Bright Insight - JFK Assassination

[pigfarmer]

The autopsy showed an entry would from the rear, the exit wound in his throat was changed by the emergency tracheotomy. With his brains spattered why they would do that is interesting, but I'm not a doctor and have the benefit of detached hindsight. I'm not sure why there's any debate - unless the Parkland doctors had been replaced by Reptilians bent on changing the timeline, which would then make perfect sense of course.

I've pounded a few squib loads out of barrels, usually it's lack of a charge not a light one. The primer's enough to stick the bullet in the forcing cone or beginning of the rifling. There's an old thing about light loads generating high pressure that may or may not be true, but as a hand loader I'd be examining my spent brass cases. The condition of the primer and case head can tell you a lot about what happened when it went bang.

 

[Rick Hunter]

I've had a few loads with slow burning powder in modest quantities where alot of the powder didn't ignite and left a ton of granules in the barrel. I don't shoot anything that is particularly strong so I switched to faster burning powders and have had no problems. Smaller charge weights are a godsend when you're paying 40-50 bux a pound. I'm planning to switch everything, including my 6.5 Creedmoor and heavy barrel .257 Roberts, to Hodgdon 335 if possible. For some reason it is $10.00 less than all the others, clean burning, lower charge weights, has listed loads for almost everything, and I'm sure I can work up loads for those not listed. It's a dandy with gas checked lead slugs in .30-30, 24 grains produces groups way tighter than I can hold.

 

[nivek]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36qUVsgCIpc

JFK assassination nurse says she SAW the 'pristine bullet' Secret Service agent Paul Landis now claims he retrieved from limo and placed on stretcher - upending the 'magic bullet' theory​

The prior eyewitness testimony of a nurse present in the emergency room after President John F. Kennedy was fatally shot in 1963 seems to corroborate a former Secret Service agent's bombshell new claim.

Multiple interviews given by nurse Phyllis J. Hall a decade ago appear to back up former Secret Service agent Paul Landis' claim, after she described seeing a bullet sitting on the mortally wounded president's stretcher next to his head.

Landis, 88, broke his silence in an interview on Saturday, nearly six decades after Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, to share a claim that upends the infamous 'magic bullet' theory and raises the possibility of multiple shooters.

In short, he claimed to have picked up a nearly pristine fired bullet from the back seat of the limousine where Kennedy was shot and placed it on the president's hospital stretcher to preserve as evidence.

That bullet would seem to be the one that the Warren Commission claimed was recovered from Texas Governor John Connally's stretcher - the so-called 'magic bullet' that appeared nearly intact despite the Commission's theory that it struck both Kennedy and Connally.

A decade ago, nurse Phyllis J. Hall gave interviews that appear to back up Landis' claim, after she described seeing a bullet sitting on the mortally wounded president's stretcher.

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Several interviews given by nurse Hall in 2013 seem to corroborate Landis' fresh claim.

'On the cart, halfway between the earlobe and the shoulder, there was a bullet laying almost perpendicular there, but I have not seen a picture of that bullet ever,' she told The Telegraph almost 10 years ago.

Separately, she told the Sunday Mirror: 'I could see a bullet lodged between his ear and his shoulder. It was pointed at its tip and showed no signs of damage. I remember looking at it – there was no blunting of the bullet or scarring around the shell from where it had been fired.

'I'd had a great deal of experience working with gunshot wounds but I had never seen anything like this before. It was about one-and-a-half inches long – nothing like the bullets that were later produced. It was taken away but never have I seen it presented in evidence or heard what happened to it. It remains a mystery.'

In fact, her description of the mystery bullet nearly perfectly matches the first piece of evidence logged by the FBI under the tag number 'C1' - the bullet supposedly recovered from Connally's stretcher after falling from a wound on his leg.

It also offers a point of corroboration to the claim of Landis, who says that he believes the bullet was undercharged and fell from a shallow wound in Kennedy's back onto the limo seat - a far cry from the two-person through-and-through wounds proposed by the Warren Commission.

Hall openly admits that she personally believes that multiple gunmen were involved in the assassination, and also waited decades to come forward with her story, explaining that she feared harassment and retaliation.

She was not on the list of ER personnel who attended Kennedy, because she was not assigned to the emergency room, explaining that she was visiting a friend in triage when she was pulled in to assist the futile attempts to save the president's life.

(More on the link)

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[Dejan Corovic]

OK, so what nurse is saying as well, is that bullet was different shape?

 

[pigfarmer]

I'm not sure what she just added beyond confusion. What it tells me is that the entire thing was handled unprofessionally from the git-go.

A Secret Service agent treating stray bullets fresh from a presidential assassination like he just found somebody's car keys on the floor at the gym is the glaring factoid I got from all that, not the theories about the bullet itself. While that was going on one of the Dallas PD had the brass rifle casings jangling around in his pocket over the weekend, and they were about to let an unscreened armed person far too close to the prime suspect because he was a known good ol' boy. Add the territorial internal pissing match over the body and autopsy and you have a great recipe for what looks and smells like conspiracy but IMO is probably human fallibility and random chance at work. This isn't exactly Dallas CSI.

The nurse's eyewitness testimony is probably genuine but suspect.

 

[Rick Hunter]

I'm not sure what she just added beyond confusion. What it tells me is that the entire thing was handled unprofessionally from the git-go.

A Secret Service agent treating stray bullets fresh from a presidential assassination like he just found somebody's car keys on the floor at the gym is the glaring factoid I got from all that, not the theories about the bullet itself. While that was going on one of the Dallas PD had the brass rifle casings jangling around in his pocket over the weekend, and they were about to let an unscreened armed person far too close to the prime suspect because he was a known good ol' boy. Add the territorial internal pissing match over the body and autopsy and you have a great recipe for what looks and smells like conspiracy but IMO is probably human fallibility and random chance at work. This isn't exactly Dallas CSI.

The nurse's eyewitness testimony is probably genuine but suspect.

I think this is the theory that makes most sense.

 

[Dejan Corovic]

I'm not sure what she just added beyond confusion. What it tells me is that the entire thing was handled unprofessionally from the git-go.

A Secret Service agent treating stray bullets fresh from a presidential assassination like he just found somebody's car keys on the floor at the gym is the glaring factoid I got from all that, not the theories about the bullet itself. While that was going on one of the Dallas PD had the brass rifle casings jangling around in his pocket over the weekend, and they were about to let an unscreened armed person far too close to the prime suspect because he was a known good ol' boy. Add the territorial internal pissing match over the body and autopsy and you have a great recipe for what looks and smells like conspiracy but IMO is probably human fallibility and random chance at work. This isn't exactly Dallas CSI.

The nurse's eyewitness testimony is probably genuine but suspect.

I was going to say that, when Secret Agent put a bullet on gurney, I thought that bullet could had:

1. fallen of the gurney due to gurney being pushed and tussled around,
2. one of dozen people passing buy could had took it as souvenir,
3. nobody would be able to identify that provenance of that bullet and would be useless to investigation.

Really what a chaos, although understandable.

Secret Agent should had kept bullet with himself and submitted it with report to the investigation once things calmed down enough.

 

[pigfarmer]

Even if it was one of the 6.5mm rounds fired found rolling around loose I'd just repeat what I've already said - sometimes bullets do weird ****. I've had fully intact bullets that were thankfully largely spent come right back and strike me. That's why we wear protective glasses.

I'd think an undercharged round might be more apt to stay in a body than exit, but like the undercharged round itself that's pure speculation. I've never had a squib from any commercial or military ammo I've used, and I've shot up stuff from WW2. I still have some Lake City Army Arsenal M2 ball headstamped 1969 and it's like new. Normally you'd look at the shape of the primers - the shoulder - for any signs of pressure. I imagine they were analyzed to see if the firing pin ding and extractor mark matches the rifle but maybe not the condition of the cases themselves. They probably exist somewhere and could still be examined. @Rick Hunter I think you nailed it - an undercharged load with a long burning powder might create an overpressure condition. I don't load for rifle but that little tidbit is stuck in my head from a long time ago.

Take a milsurp carbine stoked with military ball ammo and fire it at close range into a slow moving steel bucket full of people and what a surprise, there are multiple gruesome injuries.

 

[nivek]

JFK: Is this proof there WERE two shooters? He was a secret service agent in the car behind Kennedy when he was killed. Now, breaking 60 years of silence, his story casts doubt on the official version​

As one of two Secret Service agents assigned to safeguard the wife of President John F. Kennedy, Paul Landis was never far behind Jackie Kennedy wherever she went.

That was the situation on November 22, 1963, when the Kennedys embarked on what should have been a routine motorcade through the streets of Dallas, Texas.

As excited crowds clamoured to catch a glimpse of America's golden couple in their open-top limousine, 28-year-old Landis was one of four agents keeping watch from the jumpboard of a Cadillac immediately behind.

It meant that when shots rang out, he had a ringside view of one of the most shocking — and defining — events of the 20th century.

Yet for almost 60 years Landis has remained largely silent, traumatised by what he witnessed after the limousine passed by the Texas School Book Depository and bullets struck the President's neck and head. It is only now, in his 88th year, that he feels able to fully recall the day President Kennedy was assassinated in front of him.

This month, Landis publishes his book, The Final Witness, a compelling account of his time in the Kennedy detail, the elite team whose mission was to protect the President and the First Lady.

Why did it take him so long to tell his story?

(More on the link)

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[Dejan Corovic]

View: https://youtu.be/5u7euN1HTuU

 

[Dejan Corovic]

I watched the whole above documentary, and it is plain as a day that Lee Oswald was acting alone, but Dallas police bungled up investigation and made lots errors, that they tried to hide, which than later gave appearance of conspiracy. But, phenomenal documentary in itself because it pulls every little detail into one complete narrative so one really get a full 6th floor view.

 

[pigfarmer]

@Dejan Corovic and I have been kicking around some ideas that I thought are worth sharing here. My memory of Dealey Plaza seen from the Book Depository is old and we all know about the failings of human memory so at one point I used Google Earth to measure the shot at about 80 yards from the window to the Grassy Knoll which is about halfway to the overpass. Rough but adequate. You'll have to calculate the metric-ness of all this, I don't think in those units.

Just to give (an even rougher) estimate, the dimensions of a standard head + torso B27 target are about 38" by 25". JFK was 6'4" and sitting on a platform in that car. I'm roughly that size and this target approximates my torso and head. The little pink 6" circle is one of the homemade targets I use. I like the bright colors so I can see it with my old eyeballs as I am using the iron sights on antique bolt action rifles. Most of them have a foldable rear leaf sight that can go out to ridiculous distances - Oswald's Carcano may have had 1500 meter graduated sight on it. Doesn't mean you can accurately shoot that far with it. Service rifles have 'battle sights' that are a known distance when the rear leaf is folded down. 300 yards is standard, the Marines preferred 250 yards.

USMC rifleman in WW1 used their bolt action m1903 Springfields out to 900 yards effectively, which might tip you off that they train their people to be rifleman first and anything else second. The highest ranking officer and newest private share that in common. I've competed against young men who had recently been in the service and suffice to say I was competing, they weren't. Impressive skills.

So, have a look. I happen to have a mountain of cardboard in the garage right now and I am seriously overcaffeinated. I roughed out a B27 in black, you can see what a 6" bullseye looks like on it. I use the battle sights, not the leaf for this. Really hard to see. At 100 yards from a bench in no rush I was routinely putting virtually all of my shots well within that circle in nice tight groups. At 100 yards offhand we used to make steel plates about twice that size jump. Oswald had practice, real military training and a scoped rifle.

You can see what I 'train for' and how big that man's body must have appeared to Oswald. In a telescopic sight, even that crappy one, it would've been the size of a barn door.

When it dries out and lightens up later I'll measure off and set this at some distance so you can literally see what I am talking about.

 

[pigfarmer]

Accurate or not, here's the most simplistic map of the distances involved

 

[Rick Hunter]

I think making the shot itself would have been the easiest part of the assassination. Pretty much anywhere on the head would be a fatal shot from a rifle bullet and Oswald was reputedly a very good marksman, scoring well above a passing grade during his military training.

 

[pigfarmer]

It's one thing to look at TV and YouTube but as a shooter @Rick Hunter you know what I am talking about. In fact, since you hunt you're better qualified to talk about cycling a bolt action rifle quickly than I am. Deer are a hell of a lot faster than a big slow moving car. The Warren Commission believed he did it and made an unremarkable case to show that.

Also, with handguns I've shot at many, many moving targets. Rifle's are generally easier as they have a much longer sight plane. There's an annual shoot I used to go to for years that featured two gallery like stations at the end with moving ducks. Not easy to do at all no matter how much practice you've had, and I've had. In the combat league you regularly shoot while moving, moving backwards, with flash lights, weak handed etc. The car was moving away from the shooter, not traversing his field of view horizontally. The big target just got slightly smaller I'd think.

I was able to regularly zap a fire extinguisher turned target gong way the hell up in a tree at 80 yards without too much difficulty - same distance as the first shot at JFK. That's with a little .22 S&W 617 revolver with a 3" barrel. At 50 yards that B27 target would be Swiss cheese with the S&W 629 or 686 I've hand loaded extensively for. Could probably do it at 80 but I don't aspire to be an assassin.

 

[Dejan Corovic]

I just thought of another strong reason why Oswald acted alone.

After he left the building he left area on a public buss. Just imagine that, you are part of some super powerful and wealthy secret organisation ( mafia, 3 letter agency, CCCP etc. ), whose team just killed most powerful man on the earth and you are waiting on urban buss stop and leaving the area with all the janitors, catering stuff and pensioners.

If that is not tragi comical, I don't know what is.

 

[Rick Hunter]

It's one thing to look at TV and YouTube but as a shooter @Rick Hunter you know what I am talking about. In fact, since you hunt you're better qualified to talk about cycling a bolt action rifle quickly than I am. Deer are a hell of a lot faster than a big slow moving car. The Warren Commission believed he did it and made an unremarkable case to show that.

Also, with handguns I've shot at many, many moving targets. Rifle's are generally easier as they have a much longer sight plane. There's an annual shoot I used to go to for years that featured two gallery like stations at the end with moving ducks. Not easy to do at all no matter how much practice you've had, and I've had. In the combat league you regularly shoot while moving, moving backwards, with flash lights, weak handed etc. The car was moving away from the shooter, not traversing his field of view horizontally. The big target just got slightly smaller I'd think.

I was able to regularly zap a fire extinguisher turned target gong way the hell up in a tree at 80 yards without too much difficulty - same distance as the first shot at JFK. That's with a little .22 S&W 617 revolver with a 3" barrel. At 50 yards that B27 target would be Swiss cheese with the S&W 629 or 686 I've hand loaded extensively for. Could probably do it at 80 but I don't aspire to be an assassin.

I would imagine Oswald used the Lee-Enfield rapid fire technique of keeping your forefinger under the bolt and squeezing the trigger with the middle or ring finger. With practice, one can deliver alot of rounds quickly with decent combat accuracy. Also, from what I have read Oswald waited to fire until the motorcade had slowed down to a near stop. Which fact, of course, has fed the conspiracy fires even more.

 

[Dejan Corovic]

I think conspiracies were left to flourish, to distract from the fact that actually POTUS' security detail didn't do its job properly. I don't know how these things work, but maybe Dallas police was to blame as well.

I mean, along the whole route there were so many tall buildings and it would not be out of the order to see policemen and couple of observers with binoculars watching all the windows in the neighborhood.

Just look how security detail is organised nowadays.

 

[pigfarmer]

Lee-Enfield rapid fire technique

I never even heard of that and had to look it up !

 

[pigfarmer]

I was hoping to make a quick & dirty representation of the distance and the size of that crude cardboard target and did, sort of. It proved that a smartphone camera sucks at any distance. My iPhone 8 (admittedly old) is great out to about 50 feet.

I put that B27 target down at my BB gun range. I hung a cow bell between two trees and jammed a piece of wood in there so I can set cans and water bottles on it. Sometimes we'll stand down at ground level at 25 feet or so and blaze away with the old Daisy Red Ryders - we taught my nephew basic firearm safety that way. It really is a helluva lot of fun and is actually real practice. Sometimes we sit up on the deck and use the pump-up type BB guns that can also shoot pellets - they fly straighter than BBs do. In either case I made sure there's a safe backer for the targets - the ground is absorbing all the shots, they're not roaming the neighborhood. My brother and I can regularly ring the cow bell from up there (even while quaffing adult beverages) so I decided to finally actually measure some distances with a 100' landscape tape.

With that iPhone the object always appears smaller in the pic than in reality so this shot doesn't show the 'barn door sized target' as I hoped it would. Standing there looking over a rifle sight it looks plenty huge to me. I'm going to use a different target and camera to try and do this properly. But, just to give you an idea the large yellow box is the cow bell and B27 target at 135' or about 45 yards. The bright circle in the center is that 6" bullseye I normally use as a 100 yard target and the wee orange thing above it is the cow bell. The smaller yellow box is just a representation of 70 yards, which is about as far as I can put it and still be able to see it from the deck. The box is actually about the size the target appears at that distance. If the cow bell or that small bullseye can be hit from there with kid's friggin' pellet guns then a real rifle, especially with a scope is pretty simple. Of course, the neighbors would be a tad upset at that sort of thing. Best not to frighten 'the normals.'

If you consider the first floor of a building to be the ground floor, the elevated deck would put me in about the second floor window, at best the third. Oswald was in the sixth floor window and his first shot was at about 81 yards, not much farther than that second box.

I know the line of sight from the Depository to the limo was partially obscured by an oak tree. In any case, a target that size could be easily vaporized without the need for American Sniper skills.