (home of the U-2 flights). How many of the ex-marines here were made radar operators on a top secret base? While he was in the Marines he was investigated for the death of Private Schrand, killed by his own 12 gage shotgun while on guard duty. That investigation report has been refused for release since 1963. The USG also granted Oswald an illegal early discharge in order to allow him to defect to the USSR where he entered via Helsinki, the “spy route” into the USSR, carrying with him nine times as much cash as he then had in his bank account and even gave the full amount in his bank account to his mother before leaving. He arrived using the Albert Schweitzer College, a school used by US diplomats, as cover in order to not violate his obligation as a US reservist to the Marines subject to recall. He then told US embassy personnel in Moscow that he planned to deliver US radar secrets to the Soviets in a room the US knew to be bugged by the KGB. Although Oswald’s statement justified his immediate arrest by the Embassy guards, he was allowed by the USG to defect, but left his passport with the US Embassy (standard procedure for spies to do to prevent the KGB from using the passport for their own agents.). Oswald then informed a CIA journalist he would be transferred to Minsk. The USG then later a had a secret meeting with Oswald when the embassy was closed to prevent the KGB from recording the visit. The USG has never revealed how this meeting was arranged. During this visit the USG illegally returned Oswald his passport when he asked to return the US. The USG even paid for Oswald’s travel expense back to the USA at Oswald’s insistence. Upon his return he authored an extensive report on the Soviet economy that was provided to the CIA (You can read his report online and decide for yourself how stupid he was.). He was also debriefed by the FBI. Although another defector named Frederick Davis who returned at the same time as Oswald was sentenced to ten years at hard labor for the same crime as Oswald, Oswald was never charged by the USG. When Oswald purchased his pistol (his first choice to kill General Walker) via mail order (Seaport Traders) the sale was monitored by the USG via a committee chaired by Senator Dodd. When Oswald realized it was better to use a rifle, and ordered the Carcano via Klein’s Sporting Goods, the sale was again monitored by Senator Dodd’s committee. And when Oswald returned from Mexico City, he commented that the Cuban consulate officer he met with had since been removed, information known at that time only to the CIA. After his arrest for shooting JFK, the Department of Defense refused to give the Warren Commission Oswald’s military files. They refused them again to the House Assassination Committee and refused them a third time under a Freedom of Information Act request granted to the Assassination Records Review Board. Oh! And the USG had 10,000 pages of information on Jack Ruby BEFORE he shot Oswald. But, hey!, only a person with an IQ of 90 could draw any connections from that.
By the way, you made another omission when you mentioned Ray killed King with a 30.06 “almost perfect for the job”. While that may be true, you leave out that he first left the store with a .243 rifle and then came back later and returned it for the 30.06. So who told him in between that the .243 was the “wrong rifle for the job”?
Thanks OETK for being rational. I was at work that day and have been interested since in ‘what really happened’ and have concluded, like many others, that we (the public) will never hear the truth.
I have always been of the mind that if something doesn’t make sense, then there is another answer.
None of the government conclusions make enough sense to be the facts.
There is also some reason that the government ‘facts’ were to be ‘restricted from publication’ for 75 years – at the ‘request’ of the Kennedy family. Maybe no-one remembers this, from then.
Minor correction. Oswald got the gun from Kleins for $12.48, not $19.95.
I think you were right the first time.
His had the scope mount already and that one is listed at $19.95
I could no doubt have taken my Ruger bolt gun and fired 3 shots in that space of time and placed all three shots at the range given I seriously doubt that Oswald given the rifle and equipment he was using was able to do the same. I have seen a couple of the rifles of the type, make and model of the one used by Oswald and in my personal opinion it was a piece of junk. I was in the US Navy stationed at Iwakuni, Japan when Kennedy was shot so I am from that era.
Hey Jeffery, IRREGARDLESS is not a word…..keep drinking the ‘big government is your friend’ koolaid, obamacare is a perfect example of the efficiency of big gov.
For those who have Carcano rifles, from first shot to last, what would be the estimated time to fire three shots with some level of accuracy? This is the one point that the article and no one here has addressed.
Thanks.
My old man was rated expert by the Army and did his combat time on Leyte armed with an ’03 since there weren’t enough Garands to go around. He was a hobby gunsmith. I was a kid when the JFK thing went down. I remember him picking up a 6.5 Carcano and ammo just to prove to himself that it could have been done. With the Carcano, and it’s 90 degree bolt turning in the split bridge and open sights he could put two in the bull and a flyer in 11 seconds, 75 yards. With a Mauser 98 done in 22-250 he could approach the 6 second ride. But not attain it. I can make 12 seconds after too much coffee, maybe 10 or so in the morning after a night’s sleep and before coffee. But shooting down hill has always been a bit of a problem.
I don’t think 6 seconds was impossible, just highly unlikely that that under the conditions required that LHO could have achieved the claimed results. Adding the rout change on short notice, ambush becomes questionable- unless the motorcade was routed into the fire zone. It’s too damn bad that they took Kennedy out, but that was then, this is now. We can’t change it, but it is fun to speculate and all that. And maybe we can keep it from happening again.
I just picked up a 6.5 Carcano carbine that I think I’ll see if I can slick up a bit and see how it shoots. It has a short firing pin, so the rifle is probably a democrat- y’know, a ‘safe’ rifle.
Interesting discussion guys. Thanks.
Most experts now put the time frame at eight to eight and a half seconds for all three shots. Based upon the reaction of the crowd, as seen in the sprocket area of the Zapruder film, Failure Analysis Associates were able to determine when the first shot was fired, within a couple of frames. They put the second shot three and a half seconds later, based upon Governor Connely’s coat lapel flipping forward as the bullet exited his chest, and the third shot five seconds later, with the dramatic results seen in the Zapruder film. Also, on page 446, volume three of the Warren Commission, it states that a Specialist Miller, of the U.S. Army, was not only able to duplicate what Oswald did, but he actually improved on Oswald’s time. This was done with Oswald’s carcano, by the way. 80%-90% of people believe there was a conspiracy, yet I highly doubt that you could find one in a thousand people who have bothered to read the Warren Report, let alone the 29 volumes of testimony and investigation reports.
I agree…
And most of the people who comment with such strong opinions are not shooters…nor detectives…nor historians…nor have ever been to Dealey Plaza. It’s easy to armchair quarterback, but it’s very hard to back up your argument with concise and accurate data.
Thank you to Guns American and Paul Helinski for this article, as well as all those who wrote comments, for providing some valuable information. Most particular for establishing that the three (3) shots could have been easily accomplished from the Texas School Book Depository in the allotted time frame and could easily have hit their target with the Carcano rifle owned by Lee Harvey Oswald.
That said, sometimes clarity, the truth, is hard to ascertain, and sometimes it just cannot be fully determined.
There are some major problems with the Warren Commission Report, that I will not go into here, other than to state that: “Honesty comes hard to government.” Judge Lynn Hughes at page 809, in U.S. v. Edwin P. Wilson, 289 F.Supp.2d 801 (USDC-SD, TX 2003) – see reference below. Unfortunately, accountability of government comes even harder.
That said, without any doubt Lee Harvey Oswald was definitely involved and very probably fired some of the shots at JFK. See, Reclaiming History: The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (2007) by Vincent Bugliosi. http://www.amazon.com/Reclaiming-History-Assassination-President-Kennedy/dp/0393045250 Particularly see the 53 statements/pieces of undisputed evidence Bugliosi lays out at pages 955-969. Also recall that in 1986 Bugliosi and attorney Gerry Spence, respectively prosecutor and defense counsel, put on a 21-hour mock trial in London, that was shown on television and later was released on DVD. http://www.amazon.com/On-Trial-Lee-Harvey-Oswald/dp/B001CDLASU Here is the Wikipedia segment from Gerry Spence on the trial:
Mock trial: United States v. Oswald – In 1986, Spence defended Lee Harvey Oswald, the deceased assassin of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, against well-known prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi in a 21-hour televised unscripted mock trial sponsored by London Weekend Television in the United Kingdom.[11] The mock trial involved an actual U.S. judge, a jury of U.S. citizens, the introduction of hundreds of evidence exhibits, and many actual witnesses to events surrounding and including the assassination. The jury returned a guilty verdict. Expressing admiration for his adversary’s prosecutorial skill, Spence remarked, “No other lawyer in America could have done what Vince did in this case.” [12] The “docu-trial” and his preparation for it inspired Bugliosi’s 1600-page book examining the details of the Kennedy assassination and various related conspiracy theories, entitled Reclaiming History, winner of the 2008 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime.[13] Several times in the book Bugliosi specifically cites his respect for Spence’s abilities as a defense attorney as his impetus for digging more deeply into various aspects of the case than he perhaps would have otherwise.[14]
I have a Carcano that I purchased in 1963 the barrell is marked 7.35mm, but it shoots 6.5. It is one of the best shooting guns I have used. The ser.# is R1620. I have brought down a couple of deer with it, no scope.
So much for all those people who think they know about the rifling lol. I think these guns are truly a crapshoot.
Mannlicher Schoenauer rifle, Cal.6.5 x 54, originated in Austria in 1903. The manlicher stock is the full length of
the rifle from the butt to the end of the barrel, This rifle has a rotary clip and later models had the same.
This was not a cheaply made rifle and has a fine precission bolt action, smooth as glass. It is a very accurate
rifle and should not be compared to the Carcano in any way except for the caliber.
It is the dust in the weeds that convinced me that LHO did not work alone. I firmly believe it is LHO’s training by the USMC that makes the accepted “official” version of what happened impossible. Let me explain:
He would have been trained on American weapons, and possibly even familiar with the springfield rifle. As a veteran, trained with various weapons, I believe that any marksman will tend to go with what he was trained with. And not take a chance on an unfamiliar piece.
Also, if you follow his timeline of employment at the repository, as well as the timeline of JFK’s tour route and the fact that the route was only established just before the shooting, well, it just seems too coincidental.
My final concern, is for the placement of the hide LHO shot from. Given even a short amount of time, I am sure he could have built a much sturdier, and robust platform to shoot from.
No, I do not believe it is believable that he worked alone. But I am not concerned with that, I would just like to know why.
V/R
D. H.
USN (EXW/SW) Ret…
Lincoln a Democrat today? What a crock; the author either either does not know Lincoln or present day Democrats. I suspect both are true.
It says he wouldn’t be a replublican, not that he would be a democrat. Both both of those parties are on the same side.
First thing that needs to be said is that Oswald was never convicted of shooting President Kennedy. Jack Ruby made sure of that.That POS rifle and the optics could never had made those kind of shots even with an operator that was checked out with that weapon. The field of vision the shooter had was trees and a target in a moving vehicle. The head shot to the President was from the right,not behind moving away. The Warren Commission findings are/were a joke. The truth about this tragedy will never be known.
Good, sensible words, RDNK…though we HAVE been gradually coming to the truth of the matter, so this may not remain a complete mystery…and it’s a real pain that the conspirators will probably be dead by the time we have all the facts, and would want to indict them. What is a certainty is that the Warren Commission “fairy-tale” of the lone, crazed gunman and “single bullet theory” is baloney, and that there were shooters from different directions, and many wounds, including a frontal throat entry wound, just as the Parkland Memorial Hospital staff reported early-on.
The Marine Corps rifle marksmanship qualification when Oswald was in, they fired the M1 Garand. If you look at the above Klein’s add where Oswald bought the Carcano the add right above is for a M1 Garand for $79 bucks…sure it’s more money but, he had shot an M1 and not a Carcono before….I qualified on an M-16…if I was looking to buy a rifle and I saw an add for a Mosin-Nagant for $99 bucks and an add right above it on a AR-15 rifle that I knew and loved for $396….what would you do.
Thank you Chuck for mentioning what I have been saying for years. Marksmen go with what they know. And if pressed will always take a chance on familiar versus strange. I have conducted similar challenges with similar types of rifles. 3 shots, 3 inch group at 50 yards 6 seconds. The 6 seconds is based off reactions in the Zapruder film. I have yet to see anyone do this successfully against a stationary target with a superior support and rest. I cannot fathom how it could have been possible from a seated position against a moving target.
Nope. No way LHO worked alone, and I don’t want to know who, but why.
D. H.
Oswald had very low paying jobs and could not afford to pay for food and rent. He had a wife and child to support. In 1963, there was a big difference between $20 and $80. He simply could not afford a more expensive rifle. His wife also testified that he practiced constantly with the carcano, dry firing it for hours. Spend months with one and see how proficient you get in cycling it.
seems to me it don’t matter much. all is said and done! Kennedy is for sure grave yard dead, for sure Oswald, Roy Rogers, or the tooth fairy killed him. Dead is dead !
If I were Oswald and planning on taking out arguably the most important man in the country at the time I would have gone out and spent a hell of a lot more money on a more suitable rifle. Why would a skilled marksman choose a lower end piece of equipment ?- I guess Christmas was coming and he must have been saving his pennies. And a trained Marine knows how important a planned escape route is- why was his to return home, pick up his pistol, go out shoot a cop (while trying to keep a low profile) and then dropping by the theater to watch a movie? With a plan like that isn’t it amazing he was captured? No, if you believe that story you probably believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy so who can argue with you- or more importantly- who would want to? Every true patriot knows the Government would never lie to it’s citizens only to profit themselves individually- at least it’s never happened before right? The truth will never be known and will go down in the annals of history as the second most puzzling misfortune ever to face the American people – next to Obama’s birth certificate of course.
Although there are several 6.5mm rifles, I believe that the Carcano used a bullet diameter of .268 and all other 6.5mm rifles used a bullet diameter of .264. One other item is that many of the old 6.5mm Carcanos used progressive rifling. A good check of the recovered bullet would answer a lot of questions.
Although there are several 6.5mm rifles, I believe that the Carcano used a bullet diameter of .268 and all other 6.5mm rifles used a bullet diameter of .264. One other item is that many of the old 6.5mm Carcanos used progressive rifling. A good check of the recovered bullet would answer a lot of questions.
Whomever wrote this didn’t do a lot of research into Marine Corps rifle marksmanship qualification when Oswald was in. They fired the M1 Garand. They started out at the 200 yard line and fired 10 rounds offhand slow fire. Then they fired 10 rounds sitting rapid fire. They moved back to the 300 yard line and fired 5 rounds kneeling slow fire and five rounds sitting slow fire. Then they fired 10 rounds prone rapid fire. Then they moved back to the 500 yard line and fired 10 rounds slow fire. A round fired was worth anywhere from 5 points to 0 depending upon where it hit (or didn’t hit) on the target. A perfect score would be 250. To qualify as a marksman you had to attain 190. A sharpshooter had to attain 210 and to fire expert you needed at least 220 points. If someone fired 49 in offhand he would have ended up as high expert.
It isn’t meant to be a treatise on Marine marksmanship training, and this description is found in several places. I believe that description comes from the Warren Report itself.
How much research have you done on Marine Corp rifle training in the 1960s with the M-1 Garand? Anyone who know anything about an M-1 Garand knows you can’t possibly shoot 10 round of rapid fire with a weapon than holds only 8 rounds in an enblock clip. Some expert.
You certainly can fire 10 rounds out of an M1 Garrand.. it’s standard proceture at every rifle competition that involves an M1. It requires 2 enbloc clips, one fully loaded with 8 rounds, the other loaded with only 2 rounds, inserted in a criss cross or x pattern to hold them in the clip. You shoot the first clip ( 8 rounds) , the clip ejects “ping” and you insert the second clip, 2 more shots “ping”, it ejects. 10 rounds. Thats the way it’s been done in training ( Oswald) and competition for more than 60 years
– Carlos Hathcock (arguably the greatest sniper in USMC history) reenacted the same scenario that Oswald allegedly pulled off and couldn’t do even after trying it 10 times consecutively.
– Prior to Oswalds barley qualifying as a marksman he was a non-qual. Meaning he failed at rifle qualification.
– Also Oswald was not infantry, a sniper, of any other combat arms Marine. He was a radar technician! He never saw battle and he drew his rifle when it was only time to qualify annually or quarterly depending what his unit wanted to do.
– The first thing Oswald said when he was arrested was “I’m a patsy, I’m a patsy…”
– Lastly I’ll add the definitions of conspiracy and theory as fined by law
Conspiracy – an agreement by two or more persons to commit a crime, fraud, or other wrongful act.
Theory – a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural and subject to experimentation, in contrast to well-established propositions that are regarded as reporting matters of actual fact.
We know two things happened; Oswald couldn’t have possibly acted on his own and two there are still a lot of unanswered questions.
i owned and shot a carcano back around 1963 before kennedy was shot. Back then i found info labeling the carcano as a “cranium breaker”. some mishaps with bolts hitting shooters in the face !{recommendations were to keep chamber pressures low ! At the time the only ammo i could find was military surplus which hardly even deformed when hitting targets. Norma did make a hunting load. This was a very accurate rifle but was slow to operate because the bolt handle was straight up when opened {which was why the offset scope and mount was used} Looking through the bore you could definitly see the sharp gain twist rifling. I don’t believe oswald fired all three shots. Baring the bolt situation he would have had to maintain a constant sight picture while moving the rifle as the car moved while other objects like a tree presented a need to time a trigger pull-sight picture-lead and mental calculations all at once- “you try it “
Wow I had totaly forgotten about that until I read your comment, I had read an aticle in mid 60s about the problem with that bolt on the carcano.
A few years ago my brother and I were in Dallas and visited the site and the depository. As we looked over the area the one thing that struck us both was Why did he wait until the limo had turned and was going away, downhill on a curve to shoot. This 3 dimensional shot is considerably harder than the 2 dimensional shot that had just presented itself. If he had fired when the limo was approaching the turn he would only require a elevation change to stay on target . From the 7th floor he had a clear line of sight for either shot, Why then would he handicap himself ? Did he act alone? Do pigs fly?
Ray, I myself was 3 months from being a 13 Y/O boy. I have always wondered too this very same question. And for this reason I know it was not Oswald who did any shooting. He may have brought the rifle into the Book Depository, however it was not him who shot the President. I believe this rifle was simply placed there and most likely was the one that may have been fired three times but it was not the (head shot) rifle. 26 medical personnel at Parkland Hospital have sworn that the head shot was from front to back exiting with a big hole in the right occipital lobe area or more simply, (the right rear of the head behind the right ear there was a huge hole. I have studied this (American Travesty) for the rest of my life now. Simply put I too believe that JFK was sat up by LBJ for being assassinated in Dallas Texas. “Barr McClellan” was one of LBJ’s attorney’s and has written a book called simply (Blood, Money & Power) (How LBJ murdered JFK.) If you get a chance to get your hands on that book you will see what a maniac LBJ really was.
John, I was 8 & watched the TV after they had brought one into my 3rd grade classroom in Houston that day. . after seeing what I have from the film there’s no doubt in my mind about it being a front to back shot which guarantees a conspiracy. Also like you I have studied it my whole life . I don’t believe the truth will ever be revealed at least not until everyone living that day is long gone. Of all the suspects, LBJ would in my mind be the worst possible. I pray it wasn’t .
This is where all the conspiracy theories fall apart. The sheer number of people that would have to be involved is staggering. Just as an example, it was Jackie Kennedy that decided to have the body taken to Bethesda for the autopsy as the plane was landing. President’s typically go to Walter Reed. This would mean having teams at each hospital willing to be involved in a cover-up. Also, all the doctors at Parkland, save one who changed his story to fit the conspiracy after having a stroke, were shown the autopsy photos in the 1990’s and they all stated that they photos an consistent with the wounds they say. The doctors have also all testified that they never examined the head wound because they were busy trying to stabilize him. A lot of people have said a lot of things years later because people like to interject themselves into important events. Look at the number of people who come in and confess to high profile crimes when they have nothing to do with it.
Finally, whew. The government shills have arrived everyone. Say hello to our new guest, who has commented with extremely sensible answers that support the government story. Of course it has to be that way! You’d have to be crazy to believe all of these cockamamie theories. (spell check didn’t get cockamamie btw I think NSA took over my computer)
As a professor of history, one of the first things I tell my students is that to study history, you must emotionally detach yourself. Emotional responses cloud judgment when analyzing and evaluating information, resources, credibility of the resources, etc. Unfortunately, peoples’ emotional views of the government make many people predetermined to believe one conspiracy theory after another, just because the government is involved. History is based upon facts, not just theories. Everyone of the authors of the conspiracy books has “proved ” their theory, but they cannot all be right. One theory has as many as eight shooters in Dealey Plaza, firing 12 rounds. If that were true, Oswald may have been the best shot of the bunch! Everyone “proves” their theory, but they can’t all possibly be true, and therein lies the danger. Theories need to be based upon what can be proved or disproved, and to date, no one has been able to disprove any of the evidence pointing toward Oswald’s guilt. My view of the current government is inconsequential in evaluating the evidence and research done by the conspiracy theorists.
The magic bullet is just a theory but the government takes it as fact.
5000 people worked on the atomic bomb. However “The GADGET” was kept a secret. How was that possible,
because according to you such a secret is not possible.
John…
AMEN!!! You are “on the money!!”
Oswald waited for the limo to turn in order for the Secret Service follow-up car to turn also. He did not want the agents in that car to be able to look up and see him. Once the Secret Service follow-up car made the turn, the agents in it had their backs turned to him and he could now fire without their interference. Of course, JFK was now three car lengths past the turn.
Chris, Oswald’s ‘guilt’ has nothing to do with a ‘conspiracy’. Whether he was set up as a pure re-direct ‘patsy’ because of his ‘profile’, or whether he was ‘motivated and manipulated’ to act alone like say ‘Timothy McVeigh & Co., and was actually directly in on it somehow, because they still, to this day can’t prove he acted alone, doesn’t mean that either of these two did not have ‘help’ when the deed went down. Hence a conspiracy. The issue is not so much proving Oswald’s guilt, but finding out if there were others involved.
As someone pointed out, there is almost enough ‘circumstantial’ evidence to get a peripheral indictment if an investigation were allowed to go forward and an open book of evidence revealed. But of course that will never happen and this is something that should jump out at you in terms of true ‘guilt’ speaking for itself. You know, like the fact that John and Patsy Ramsey were indicted by a grand jury in Denver but the attorney in charge refused to prosecute?
But you’re correct about emotional content affecting analysis of historic events not yet proved one way or the other. This has been the bane of all fact finding throughout history because of the attendant propensity for proprietary redactions and interpolations being subsequently passed of as ‘history’. Texas is now doing this with their new ‘history books’.
As far as the issue about an assassination of this ‘magnitude’ involving too many people to pull it off, that is an illusion which belies some of the realities of ‘this line of work’. For instance the whole country and much of the world is celebrating Christmas, the birth of Christ, and to this day, it still cannot be proven beyond all reasonable doubt by standard criteria of evidence evaluation and validity, that this event actually occurred. Yet by last Harris poll, around 70% of Americans believe this to be true without any source of reference other than hearsay or ancient non verified, non eyewitness written accounts!
By that standard there should be no discussion as to whether or not there was a conspiracy and someone else also shot Kennedy?
It would be amusing, if it wasn’t so tragically sad. As a professor in historic theology the first thing i teach my students is that… ‘nothing is as it seems’.
Very nice article. I was 13 when all this happened, and watched and followed all the stories and speculation going on over the years. Everyone has their own opinion about what happened and by who. If we ever do here the truth, that I fully believe the government will never let come to light, my theory is the was a second shooter for the head shot. And I firmly believe to this day, that Lyndon B. Johnson and his mafia and Government friends perpetrated the whole thing. ( remember, this is just my opinion, right wrong or indifferent)
I managed to get an arsenal new Carcano and loaded PPU brass with the proper .268 bullet.
I fired it at 100yds and got a very respectable 3″ group.
Theres no arguing to me that the rifle was capable of doing the job.
But, there is a theory that has surfaced lately, backed by some testimony that was not used in the Warren
probe that the bullet that actually killed Kennedy was an accidental discharge of the M16 in the hands of a Secret Service agent in the car behind JFK’s car. In the documentary it was stated that he was bringing the rifle up from the floor of the car and had flipped off the safety and at that moment the car was accelerated by the driver and he fell back against the seat and accidentally pulled the trigger.
If so, I can understand all the meddling with the facts to protect the Secret Service from investigation and possible charges of an assassination attempt that would have caused a major shake up in the Secret Service and the ripples could have toppled the existing administration.
Makes more sense than all the other mysterious theories
I was 11 when he was shot. I have seen “what I thought was” all of the theories on the shooting. Last week I watched “The Smoking Gun” documentary and it made more since than any of them before. Worth a look see.
Read ‘Mortal Error:The Shot That Killed JFK’ by Bonar Menninger.
It tells of the ballistic & forensic investigation that Howard Donahue did. Something that the Warren Commission somehow neglected to delve into.
I always wondered how come the JFK autopsy showed a lot of fragments, but the 6.5 bullets were nearly intact.
A coincidence that one photo of the Secret Service ‘follow car’ showed a 5.56 [M16] in the hand of Agent Hickey?
I don’t think the government is ‘tight’ enough for a ‘secret’ conspiracy of that magnitude, but is perfectly capable of a successful cover-up. “Law enforcement” knew how to and could keep a secret back then.
I agree with Mr Menninger. All the ballistic evidence of the head shot points to a small caliber, high velocity bullet, not a heavy, medium velocity bullet with a thick jacket. I have killed enough animals with a 223 to know this for a fact. There had to be a cover up. I mean, really? The government is going to announce that Lee Oswald fired a lethal shot into JFK, but one of their Secret Service agents, in the heat of the incidence, accidently tripped off a round that finished him off? Yeah, I can’t see that happening either. I suspect that if the remaining bullet fragments, if they haven’t been “misplaced”, were spectrographically analyzed, would not match with the 6.5 Carcano bullet. Saw something on Fox news that spoke of analysis of tissue and threads on the fragments, but when the FBI was approached about this in 1998, they had no interest in a case that essentially had been closed for years. I’m sure they would have zero interest in demonstrating that the fragments did not match to the 6.5 Carcano, as this would rule in the presence of a second shooter [and possibly a shot fired by the Secret Service agent]. It’s too bad we will likely never know the real truth.
Mark, you’re pretty right on with the power of cover-ups. Just look at Fast and Furious and Benghazi, etc. etc. And it was much easier back then. Nobody dared question cops and Fed agents in the ‘wrong way’. And speaking from experience, you’re right about the cop’s code of silence being just as ‘bad’ as the mob’s back then. Just remember that Bobby was about to ‘do something’ about J.Edgar Hoover and some of Johnson’s rich oil buds. Before Bobby, Hoover was the boss of all the applesauce. It would be interesting to know how many ‘secret service’ agents were former FBI? In any case, this story was kept quiet for a life time. And some of us will die with untold secrets.
How many of you have cycled the bolt action, with live ammo, on an
actual 6.5mm Carcano? I own one, and with the non-spitzer ammo,
they cycle very slowly, as the nose of the bullet doesn’t act as a guide
for the cartridge. Maybe I just got a rifle which cycles poorly, and the
stock does give the appearance the rifle may have been dragged behind
a tank for a few weeks, but if you get the standard ammo for this
gun, and try to cycle it quickly, IME, you are in for an eye-opener.
Amen to that one. We have a second M block gun that the bolt closes really hard on, and about 2 of every 6 round clip actual seats correctly in the extractor.
Oswald fires at General Edwin Walker from close range (through a window) no one around, and misses, but fires 3 deadly shots at a moving target with hundreds of people around and hits it?
Hmmmm….
He didn’t miss, he hit the bottom window frame on the top pane of glass, which was dead in line with Walker’s head, but was invisible through the scope. Had the bullet not been deflected, Walker would have been killed. As it was, it only missed him by a couple of inches.
The bullet did go through the sash but hit well above his head. He had to stand and reach up and point with a pencil to the bullet hole in the wall for reporters. Considering he was sitting at the time of the shot, it missed him by “feet” and not “inches”.
Hitting the sash demonstrates Oswald had no clue about the bullet rise on his rifle.
For “Gee-Whiz” info, I heard something over the weekend on the many shows National Geographic showed that possibly answers the “1st Bullet” question: When the shooter panned to take the shot, the 1st shot more than likely hit the traffic light post, causing the bullet to ricochet, hit the concrete across the plaza, causing a shard of concrete to cut a man’s face while he was taking cover under the overpass.
Seems plausible…..
Thanks for a great article, BTW !
That “same series” was pretty interesting. Ive spent many hours trying to find my old issued Enfield Mk 4 and got one within 2 numbers of mine right here in the USA. Even more amazing, it was local to me.
Regarding the gain rifling, my understanding is that it reduces the stress on the bullet: in the first few inches of the barrel, the twist rate is slower, but by the time the bullet exists the muzzle, it is spinning at the advertised rate.
So, from my understanding, it’s not that bullets are “made” for gain rifling, for there is nothing about gain rifling that requires special bullets. (Case in point, my Rock Creek 300BLK barrel has gain rifling. I recently found out about that detail, as it was not advertised. Nothing was said about using this or that bullet.)
The advantage of gain rifling is about the reduced wear and tear on the throat/lands Because the bullet is not going from 0 twist to, say, 1 in 12, but instead from say 0 to 1 in 8 before progressing to the final twist rate, there is less wear on the rifling at the lands, and therefore there would be a longer barrel life and less refurbishing costs. Now that, government bean counters all over the world can rally behind.
The point is that you can use a longer bullet because it doesn’t have the initial spin up which would otherwise theoretically strip.
Thanks for an in-depth look at the rifle. I do think you should have reloaded those original cartridiges with those looong, 3″ bullets for better test results.
Did Oswald act alone, or did he have help? There are a LOT of “EXPERT” opinions on both sides. One side is wrong.
No, I don’t know which side is wrong, I just know both sides can’t be right.
Ed….
Respectfully…there is a third choice…that he didn’t shoot anyone, and was innocent of the murder of both Tippit and Kennedy. As a fact, the evidence against the man was extremely sketchy. And, he was provided NOTHING in the way of “due process.” Obviously, with no case, they had to send in someone to clean up the missing detail of his still being alive.
I have one of these. It is repeatably accurate, however the idea that Oswald used the steel sights is questionable. The sight’s lowest setting hits very high at even at 50 yards and the trigger pull is ugly. Mine feeds quite reliably by the way.
Bolt time to fire three shots accurately?
you just have to do some range time, and more importantly know your rifle. At that range I would have used the iron sites myself, if you know your rifle and at that range should have been a real easy shot.
Jeffery, fortunately your idea of ‘common sense’ wasn’t so common among American Patriots. Otherwise we’d all be ‘sig’ heil-ing’ and speaking German.
Something about the Cacarno round that is always overlooked is the the WWII Italian military ball ammo had a very thick work hardened jacket. The lands of the Carcano were intentionally made to be very deep so to improve the life of the barrel such that it is highly likely modern jacketed bullet when at the correct bore size with have it jacket severly cut into and stripped when fired from a Carcano. The Carcano bullet holds together very well. The diameter of modern 6.5 ammo is to small for the Carcano’s bore diameter which is an oversized 6.5 and doesn’t shoot well in the rifle. When you start looking at the WWII Carcano round it’s best to think of it more as a Arfican game thick jacketed bullet. I shoot a Carano and I found the rifle to be a light handy well balanced short rifle. As WWII standards go, it was a light weight but the round will hold it own against the modern 5.56. Personally I find that two hits and a miss in doable in the time that was alloted with the rifle.
He didn’t use Italian military ammo. It was commercial Western ammo.
It was Full metal jacket- just like military.
A 6.5 full metal jacket 160 grain bullet is known for its extreme penetration. The 160 grain 6.5 Manlicher bullet was often used to take African elephant with head shots. Similar bullets shot in my 6.5 Swede would go clean through 18 inches of live Elm where the 174 grain .30-06 FMJ would not.
Is that Elm (the tree) or a typo for Elk?
Yes, 160 grains is very heavy (and thus penetrating, with little damage to the bullet) for a 6.5 mm bullet.
Serge, You are totally correct on your 6.5 observations. I have a 1903 Mannlicher Mountain Carbine in 6.5. The man who had the rifle before me took a lot of deer with it over the years.
All the reading I’ve ever done supports the fact that the long 6.5 bullet tended to pass through a lot of game. In fact if I remember correctly this was one of the reasons that this round lost favor among the safari set. I think that one famous hunter was killed by his quarry after the round he fired went through the animal and failed to do enough damage to bring it down.
“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what YOU can do for your country.” A great thought.
“We work TOGETHER, we don’t refuse to work.” Have you asked those who shoved Obamacare down this nations throat and were not willing to address the problems it has created, even last month, rather shut down the government who they are working with? NO ONE. Sir my wife and I both work in the health care industry from different sides and there is a major mess there. Created by those you are praising.
Today too many are not doing anything for this country including many in Washington but are only interesting in taking from this country. That is not supporting this nation in any form or fashion. That is true of both parties.
As to this article thanks to those who did the work.
Boy’s Boy’s Boy’s, After following this fro 50 years, I still don’t know what happened, and really don’t trust the Gov. to tell me, we all (I am sure hunt) and spent a year in VN, full metal jackets really hold together, but that much? One other point is the tree is much smaller in 63, look at the original photos. Also I just saw the special on the first bullet was fired much earlier, maybe hit the traffic signal,, and two witness’s also said they heard the first shot when the car just cleared the corner. And the man who was hit in the cheek. Keep looking and maybe some day.
The ejection pattern of the recovered empties suggest the rife was pointed down and in front of the tree when the first cartridge was ejected from a standing position. There were possible two obstacles to this bullet – the traffic signal and the pole it hung from.
The next two cartridges ejected were found to be consistent with being fired after the tree from a kneeling position.
With current technology and firing pin fingerprinting, I wonder if the three cartridges found beside the gun were from that gun? It would be an interesting test.
There were lots of them out there.
It was tested and it did match.
Nope, they did not match. Spectrographic analysis found differences. Hoover fudged by sayint that there were no “significant differences,” but in a critical test like this ANY difference would mean an absence of a match.
There is a new book out called Phantom Shot that proves there was only 2 shots fired that day. Over 40 witnesses including Jackie, Gov Connally, Nelly Connally, Clint Hill, the Dallas PD motorcycle police on either side of the car, most of the spectators on both sides of the car, most of JFK’s Secret Service and witnesses close to the snipers nest, all initially reported only hearing just 2 shots. The way Dealet Plaa is constructed only the people near the car could actually see what was happening. The initial media report by Merriman Smith is where 3 shots came from. This in turn influenced many of the witnesses to change their reports from 2 shots to 3. One of the three shells in the snipers nest is dented in such a way that it could not of held a bullet and lacks other marks that indicate that it would have been fired that day. It appears to have been dry fired as way for Oswald to practice which is what he was taught to do in the Marines. All the ballistic evidence indicates only 2 shots. When you understand that only 2 shots were fired there was no assassination it was simply Oswald murdered JFK in front of hundreds of people. When you read all the stories about him you realize he really was just one sick individual.
Jack, I worked as an inner-city EMT for several years, so I’ve seen a few gunshot wounds. Entry wounds are invariably smaller than exit wounds, due to slower velocities. I’ve also seen some weird things happen with bullets, but they don’t hit bone 3-4 times without some deformation. And seeing JFK’s head rock *back*, with brain tissue on the back of the car? Common sense will tell you that he was from the front. Yes, there was an assasination, and no, I don’t think Oswald did it.
One of the reason’s a shot from the front, either from the grassy knoll, or the overpass, was rejected is the simple reason that from that angle, the shot would have also hit Jackie Kennedy. From the film and dozens of photos, we know exactly where the car was at the time. Also, don’t believe Hollywood movies. As anyone who has been in combat and seen people hit can attest, people do not always fly backwards when hit with a bullet. As to the bullet being deformed, it is. The Governor had a one and a half inch entry wound, and a two inch exit would because the bullet hit him sideways, flattening out when it hit his rib as it exited. This was the first bone it struck. It then hit his wrist backwards, deforming the base. These were the only two bones struck, at much slower velocity than the head shot.
Appreciate your comment, Kate. The WC (and their vapid SBT narrative) twisted the facts all round (and attempted to repeal Newton’s Laws) in the way of trying to convince us of truly absurd conclusions. The evidence suggests the presence of about ten shots on that day, from several directions. Even the HSCA, which was blocked by folks who didn’t want the truth to come out—yet again!–(so pretty bland), concluded that there had been at least two shooters (with one in the front of the presidential limo)…and–obviously–a conspiracy. And the fact of the Z-film having been altered to make it look like all the shots had originated from the rear, certainly complicated the matter.
As just a start, there were at least three missing shots (the Teague one and two others), a couple of shots to Gov. Connally, a shot to JFK’s throat (no, not the posterior C-spine, though the idiots keep bringing up that stupid error, which Gerald Ford–and Arlen Specter–foisted on us!…and Ford later copped-to in his book.) and back, one to the back of his head, at least two to the front of his head, and the insertion of chest tubes (to remove fluid) suggests one or more chest shots. Obviously, the throat shot was from the front (creating a small entry wound). The damage to the hilus of the right lung mentioned by the autopsy prosectors could have been caused by a chest shot, or from a ricochet of the throat shot off the ant. aspect of a cervical vertebra. And, yes, the major head wound (exiting and very large) was in the right, general parieto-occipital region, and was the result of a frontal shot…just as the Parkland Hospital staff doctors had testified. Which correlates with the strong thrust of the President (not a “head snap,” but the entire body) to the left and rear of the automobile, as emphasized in the Oliver Stone movie. According to Newton’s Second Law of Motion, when a force is applied to an object, the object will move in a direction consistent with the trajectory—or vector–of the applied force (and opposite to the origin of that force, such as a rifle barrel). Stuff about “jet-effect” and muscle spasm are simply silly mind-games (casuistry, actually) concocted by the Warren Commission apologists.
The Marine Corps doesn’t teach you to dry fire.
I tend to agree with that theory.I recently watched the documentary The Lost Bullet wher they think the bullet may have hit a traffic signal or a tree.
One of the three empty cases was found very far from the other two. It could have been a cold,not just fired brass that was ejected far due to temperature differences.In that case either Oswald forgot he had an empty case in the chamber or he dry fired on purpose? He could have had an easier earlier shot at less distance but he- inexplicably-waited longer to fire the last two.So if he shot three times, it is strange that he missed badly with the first one while hitting the mark on the last two at greater distances.
“When you understand that only 2 shots were fired there was no assassination”… Jack, are you serious? The number of shots determines if it is and assassination? If that is true, no president has been assassinated, just
simply murdered. Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy were all shot twice. Lincoln was only shot once, so do you call that the lesser act of manslaughter?
You are correct about the condition of the bent cartridge found, right down to its having been dry fired (twice). The dent is likely the result of its having been run through the rifle as an empty and, without the bullet nose to guide it into the breech, was simply jammed into by the bolt travel and dented. The question becomes, why did Oswald leave behind an empty cartridge and still have three shots heard?
Merriman Smith is not the source of the three shots being heard. It was obtained by the FBI interviewing the actual “ear witnesses”.
So many questions and opinions on this National Tragedy. Take your pick on what you believe.
One thing for sure, the Kennedys were all double crossers and good at using other peoples money for their legacy.
They double crossed the Wall Street Jews, (disbanding the Fed. Reserve), the Mafia and Frank Giancanni, (“Well, we got him), the Cubans (Bay of Pigs), and even double crossed MLK. Go figure!
Yea to bad they did’nt get the job done on the Fed Reserve.
Being 64 and a teenager in the sixties, I remember the Carcano being readily available. Kmart (no Walmart yet) would have a barrel in the sport’s section filled with Carcanos, Arisakas, and Mausers. Naturally, the majority of buyers gravitated toward the Mausers.
I have two of these rifles, one of which I didn’t think was safe to shoot. I have had rifles for a long time. Serial numbers not close to the ones you talked about. I also have some military ammo that was purchased at same time as the rifles. Not shure when they were purchased but got them from Montgomery & Ward.(late 50’s or early 60’s)
Interesting article
Larry Hogan
“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what YOU can do for your country.” Stop being afraid of it and start respecting it, might be a starting point. Stop trying to break it, and work to fixing it. Which by the design of our founding fathers means “compromise.” If we did not support compromise, we’d have a dictatorship. We vote. We support voting, we don’t limit and inhibit voting. A REAL American wants everyone to vote. We give all fellow Americans a voice. We don’t allow leadership though minority thought or parties because the last time that happened, that was 1936 Germany. Notably we respect the rise of political parties but we don’t allow the destruction of our two party system. from a minority movement. We work TOGETHER, we don’t refuse to work.
Inhibit voting ?? I’m sorry, but if you allow anybody to vote unchecked, this country COULD possible be taken over unwittingly by foreign entities. Citizens, legal citizens should be able to prove they are citizens. If you let illegals vote, dead people vote, or let someone get away with voting numerable times (documented in Ohio), you are depriving legal citizens of this country, their properly elected choices.
We don’t compromise on Constitutional principles. So to the extent that public policy must be legal, there is no compromise. If radical Islamists demand to have Shariah law throughout the country, we don’t compromise and let them have it in half the country. We don’t allow illegal aliens to vote because they are not citizens. Period. Some things cannot be compromised. Don’t confuse compromising principles with working out differences within the principled framework.
This has got to be one of the most asinine artcles I’ve read on Kennedy and this rifle and the analysis of todays political parties I’ve ever read. Lincoln WOULD be a Republican today unless you are admitting that the GOP has no interest in black freedom and total fee integration into today’s America. Kennedy would still be a Democrat today because he believed in the Governments responsibility in protecting the average citizen against the influences of the fascist corpratacracy that exists today in American politics. Kennedy also believed in investing in our future through NASA. He recognized that government can acheive for the great good, goals irregardless of a profit motive. The internet? Your government created that. Landing on the moon, your government did that. Discovering America, the Spanish government funded that project. The dams and water prohects that feed America, your government did that. The electrical grid, the freeway system, your government did that. Start being PROUD of America and what the American government has created. It’s time to stop being afraid of the American government and start being Americans and protect and serve your government and be a Patriot and stop being afraid.
someones been drinking WAAAAAY too much koolaid.
There are a lot of heavy drinkers here, but some are also actually government shills.
Government shill? If that what you call a “patriot” that served his country. Instead of the bullshit peeps like Alex Jones. Do you really want Americans to be afraid of their government? Do you really fear your government? Do you wish to inlfuence MORE people to rise up against their government? Do you think it’s reasonable for average citizens to consider rebelling against their government? Are you a communist? Just because I love my country AND support my government, I’m a shill? I call that being a PATRIOT and a VETERAN.
Obama has been filtering the armed forces to put those who will fire on Americans in leadership positions. Maybe you should reinlist? Yes, you probably are a shill. Americans are afraid of their government and they have every reason to be.
Jeffery Babineau, You are a very obvious liar.
“It is easier to fool a person than to convince them that they have been fooled!” Mark Twain
“No matter how cynical you become, you can never catch up!” Lily Tomlin
The Founding Fathers did not think of America as the Government, Jeffery; they thought of America as being the PEOPLE. Government is to SERVE THE PEOPLE, not vice versa.
I love my country, but I HATE the government. Government is a necessary evil, and this was well recognized by the Founding Fathers. The entire Constitution is a CONSTRAINT on the federal government, but over time, corrupt career politicians and entrenched bureaucrats have repeatedly violated the Constitution. We now have a much too large, powerful and intrusive federal government test needs to be reduced in all those ways. Remember Reagan’s comment about the 9 most frightening words in the English language: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” Be afraid; be very afraid of a government so big it can give you everything you need because that government can also take away everything you have. You really want the IRS deciding whether you are going to get that medical treatment you need to stay alive after what they did to Tea Party organizations and auditing of targeted conservatives? If you love your country, you will fight for much smaller federal government.
That’s hilarious. the people that WERE the government and wrote the laws that hated government. Would you do that? If you had total control would you create laws that said “don’t trust me?” “please feel free to usurp my authority anytime you wish?” It’s time to walk away from the anti government communist propaganda and use common sense.
But we better do it by the 2014 midterm elections, or it might be too late after that.
The marxist control freak billionaires are pouring fortunes into anti gun legislative candidates to further emasculate our personal rights to privacy and security.
Obama’s recent Christmas year’s end speech was the typical re-direct bullshit but he did make one purposeful revealing comment. He made it a point to mention that ‘We must pass a universal background check’ law.
This law was only defeated by five votes last time.
A universal background check will literally be the beginning of the end for private gun ownership. It will immediately expand to all personal transactions, including the gun you ‘gift’ to your children or friends, as is already happening in slave states like Illinois.
Once the NSA knows everything about who has what and where it is located, do I have to say ‘guess what’s next?’
I love my country, but I HATE the government. Government is a necessary evil, and this was well recognized by the Founding Fathers. The entire Constitution is a CONSTRAINT on the federal government, but over time, corrupt career politicians and entrenched bureaucrats have repeatedly violated the Constitution. We now have a much too large, powerful and intrusive federal government test needs to be reduced in all those ways. Remember Reagan’s comment about the 9 most frightening words in the English language: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” Be afraid; be very afraid of a government so big it can give you everything you need because that government can also take away everything you have. You really want the IRS deciding whether you are going to get that medical treatment you need to stay alive after what they did to Tea Party organizations and auditing of targeted conservatives? If you love your country, you will fight for much smaller federal government.
You forgot to mention that everything was stolen from the Indians, and Al Gore invented the internet.
I served with “Real Patriots” who did not come home. We swore to support and defend the constitution of the United Stated of America not the “american government”. You are confused, the government is here to serve us. When the government is not following the Constitution, it is time to be afraid.
@Jeffery… The government funded many of the things you mention, but it was the Private contractor who designed and did the work, not some government hack employee
Come on Mr President, settle down.
your money done that, without your money it would not have happend, and those were civilian hired by the government.
A simple question for Mr. Helsinki and fellow responders to this article. Have you watched the Zapruder film in high definition ? Thanks to modern technology the bullet that caused the fatal headshot can be seen by zooming in on the Presidents head. It can be seen with a shockwave before entering the top left side of his head. The bullet trajectory is consistent with that boxcar that was positioned on the railroad overpass. Therefor Lee Harvey Oswald did not fire that fatal shot that killed JFK. He was falsely accused and his surviving family should be compensated.
Standard film runs at 24 frames per second. Silent film at 16. I understand that the (silent) Zapruder film ran at 18.3 frames per second. At any of these speeds, one would be unlikely to see a rifle bullet at all, and if you could, (such as with strong lighting with perfectly contrasting background, or, of course, with tracer rounds) the bullet would be a streak over 30 feet long.
Why does it take “modern technology” to enlarge a piece of film (“zooming in”)?
There are all kinds of interesting videos on Youtube about whole Zapruder conferences and the inconsistencies and missing frames. If you have the time (who does?) search Youtube for Zapruder Hoax.
Yes. The “missing frames” were deliberately cut. It is now known why, by who, and what was in them.
Since when does being falsely accused require compensation? Ruby killed Oswald. Do you think the Ruby family should compensate the Oswald family too ????
from these pictures of this carcano, i wouldnt think he would have chose this rifle when the one he probably trained with in the marines was the one just above in the catalog pictured here. i find this strange to pick this weapon in the first place.
If one reads the Klein’s ad, you’ll see why Oswald chose it. It was 36″ long. Oswald did not have a driver’s license and often traveled by city bus WITH THE RIFLE (His wife’s testimony). He concealed the carbine under his Marine raincoat to do so by carrying the rifle by its sling, barrel down. This is confirmed by the sling pad on Oswald’s rifle. He needed a short rifle to do this. That he noted the advertised length of the rifle in the ad is demonstrated by his constructing a 38″ long bag to fit it in. However, Oswald never checked the length of the delivered weapon. It was not the 36″ carbine advertised but a substituted 40″ long Short Rifle. Hence, it would not fit in the bag.
Interesting, if that’s true, then this might account for the picture scale problem?
Ad lists a 40 model
That’s the problem with the rifle.
Kliens never had a36 inch rifle to sell to Oswald
The ad that IMAnonymous is talking about is the February 1963 issue of American Rifleman where Kleins advertised a 36” rifle. You could pay extra and have a scope mounted and then it became catalog number C20-T750. This is on Oswald’s order to Kleins WCH Vol. XXI page 704. The words “American Rifleman Feb. 1963” are at the top of the Exhibit. The catalog number C20-T750 is also on Kleins Order Blank to A. Hidell, dated 3/20/63 in which he was sent Italian Carbine 6.5 W/4X scope, serial number C2766.. WCH Vol. XXI pg. 703. What Oswald actually got is anybody’s guess.
I do not believe Oswald killed Kennedy. There is too much evidence that supports more than one shooter. A large rear portion of Kennedy’s skull was blown out. Too many people who heard shots from the grassy knoll and saw suspicious actions of other possible suspects conveniently disappeared. Oswald was said to be in the cafeteria at the time of the shooting and LBJ’s hit-man was in the book depository. There is a 9 episode series on You Tube titled “The Men Who Killed Kennedy”. I saw it and found it to be very informative and interesting.
It’s always bugged me that Oswald started working there long before LBJ changed the route to pass close by. It all stinks.
Oh yea, and the route was changes thirty minutes before the assassination.
One shot hit a curb far down the road. A piece of concrete hit a Mr. James Teague. I have never heard of the Warren Commision checking the trees for bullet strikes. If there were only three shots AND the curb shot was its own shot AND the “magic” bullet was not a plant, then the piece that hit the windshield support must have been from the fatal shot, but I do not know if this fits with the other particulars about that bullet.
That was proved with metallurgical analysis. There were 2 sizable fragments in the car that matched with the fragments from the fatal head shot. There is a great explanation of the different tests conducted both on the fragments and other tests done by the government and independent experts over the years in the book Case Closed, by Gerald Posner. Another great source in Reclaiming History, by Vincent Bugliosi. Both should be required reading before anyone draws a conclusion
What should a reasonable person conclude when a FMJ bullet fragments in a head shot and a supposed similar bullet can go through Kennedy and Connely and not fragment at all?
Actually, the bullet is flat on one side because it hit Connely sideways, leaving a 2 inch hole in his chest. The bullet fragments taken from his wrist also matched the make-up of the bullet found on the stretcher. A unique thing about the company manufactured Oswald’s ammo is that they were the only company in the world that did not ship rounds by batch, which means that each bullet unique, so matching fragments way not difficult. Also, the bullet left Oswald’s rifle at 2000ft. per second, but was only travelling at about 700-900ft when it hit the Governor’s wrist. Later tests conducted with ammunition with a reduced charge and fired through material of the same density as human bone, produced rounds that came out in better condition than the supposed Magic bullet. Lastly, if someone had planted that bullet, they were taking a foolish chance that a bullet would not be found in the governor, because the doctors were operating on his chest at the time, and had not yet x-rayed his leg to look for the bullet.
The FMJ bullet was discovered by British Army doctors during WWII, tat when it tumbled through a wound, it was so long that, at high velocity, it could break apart from the stress.
I seem to remember watching one of the reenactment shows that definitely mentioned using a particular lot number of Western ammo, but thought it was filmed in Australia. They used ballistic gelatin torsos and damn near duplicated the magic bullet shot. I remember that the one bullet didn’t penetrate the thigh, but did hit it after exiting the arm.
I saw that too.
I’d like to take some issues with your statements about Oswald’s Marine Corps rifle range performance. I went through boot camp in 1962 and the rifle range qualification course was nothing like what you stated it was. The course did consist of firing 50 rounds for record but it was 10 rounds slow fire offhand over 10 minutes. Then 10 rounds rapid fire with one magazine of 5 rounds changed in 60 seconds, both of these at 200 yards. The slow fire target was a 12 inch bullseye 5 ring target and the rapid fire was the D head and shoulders target. Next at 300 yards, there was 5 rounds slow fire kneeling and 5 round slow fire sitting over 10 minutes. Then 10 rounds rapid fire prone with one magazine of 5 rounds changed over 60 seconds, both using the same targets as used at 200 yards. Finally, there was 10 rounds slow fire at 500 yards over 10 minutes using a 36″ bullseye target. There was a total of 50 rounds and the max possible score was 250. Oswald qualified using this course twice, the first time firing a score of 212 which qualified him as a sharpshooter and the second time he scored a 191 which barely qualified him as a marksman. Below 190 was a disqualification. Although Oswald went through boot training in 1956, the course was the same as the one I fired and he probably used the M1 although the M-14 was being released to basic training around that time.
I’m glad someone else brought that out. Marksman was a step above NOT qualifying.
I went thru boot camp in 1961. Our slow fire target at 500 yds. was 16 in. The 36 in. target was used at
the 1000 yd. range. I went thru boot camp with the M-1 then in 1962 they switched to the M-14.
We fired rapid fire with the M-1 2 rounds in then a full clip. Both very good weapons.
A further clarification on the USMC rifle qualification – the rapid fire at 200 yards was 50 points possible, not 50 rounds – it was ten rounds total, including a magazine change (2 mags of 5 each), fired in the sitting position (starting standing and getting into position when the 60 seconds started) with each round worth a max of 5 points. A score of 48 or 49 means he dropped a point or two. A reasonable performance but nothing unusual. Marksman is indeed the lowest of the three possible levels of qualification, followed by Sharpshooter in the middle and Expert at the top.
Semper Fi,
Jim Finley, Captain, USMC, retired
Thanks for the clarification Jim. But the M1 Garand does not have a 5 round magazine, and that is the rifle he supposedly qualified with.
M1 Garand uses 8 round En Bloc Clips.
And both of these rifles are still good weapons.
But the Carcano was a POS.
DICK YOU ARE VERY CORRECT, M-1 FIRED 2 ROUNDS AND THEN A FULL 8 ROUND CLIP. 100 YDS OFFHAND, 200 YDS RAPID PRONE, 300 YDS KNEELING AND SITTING, 300 YDS, 500 YDS SLOW PRONE. BOOT CAMP 1956, SHOT 247 OUT OF 250. WENT ON TO SHOOY WITH THE MARINE BLUE TEAM, AMONG OTHER DUTIES.
SEMPER FI
I remember when I was in Jr. High getting the Klein’s catalog and I actually tried to get my dad to let me buy the 6.5 mm Carcano for under $20.00. We seemed to have trusted our citizens more back then, no need for the government to get involved in the purchase, but the store and the mailman and the private citizen.
And can you believe the price of the M1 carbine and the 1917 Enfeld!
I set one of theses rifles up with the original scope and mount that was used on the Oswald rifle for a reenactment of the Kennedy Shooting we filmed in Hollywood.
The mount is a stamped metal mount and can be easily bent. All I can remember of the markings on the scope was the Hollywood name. The movie industry armory I was working for at the time had two of these scopes. We were lucky enough to find (by pure luck) 2-3 boxes of ammo of the lot Oswald supposedly used. Shot them all except for two and gave those to some youngsters as collector items. No misfires with this old ammo. Yes, it was Winchester ammo. The biggest problem with the scope-mount setup is that you shoot across the bore line and not with it. So whatever range you set that intersecting line is all you have. The rest is the old Kentucky windage. Drove me up a wall when I started sighting the rifle in.
This would make sense with all the reports that Oswald was hired to shoot the governor of Texas and the shots that hit the president were misses. He apparently was good at near misses, Oswald attempted a hit on a military officer (sorry I don’t remember his name or rank) but he shot high and put a part in the man’s hair rather than though his head like he planned…
Tony
You’re talking about Major General Edwin Walker. The alleged shot was from less than 100 feet and according to Walker missed him by inches. Witnesses saw two men leave the scene of that shooting. Later Marina testified that Oswald was the shooter. George Dr Morenshildt also testified about the fact that he asked Oswald if he was the shooter and Oswald just smiled. When looking at the timeline of events, it is more likely that Oswald bought the rifle to kill Walker than Kennedy. And while some will say the purchase of the rifle was innocent, then why did Oswald use an alias for the purchase? I believe Walker was Oswald’s intended target all along.
Well, I suppose this was fun. Back in Oswald’s day, Western had enough sense to load their 6.5 Carcano ammo with the proper .268″ diameter bullets. It’s very likely then that his rifle was much more accurate than yours, bullets in PRVI ammo are generally .263″. I think pulling the old bullets from the military ammo and loading to approx the same velocity would have made you a better comparison. But, IRC, someone already did the comparison shooting the same Western bullets.
Interesting factoid, but the Carcano is known for deep, gain twist rifling, so it more likely would make a velocity difference rather than an accuracy difference.
The gain twist was used ONLY on the 1891 rifles. It was not used on the Model 38. I have owned many of the Carcano rifles and I never found them rough to use. The particular rifle you had may have had difficulties. I have even observed 1903 rifles that had to be slicked up to work properly.
There is a lot of misinformation on this for and against. Our rifle doesn’t appear to have it, but you really would have to look side by side to determine if there is any gain at all. There is certainly no dramatic gain twist on the test rifle for sure. The point is that the long bullet was most likely made for gain twist, and there doesn’t seem to be any government information about the twist of the Oswald rifle, though it may be somewhere.
Have you ever been to Texas and looked through those windows towards the place that Kennedy was shot? If not then don’t be making comments.
I always take any weapon apart and slick up all of the moving parts…….that way you start with clean a weapon and any error you make lets you know that it is not the weapon.
50 witnesses say the shots or shots came from the grasses knoll
One tiny tidbit very seldom mentioned about Lee Harvey Oswald: He was left handed. He almost certainly fired “The Shots” from his left shoulder, rifle rested on the carefully arranged boxes, with his right hand working the bolt – this allowed for the fast 2nd and 3rd shots that some “conspiracy” whack jobs discount as being possible. I am also a lefty, and have fired from a similarly rested position, working the bolt with my right hand, the trigger with my left, and keeping my head on the stock. One can make very fast, accurate, shots this way. Just another little data point.
That would make the scope more usable for Oswald. It would be similar to right handed me shooting a K31 that has a scope mount offset to the right. My normal cheekweld becomes a chinweld, and a good solid hold. It would be the same for Oswald if he held the rifle as Paul has speculated.
Paul F. If you really believe that Oswald fired 3 shots through a tree that was blocking his view then, you are a complete whack job who probably believes in every stupid “government” conspiracy ever dreamed up!!!
JOE, HAVE YOU EVER BEEN THERE IN THE 6TH FLOOR MUSEUM? HAVE YOU LOOKED THROUGH THAT WINDOW?
ME OR YOU COULD HAVE POPPED OFF THREE OR 4 SHOTS AND HIT KENNEDY. AND WITH A SCOPE, HE WOULD HAVE LOOKED LIKE HE WAS SITTING RIGHT IN FRONT OF OSWALD. AND IT WAS NOVEMBER, THERE WERE HARDLY ANY LEAVES ON THAT TREE! ACTUALLY OSWALD HAD A FACE SHOT THAT WAS EVEN EASIER BEFORE THE CAR MADE THE LEFT ON ELM. DONT READ INTO ALL THESE CONSPIRACY BUFFS. ANY ONE WITH EVEN THE SLIGHTEST BIT OF TRAINING COULD HAVE MADE 2 OUT OF THREE AT THAT DISTANCE. OSWALD WAS A MARINE MARKSMAN!
You can’t look through the widow. It has been walled off with a glass partition to prevent you from doing so. And there were leaves on the tree. The FBI photographed the tree from the “sniper’s nest” and determined the tree completely blocked Oswald’s view for all but a fraction of a second. Further, when the FBI mounted their camera on a tripod to take the pictures they found a second obstacle between them and shooting past the tree. The half open window, positioned as it as at the time of the shooting, blocked the camera. The FBI solved the problem by opening the window the rest of the way, something Oswald didn’t do.
Since this suggested it was impossible for Oswald to be positioned as the FBI camera was, Gary Mack, the 6th Floor Museum curator, placed a movie camera in the window and proved it was impossible to fire any shots before the tree without standing or any shots after the tree without kneeling. Since we know he had to be kneeling for the last shot, the assumption was that he must have been kneeling for all three shots since he would have at least hit the limousine with his rifle if he fired before the tree as one shot is known to have missed and the two that did hit were fired after the tree. The time available to Oswald to fire three shots while kneeling was less than 6 seconds. When the Warren Commission invited EXPERT shooters (not “marksmen”) to make the same shots with the same rifle (With the scope shimmed. It wasn’t shimmed for Oswald.) ALL OF THEM FAILED THE TEST. So CBS News tried to recreate the shots (twice – the first test failed so badly the show was not aired.) and their shooters also FAILED. The problem isn’t in target size or distance (the longest shot was 80 yards) it’s in the TIMING.
Sorry, Mel, but you have picked on Joe for his being right.
Do the old photos show branches large and close enough to allow a man to go into the tree?
hey asshole, why don’t you go look at the zapruder film, theres plenty of leaves on all the trees, November in texas aint the same as November in buttfuck where ever you live.
Roderick don’t know jack squat, research a “Texas Live Oak Sheds it’s Leaves” in the Spring is what you get, so in other words, you don’t know what you are talking about besides being a name-caller.
Texas Live Oak is what was in front of the 6th floor depository building. But I don’t know how much it covered, I know some of where the limousine drove was covered for a time.
Here is a picture of Kennedy being hit with the first shot. Notice the fully leafed tree blocking the entire view from that window
NO MARINE GETS OUTTA BOOT CAMP WITHOUT ATLEAST A MARKMAN’S BADGE…MEANING IT’S BASICALLY THE ENTRY LEVEL ACCOMPLISHMENT…NO BIGGIE.
This is too much of a coincidence…Mel one of the alternative investigators on a simultaneous investigation team. “Mel” shared the autopsy pictures with me, I’ve been to the 6th floor repository, I’ve seen the pis poor rifle, Remember oswald tried to shoot someone else through his living room window and not only missed but the gun jammed and he had to bolt. Anyway I digress, Mel said that their report was buried, they did not come to the same conclusion as the Warren commission the last “unknown” copy of this report was donated to a library in S.FLA and the day before the library opened the set was stolen.
Yep there is no conspiracy and oswald shot the President and the poor mafia, cia, and castro had nothing to do with it, jack ruby was really a choirboy. By the way I build AR’s (5 cals) load my own ammo and know a thing or two about rifles and ballistics. JFK was a pain in the side of too many people in power of all flavors and he was offed. Like Oswaldd said he was a patsy. He was a coward and a commie wannabe, Marine Marksman huh? The alternatete investgation found that he barely passed he was no marine marksman he was a sharpshooter. He was called a sociopath, no sir he was slow borderline retarded. Sorry for the insensativity. May JFK rest in peace and I hope one day this chapter can be closed. Someone tell the writter of this article that he will need Berdan Primmers not Boxer. It should be quite easy to reload, powders have changed but more likely than not some of the old surplus russian ammo (corosive) should be considered for the integrity of the test.
“ACTUALLY OSWALD HAD A FACE SHOT THAT WAS EVEN EASIER BEFORE THE CAR MADE THE LEFT ON ELM”
That always bothered me-why didnt he take the shot then?
It was a perfect shot,and would have actually given him more time.( And I doubt any need for more than one shot).
Have you ever been to Texas and looked through those windows towards the place that Kennedy was shot? If not then don’t be making comments.
H.R. Bevis I am not sure if you are referring to me with your comment but, it is a very stupid question because years ago they cut down the tree that was blocking the view of anyone who would have shot from that location and yes Mel, I have been all through out the museum…so what??? Here is a much better question…why would Oswald or anyone for that matter choose that location because, the announced route that was in the Dallas newspaper had the car NOT turning down elm st.!!! It was suppose to continue straight on Main st. The secret service made that choice at the last minute!!! Oswald could NOT have known this unless he was working for the secret service. If Oswald had any intention of shooting the JFK then, he was in the wrong location. It is a fact that the shots came from in front of the car. But, true idiots will try to argue against video proof!!!!
Joe- The route was published in the Dallas newspaper Your info about not turning is wrong. Also In 1963 those trees were much (!) shorter. Those shots were not difficult, even for a Marine “Sharpshooter” which is wat’s in his USMC record. As for Oswald being a leftie, watch “Saving Pvt. Ryan”. The sniper in the bell tower was also a leftie, and had a M1903A4. See how easy that was. You shouldn’t be calling names when your own info is wrong. (Sorry). As I remember the 1st shot was from 58 yds and the last was at 73 yds. Very easy shot for a trained shooter. If he was in cahoots with anyone, why would he use a $12.95 mail order rifle to kill a president> The Carcano does not come to mind as one of the better milsurps. Also Oswald only got tha job a week before 11/22. How would he have known if it was a last minute decision? (YOUR words, Joe). The whole damn incident was bizarrely mishandled. For that you can blame Jackie -who wouldn’t leave w/o her husband, LBJ who wanted to hightail it to Washington, RFK and the JFK loyalists on AF-1, and of course the secret service. At that time presidential assassinations weren’t a federal crime and so it SHOULD’VE been handled by the Dallas PD. THAT’s why we’ll never REALLY knbow all those missing facts. Even JFK’s brain is MIA. The whol;e thing was screwed up.
How did oswald do this from the cafeteria?
At one point in time I was a conspiracy believer because I did not think Oswald, as described in the Warren Commission report, could shoot 3 times in 4 to 6 seconds accurately, however, newer evidence allows 8 to 11 seconds which is most doable[http://www.washingtondecoded.com/site/2007/03/11-seconds-in-d.html]. Published pictures of Dealey Plaza make the distance for the shot seem long; however, actually standing where Kennedy was shot and looking back at the Depository it is awfully close and sent chills down my spine.
If you visit Dealey Plaza it becomes apparent that the grassy knoll is a terrible place for a shot to be taken from. It is far too open on all sides and a huge railroad yard is behind the fence making escape difficult let alone not being seen. In addition, a shot from that distance (25 yards) would have blown Kennedy’s head clean off and have also hit Mrs. Kennedy. If there were multiple shooters and only one hit the President, then certainly someone else would have been hit with that many bullets flying let alone believe they would be that bad of shooters.
I cannot think of a reason why Oswald would wait until his target was approaching 1/3 to 2/3 of a football field away before taking his first shot. Makes sense a much closer first shot was desirable. As Kennedy turned the corner from Houston to Elm Street the car almost completely stopped meaning Oswald had a clear shot.
Looking up at the 6th floor from beneath the Depository a steep angled shot would be required at the time Kennedy turned on Elm Street. A steep shot at close range would require under hold because of the bullet going higher than the point of aim. Secondly, depending on Oswald’s sight in distance for his scope (e.g., 50 or 100 yards) the bullet would travel a parabolic arc to the point of impact and at distances closer than the sight in distance the arc would be higher (i.e., overshooting). Also at that distance he would have to correct for movement (called tracking) whereas at the distances of the 2nd and 3rd shots that would not be necessary.
I believe failing to correct for the steep angle and scope setting and perhaps not tracking correctly could have caused Oswald to miss his first shot (perhaps aiming 2 to 3 inches high). Remember he was trained in the Marine Corps on stationary targets at 100 to 300 meter distances on flat terrain. That bullet perhaps hit the overhanging street pole in a glancing blow causing a ricochet (nobody has ever looked at the pole) or missed and struck the curbing or it hit a tree limb further down the street also causing a ricochet.
Then there was a pause (most all say second and third shots were closer together) and two more shots striking Kennedy. Meaning Oswald probably was surprised no one reacted so he settled down, took his time for the second shot and then once on target the third was easier.
Merbeau, Any trained sniper would tell you the height ‘angle’ of that Dallas window differentiation has virtually no significance at a distance of less than 100 meters with a high powered rifle. Most rifles shoot pretty flat out to sixty meters with insignificant or no drop. Arrows shot from high tree stands might be affected, but not a rifle. Similarly with the actual moa variance of the particular barrel. Put another way, A skilled or even a good shooter can even take an AK with iron sights, if properly sighted in to point of aim, and hit pretty close in the middle of point blank center mass at 60 meters just as easily as an AR15 with sub moa accuracy and a dead on scope. Maybe even a little easier considering the time to lay on the crosshairs and a moving target.
And don’t forget that nobody can prove that Oswald or whomever didn’t use the iron sights either for at least one of the shots. In investigations over the years we’ve always found, but hated to admit it, that the Murphy’ factor invariably factors in in most cases at some point throwing a real debate in a headlock.
What if Oswald, or whomever, used the scope on the first shot and was surprised at the miss, instantly assumed it was out of adjustment, and defaulted to the iron sights? You’d be surprised how ‘long’ a second is under certain circumstances. It may or may not be possible to fire more than three shots from a bolt rifle in six or eight seconds. But I wouldn’t bet your life on that guess. There’s somebody out there that can do it. And i could hit you hard with my fists or feet at least three times in ONE Second. And when I used to compete, I could draw and fire my pistol and hit three center mass targets at 10 meters in less than two seconds.
During the last anniversary of the assassination they had a couple good specials on TV based on the well researched books revisited for their unusual assessments. I don’t have the author’s at the moment but there were interesting new theories including the supposed fact that the first shot deflected off a metal light post and went on to hit the concrete where a bystander got fragments in his face.
And the head shot was actually done with an AR-15 carried by a secret service agent in the first following vehicle. By ‘accident’ of course, in knee jerk reaction to the sniper shots, but it was still covered up, until this author/documentary exposed it. The agent who allegedly did the accidental shot is now deceased. In one of these documentaries/books they also managed to measure the skull shot entry hole and it was .223 size instead of 6.5 size.
After years of reviewing almost every conceivable information on the subject and some not easily available to the public because this was kind of a avocation with my old detective squad, and considering other factors like the fact that behind the Camelot illusion almost everybody in the world hated the Kennedy’s from governments to VP’s big oil buddies to the head of the FBI, to the Mob and Unions, et al, and from the way the first lady acted afterward to protect here family, and to the way JFK Jr. alluded to his intense desire to ‘learn the truth’ with eventual plans to run for pres himself, and of course his ‘untimely plane crash, because of how suspicious the rest of the Kennedy family always was afterward, our professional evaluation is that if it wasn’t a conspiracy, then Santa Clause is just a myth.
Remember the first leg of any mystery is ‘motivation’. Political whack nut jobs like Oswald notwithstanding the hundreds of people including some very big ‘shots’, who never went to prison after the Kennedy brothers went to heaven.
And after all is said and done, there will always be more ‘said’, than ‘done’ to determine the indisputable final facts on this amazing case. Especially when they still won’t reveal or release major evidence until many more years in the future.
Witnesses said that the limo stopped just before the last head shot
The Zappru to film clearly show a shot from the right front
Thanks, Joe. You are on the money. Still, I am appreciative that Paul reminded us that suspect Oswald was a “lefty.” I will add that I understand that no ammo clip was found on the scene, on the sixth floor of the TSBD, which would seem to require that a sniper manually load all his shots, one at a time, on a carbine model that was already a pain in the butt to operate.
Paul F, I went through boot camp in early ’66, and we had a few lefties. Our Senior DI, the biggest and meanest Hawaiian staff sergeant ever made, strongly recommended (ok, ordered) that they shoot as a righty. The main reason being that the M-1, M-14, and early M-16s all eject back and to the right. Hot brass with a sharp edge on one end striking the face or eye tends to ruin the entire day. They finally wised up with the M-16 and put that little wedge shaped deflector which throws the brass more to the right and less to the rear.
Your Senior DI was wrong. I’ve shot an M14 lefty all day and never once been hit with hot brass. I shot my M16 lefty at boot camp and throughout my time in the Marines, and never once took a piece of my own brass to the face. In 1966 it might have been different for the M16, I don’t know when they added the brass deflector, but an M1 or M14 are easily fired left-handed with no problems whatsoever, and telling recruits to shoot weak-hand is simply setting them up for failure.
Did you ever fire the M-16 offhand? I am a lefty and I still have burn marks on my right forearm where I got pummeled by hot brass. I was in the Army in the early 70s pre-deflector. To this day I only buy ARs that have a left eject.
Of course I’ve fired an M16 offhand. I fire my AR offhand too. I have never once been hit with my own brass from any AR/M16. If your forearm is getting burned with brass, either you’re using a slick-side rifle, which I’ve never fired, or I don’t know what kind of position you’re shooting from, but certainly not any position I ever learned. And I hate left-ejecting rifles. They’re a crutch, nothing more. The AR platform (provided it has a brass deflector) is perfectly ambedextrous.
Grey Wolf I was in the Corps 68-71, qualfied with the M-14 and carried the M-16 allthrough Nam, I’m also left handed and never once had a problem with brass hitting me. Also if you notice on the carcano the scope is off set to the right, it would be a little difficult for a leftie to use that scope.
I forgot to add that my M-16 IN 68 had a deflector so it is unlikely yours did not have one unless some how yours was the first version which was faised out do to malfunction problems.
Sometimes time alters perceptions, and certainly memories. Especially if the original experience was under stress, as in ‘drill sergeants’.
It’s pretty hard to hit yourself in the face with any ejected brass from any semi-auto rifle unless you instantly stick your head up in the path of hot brass after pressing the trigger to see if you hit anything, LOL!
Where this came from is that some of the early M-16’s without the deflector might have flipped some of the hot brass on the left handed shooter’s arm depending upon how they held the weapon, big guys always got hit more, but they did throw it back on the man laying next and slightly behind to you. If you were firing full auto that could be a distinct irritation to his concentration, especially if hit in the face. I don’t remember it being too big of a deal when i was there. We worried more about enemy rounds in our faces. And it was always much more irritating when guys threw grenades without looking exactly where they were throwing or firing LAWs without looking back to see if anybody was behind the tube.
I have an AR 15 made in the mid 1980’s that does not have the shell deflector.
Bill that is not a military M-16, apples and oranges.
M16A1 rifle, no integral brass deflector, but can use a plastic one that attaches by snapping into the hole in the carrying handle for use by lefties.
The first military issue M16 which had the “wedge” behind the ejection port which functions as a brass deflector was the M16A2 which was not adopted until the early/mid-80’s by the Marines and mid-late 80’s by the Army.
You are correct. Being a lefty, the brass from the M-14 hit hit me in the back of the neck – (burned a little). The M-16 (later) brass cut across my right cheek, making a slight cut on my face. But being left eye dominate, it was very hard at best to shoot right handed. Because I could shoot very well as a lefty, they let it go as long as I didn’t make any complaints. No complaints here, I always qualified expert. MCRD 1969.
The differences that people have experienced with ejection angles are because the same model rifle can have different angles that brass ejects. I’ve never seen two Garands the exact same.
I don’t think the differences get that drastic. I’m a lefty, and the ONLY firearm that has ever hit me with my own brass is a lever-action Marlin 1894 I own in .44 mag. Sometimes the brass lands in the crook of my right elbow. I still think it’s a fun rifle to shoot. Granted, I’ve never shot an M16 without a brass deflector, and I imagine that can be less than optimal for a lefty, but an AR with a brass deflector or an M14? That just sounds to me like people complaining for the sake of complaining.
Yes, you are absolutely correct and i forgot to mention that in my comment. Thanks. There are variables anywhere from extraction/ejections spring tension, gas tube power, to full auto bursting. Also, the physical differences in shooters, including the positions of holding the rifles and other factors all add up.
Look at that picture of him in the article. He has his pistol on his right hip and is holding the rifle as a righty would, not a lefty. There is no reason any left-handed shooter would pose for a picture that way. I am a lefty as well, and don’t own a right-handed holster, because I have zero use for one. I also don’t hold my rifles weak-side, especially not if posing for a picture. Based on this, I doubt Lee Harvey Oswald was a lefty. I agree, however, that these conspiracy theories are nonsense, and that an ex-Marine (Oswald is the ONLY ex-Marine) would easily be able to make those shots.
The proportions of the body to the rifle, which is a known measurement, put him much shorter than he really was, so that isn’t his body.
His wife admits to having taken the pictures, and experts have rebutted all the points claiming that they were altered.
Because wive’s and experts never lie. Apparently you have never been to either a divorce court or a criminal trial. The math is very simple. The rifle is a known measurement. Cut it out and compare it to Oswald.
I’m still more apt to believe that photos that his wife claimed to take, that were taken in his backyard with his rifle, are pictures of him. Especially because one of them was in the possession of his friend, and had his handwriting on it. As you said yourself, experts lie. The length of the rifle may be a known measurement, but figuring out the exact height of a body compared to it isn’t, especially considering angles and posture and such. Furthermore, this isn’t the era of photoshop here, in the 1960s it was far harder (though admittedly possible) to alter a photo. Just because, post arrest, Oswald claimed that the photos were bogus doesn’t mean they are. He made all manner of absurd claims. Apply Ockham’s Razor here; it states that the simplest explanation is usually true. Is it more believable that a disturbed man had pictures taken of himself with his weapons and communist periodicals, or that some shadowy government cabal produced forgeries (within a day or two in 1963) to further indict a patsy that they set up?
Apt to believe is the problem with America. It’s ok let it crumble. Your nap time is important.
There is something called scale. A person just cannot take a picture and if an object is in the picture measure it and think it is correct. One would need to know the scale the picture was taken to account for correct length. I proved this to myself by taking a picture of my skeet shotgun and knowing the barrel length was 28 inches tried to measure the length of pull. Not even close. I then went back and ran the picture through a filter to make it to scale (i.e., one inch equals 5 inches) and then measured the distance and came very close.
your right about being left handed. I always had a hard time in the service firing the M1, as the casing would
eject “hot”, and hit me in the cheek. bolt action were much easier for me to use.
Not sure where you got that Oswald was a lefty. He wasn’t. The only source for him having been a lefty was one of the early releases of the pic of him holding the rifle. The picture was itself photographed (as was the custom for newspapers back then) and the negative was accidentally printed backward. When the new pic of Oswald holding the newspapers was released, people realized the mistake. Neighbors testified having seen Oswald practice the bolt action of his rifle on his front porch – he always fired right handed. Also, in every photo of Oswald, he demonstrates right hand dominance. The testimony of him carrying the “package” indicates (by several witnesses) that he carried it in his right hand. Oswald was not a lefty. Funny how a small detail can set off a whole conversation only to realize the detail was wrong.
Naaah Try getting 3 shots off in 7 seconds with that rifle, re-aiming in between each shot Not easy for a marksman
and I am left handed too
Chronograph’s were around as the modern version was made in the 1950’s, before that they would use two spinning disk to measure.
How did the spinning disks work? How was that type of test done?
RE: the third bullet, the headshot, disintegrated entirely after going through two layers of skull,
which is significantly thinner than a rib.
Would A trained assassin or at least a Well supplied and Well advised one have shells with varied power loads and possibly
different bullet weights and compositions for various predictable effects on the target ?
Evidently you have no experience with shooting, different bullet weights do not hit at the samp point of impact as a rule! with a great deal of effort 2 diff weights can hit at same point but only 1 point in the arc(s) of flight.
It is quite possible the original bullet never weighed 160 grains, and didn’t actually “lose” any of it’s weight.
Ive seen even expensive match bullets have as much as a couple grains difference in weight, not a big deal. Since he used surplus ammo, I wouldn’t be surprised if that bullet never weighed 160 grains.
Just wanted to throw that out there, since I saw it mentioned at least twice about how it “lost” two grains of it’s weight. Fact is, nobody knows exactly what it weighed when it was loaded in the rifle, only what the ammo spec. was.