Thread: Any ballistic experts out there? JFK Assassination ?

Originally Posted by jockeys

it's not uncommon for a 6.5Grendel to still be at fragmentation speeds after 400-500 yards. the shot was taken well within that range, there is no reason to think the bullet wouldn't have fragmented.

The pristine bullet that was recovered from the stretcher which is part of Arlen Spector's "single bullet theory" certainly didn't fragment. None of JFK's wounds other then the head wound show anything like that kind of damage.

There are many things from the books I've read on the topic that give me room for doubt among them the parade route being changed on the morning of the motorcade, the fact that only the three shell casings were found in the 'sniper's nest' and no more rounds were found among Oswald's possessions at his room or at Marina's home. If he was going to attempt to do something like that I would think he might bring some extra ammo.

That they interrogated him for 12 hours and there is no transcript. That a hoodlum with known underworld ties murdered him. I saw it live on TV that morning. That JFK's autopsy was botched and the brain of the President of the United States along with tissue samples is missing. I am not an expert on autopsy by any stretch but I would think the bullet fragments in the brain could have told us something that might have been conclusive.

In 1979 the House Committee on Assassinations concluded that both President Kennedy's and Dr. Martin Luther King's assassinations had been the result of a conspiracy BTW.

Well as i have been saying for years... i stood on the grassy knoll and used a winchester .308 with 185 grain nosler partition bullets... lots of mushroom

















oh course i did that 2 years before i was born... i was that good !

I am going to take this one step at a time, otherwise I will fill up pages of posts and say nothing..... Like I said in my first post this is a subject that tickles my brain...

First the myth of the inability of anyone being able to reproduce the shots..... It has been done numerous times the problem was that somehow when this was first tried no one thought to pull the trigger, cycle, pull cycle, pull thats it.... not cycle pull, cycle pull, cycle pull...

This seems so logical to any hunter or shooter but it escaped the Warren commission....


The timing required to do this is anywhere from 5.6 sec to 8.3 seconds depending on which evidence you subscribe too either way the shots have been done in 3.4 seconds...

The other side of this for the conspiracy guys, is most often an experienced shooters first shot is the hit, but Oswald missed, (maybe) then hit on the two follow ups, this is unusual, not impossible, but unusual....

Here is what you need to visualize which is fairly easy for a shooter to do take 3 targets one at near 45 yards one at 63 and one at 88 these are the approximate distances of the three shots, keep in mind there is a distinct possibility that the first shot was actually deflected by a lamp post, and make the three shots... Think you can do it????

no if i want any of the hits in the 10 ring and still not in under 10 seconds with a bolt action

Keep it coming Glen.
I am not a conspiracy nut, but the things I saw about the JFK assasination seriously make me doubt that Oswald was alone (or even involved).

In the PBS special Oswald's Ghost he was portrayed as a man who longed for some sort of notoriety yet he denied that he was the assassin saying,"I'm just a patsy". J Edgar Hoover portrayed him as the lone nut and a malcontent. In the marine corps he was a radar tech at the air base in Atsugi, Japan where the U2 spy planes were deployed flying over he Soviet Union. An MOS which no doubt required a substantial security clearance.

His defection to the Soviet Union is also interesting for the fact that when he decided to come home he was immediately allowed back in without a great deal of difficulty. If you aren't of an age to have lived through the cold war years it is hard to imagine the attitude towards communism in general and the Soviet Union in particular. We kids were routinely going through "duck & cover" drills and the joke was "put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye".

His record vis a vis the rifle range was undistinguished. He qualified twice once as a sharpshooter and later as a marksman, a lower rating. Both times with an M1 rifle. Whether he could have made the shots is one of many questions. He could have started with a round in the chamber and would have only had to cycle the bolt twice if three shots were fired.

The timing of the shots is documented by the Z film. I have read that in mock ups created at Quantico the USMC rifle team tried to duplicate the shots within the time allotted at a stationary target and couldn't. Since then it apparently has been done a few times out of hundreds of tries.

To me the fact that the Warren commission was set up to close any meaningful investigation into the assassination is undisputed. President Johnson thought that Castro, having learned of the US policy to eliminate him, was behind it. He was afraid that if the public found this out it would lead to a US attack on Cuba and the Soviets defending them precipitating WW3.

Is it any more far fetched to believe in a conspiracy to kill JFK then to believe that the CIA incorporated the mafia to kill Fidel Castro ? Imagine that you were a CIA agent and a fervent anti communist. You spend months, even years training Cuban refugees to invade their homeland and develop a bond with many of them.

You assure them that the US will be there for them with air support when the invasion finally takes place and you believe it. The Bay of Pigs turns into a fiasco and an embarrassment for the administration. For the CIA it was way more personal. Those trainers had friends amongst the Cubans who participated in the invasion and were left dead on the beaches or captured and imprisoned.

The feeling of betrayal that they felt must have been extreme. They already had ties with the mafia. Could rogue elements of the CIA have teamed up with the underworld to kill Kennedy ? I'm not saying that is what happened but it certainly is a possibility. The two organizations were already associated in planning an assassination of a head of state. Is one more unbelievable then the other ?

For those who weren't around in those years the election of 1960 plays into it too. Politics makes strange bedfellows. It is said that had Sam Giancana not delivered votes in Chicago the election would have went to Nixon. Nixon could have contested the election and was advised to but felt it would cast him in too negative a light and declined to do so. When RFK was made attorney general and went after organized crime with gusto they too felt betrayed.

When the House Committee on Assassinations scheduled Sam Giancana, Johnny Roselli and Tony Costo to testify regarding their involvement with the CIA all three were murdered before they could appear, Giancana had been the head of the Chicago mafia and Roselli the liaison between the CIA and the mafia in planning the Castro 'hit'. Costo, A.K.A. Tony Plate was a lesser known higher up within the mob.

I never got into the space between the shots and time involved but I was watching TV the day it happened. One of the first things they said was that the shots came from the grassy knoll. That is the first place the Police checked. I have been a varmint hunter since the early 60's and have a bit of experience in bullet ballistics and performance. I had a hollow point [25-06 110gr at 3700fps] go into a groundhog in his heart lung cavity and had no exit wound. I did a field autopsy and could not find the bullet. It disintegrated into small shreds and the chest cavity was just one big blood clot. The animal did one back flip and did not move. A bullet of this type could have done similar damage in the president. I have always thought there was a conspiracy from day one.

bj

Originally Posted by 2Sharp

I have been a varmint hunter since the early 60's and have a bit of experience in bullet ballistics and performance. I had a hollow point [25-06 110gr at 3700fps] go into a groundhog in his heart lung cavity and had no exit wound. I did a field autopsy and could not find the bullet. It disintegrated into small shreds and the chest cavity was just one big blood clot. The animal did one back flip and did not move. A bullet of this type could have done similar damage in the president. I have always thought there was a conspiracy from day one. bj

I was hoping someone with your experience with hyper velocity varmint cartridges would step up. For those who are not familiar with those weapons it is hard to imagine the difference between that and a full jacket military round. Had the rounds that struck JFK been the same the wounds in his trunk and Governor Connelly's would have been far more damaging. Governor Connelly probably wouldn't have survived the shoulder/chest wound.

"Long story short..." I have thought for many years that the fatal shot was probably something in the class of a seventy grain bullet in .243 caliber. From behind the stockade fence the short range would have made it an easy shot for a competent rifleman.

The wound that was caused by the round suspected to have been used is possible. But what you have to take into account is that the original report stated the the entry was below and behind the left ear, exiting the upper right fore head area. This would account for the explosive exit. Shoot a milk jug fiilled with liquid with a FMJ bullet, and it does the same thing. Small entry, large exit.The head is a container, hard shell filled with liquid gellintin mass. Now comes the hard part, the suspected shot came from high right?
The single bullet therory is also possible and has been proven that it could have hit both.
This accounts for two shots, first one missed. Where did the bullet hole in the winshield come from?
The motorcycle officer on the over pass in front of the limo that was not suspose to be there and has not been accounted for.
Why did the driver slow down and have his foot on the brake instead of speeding up until after the fatal shot had been fired?
Why has every one conected to the event, ie; nurses, doctors, attendents, etc. died of quetionable deaths. 53 in all.
X ray film taken at hospital don't match the autopsy film.
There are more questions then answers.