Rifle tests at former Carcano factory

[Trygve V. Jensen]

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2007...ation_gun/1113/

[John Simkin]

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2007...ation_gun/1113/

This information actually appeared on BBC News on Saturday.

Italian experts test JFK assassination gun

TERNI, Italy, June 29 (UPI) -- Italian weapons experts say tests on the type of rifle used to kill U.S. President John F. Kennedy show assassin Lee Harvey Oswald could not have acted alone.

The Warren Commission report concluded that Oswald fired three shots with a Carcano M91/38 bolt-action rifle in 7 seconds to kill Kennedy in Dallas in 1963. However, tests supervised by the Italian Army showed it would take 19 seconds to get off three shots with that type of gun, the Italian news agency ANSA reported.

The tests were done in a former Carcano factory in Terni.

In one test, a bullet was fired through two large pieces of meat to simulate the assumed path of a shot that the Warren Commission concluded struck Texas Gov. John Connally after passing through Kennedy's body. In the test, the bullet ended deformed, while the bullet in the Kennedy assassination remained intact.

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2007...ation_gun/1113/

[Tim Gratz]

I suggest we obtain the test results and send them to Sen. Specter and Mr. Bugliosi.

[John Simkin]

Article in today's Sunday Telegraph:

Oswald 'had no time to fire all Kennedy bullets'

By Tim Shipman

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...wkennedy101.xml

Lee Harvey Oswald could not have acted alone in assassinating President John F Kennedy, according to a new study by Italian weapons experts of the type of rifle Oswald used in the shootings.

In fresh tests of the Mannlicher-Carcano bolt-action weapon, supervised by the Italian army, it was found to be impossible for even an accomplished marksman to fire the shots quickly enough.

The findings will fuel continuing theories that Oswald was part of a larger conspiracy to murder the 35th American president on 22 November 1963.

The official Warren Commission inquiry into the shooting concluded the following year that Oswald was a lone gunman who fired three shots with a Carcano M91/38 bolt-action rifle in 8.3 seconds.

But when the Italian team test-fired the identical model of gun, they were unable to load and fire three shots in less than 19 seconds - suggesting that a second gunman must have been present in Dealey Plaza, central Dallas, that day.

Two of the bullets hit Kennedy, with the first - the so called "magic bullet", ridiculed by conspiracy theorists - also wounding the governor of Texas, John B Connally, after it had struck the president.

In a further challenge to the official conclusions, the Italian team conducted two other tests at the former Carcano factory in Terni, north of Rome, where the murder weapon was made in 1940.

They fired bullets through two large pieces of meat, in an attempt to simulate the assumed path of the magic bullet. In their test, the bullet was deformed, unlike the first bullet in the Kennedy assassination, which remained largely intact.

The second bullet is thought to have missed its target. According to the commission, the third disintegrated when it hit Kennedy's head. The new research suggests, however, that this is incompatible with the fact that Oswald was only 80 yards away, in a book depository, when he fired. The Italian tests suggest that a bullet fired from that distance would have emerged intact from Kennedy's head, implying that the third shot must instead have come from a more distant location.

The findings will encourage conspiracy theorists who hold that Oswald could not have fired three shots in time. For each shot, he would have had to push up the gun's bolt handle, pull the bolt backwards to eject the spent cartridge case and then forward to slide the next round into the chamber, before turning down the bolt handle to lock it in place.

Nearly seven out of 10 Americans believe that Kennedy was murdered as a result of a plot. Depending on which theory they back, the participants supposedly included any or all of the CIA, the Mafia, the Cubans, the FBI chief J Edgar Hoover, the military-industrial complex and Vice-President Lyndon B Johnson.

It is the second challenge in two months to the view of the Warren Commission that Oswald acted alone. In May, researchers at Texas A&M University argued that the ballistics evidence used to rule out a second gunman had been misinterpreted.

The findings will be a frustration to Vincent Bugliosi, the author of a 1,600-page book, also published in May, which claimed to put to rest all the conspiracy theories of the past 44 years.

The Italian findings will be hotly contested by those who believe that Oswald was a lone gunman - not least because they contradict firing tests previously conducted, using Oswald's actual rifle, by the FBI and the US Marines, and another study by Washington police marksmen using an identical gun.

Oswald would only have needed to reload the weapon twice in the eight seconds to get off all three shots, since the time was measured only from the moment he fired the first shot. The FBI concluded that a marksman could have fired a shot at least every 2.3 seconds.

In his book, Mr Bugliosi details how after just two or three minutes' practice with the gun in 1979, three police marksmen aiming at three targets representing Kennedy at the same distance from Oswald, got away three shots in less than eight seconds.

One marksman hit the targets twice and missed the third shot by an inch. A second shooter scored a "kill" with his second shot.

Mr Bugliosi recounts three separate ballistics tests that found that the magic bullet could have wounded Kennedy and Connally and emerged in similar condition to the real bullet. But that is unlikely to stop the Italian research fuelling another generation of conspiracy writers.

[Charles Drago]

The dramatic disparity in timing should give us pause.

Let's not put too much stock into this development until the details of the test are forthcoming.

If memory serves, previous exercises with the weapon allegedly "used" and "discovered" at the "scene" did not allow for aiming time. Did the Italian recreations do so, and if so, under what guidelines?

Bottom line: We're still screwing around with the "how" within a "to be determined" context.

Which is precisely what they want.

Charles

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Let's not put too much stock into this development until the details of the test are forthcoming.

Charles

There will be a prize for the first guy to post

(a) The ANSA report which everyone seems to be relying on.

( The actual report of the Italian army group giving the full protocols on each of the different tests conducted.

It would be interesting to know the full background behind these tests. As the Telegraph writer points out, this is very bad for business if your name is Bugliosi. And note how UPI plays down the story for American distribution, while the Telegraph writer more or less admits that it is getting to be a tough fight these days trying to keep a lid on this Pandora's Box.

The part that really grabbed my attention in the Telegraph was this:

QUOTE ON The second bullet is thought to have missed its target. According to the commission, the third disintegrated when it hit Kennedy's head. The new research suggests, however, that this is incompatible with the fact that Oswald was only 80 yards away, in a book depository, when he fired. The Italian tests suggest that a bullet fired from that distance would have emerged intact from Kennedy's head, implying that the third shot must instead have come from a more distant location.QUOTE

Did I hear T. Folsom say something about a frangible bullet?

I nearly forgot. The prize for producing (a) and ( above will be a night on the town with one of Italy's leading ladies:

http://images.google.com/images?client=fir...mages&gbv=2

[Charles Drago]

I know the name of the guy who wrote the report.

May I have her younger sister?

Carlo

PS -- Thanks to Mr. Carroll for fleshing out the story in terms of problems with frangibility and distance to target.

How fascinating is the timing in the release of all these stories. Am I being prematurely optimistic to think that ... oh, never mind.

Edited July 1, 2007 by Charles Drago

[J. Raymond Carroll]

May I have her younger sister?

Sorry, she's already mine.

How fascinating is the timing in the release of all these stories. Am I being prematurely optimistic to think that ... oh, never mind.

Time for a refresher on William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878)

Truth crushed to earth shall rise again,—

The eternal years of God are hers;

But Error, wounded, writhes with pain,

And dies among his worshippers.

The Battle-Field.

[Ron Ecker]

Given the incredible disparity between the Italian and American test results, I can only guess that this is a ridiculous attempt by the Italian army to prove that an Italian rifle wasn't used in the assassination. It had to be German Mauser or something.

[Charles Drago]

May I have her younger sister?

Sorry, she's already mine.

How fascinating is the timing in the release of all these stories. Am I being prematurely optimistic to think that ... oh, never mind.

Time for a refresher on William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878)

Truth crushed to earth shall rise again,—

The eternal years of God are hers;

But Error, wounded, writhes with pain,

And dies among his worshippers.

The Battle-Field.

Hopeful and lovely.

Charles

[Francesca Akhtar]

Given the incredible disparity between the Italian and American test results, I can only guess that this is a ridiculous attempt by the Italian army to prove that an Italian rifle wasn't used in the assassination. It had to be German Mauser or something.

[Francesca Akhtar]

I suggest we obtain the test results and send them to Sen. Specter and Mr. Bugliosi.

Good idea! I offer to add a few choice Italian phrases just for Vincenzo!

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Given the incredible disparity between the Italian and American test results, I can only guess that this is a ridiculous attempt by the Italian army to prove that an Italian rifle wasn't used in the assassination.

I don't remember any American tests which demonstrated that a copper-jacketed bullet like the Carcano will disintegrate on impact with a human skull or its equivalent. The guy who wrote the Telegraph Article did not mention one.

[Edit] I just came across this from Michael Griffith:

"Although Dr. Olivier fired bullets into 10 skulls, he only cited one skull as having an exit wound that was at all similar in location and size to the large exit wound described by the autopsy doctors.... The Parkland doctors and nurses reported seeing a large wound in the right rear part of the head, strongly indicating a shot from the front. And, thanks in part to newly released HSCA interview files, we now know that witness after witness at the autopsy told Committee investigators that the large wound was in back of the head."

http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/the_critics/g...from_front.html

Has anyone produced evidence on whether a frangible bullet, fired from the right front, would cause such an exit wound in the right rear of a human head?

Edited July 2, 2007 by J. Raymond Carroll

[J. Raymond Carroll]

I suggest we obtain the test results and send them to Sen. Specter and Mr. Bugliosi.

Good idea! I offer to add a few choice Italian phrases just for Vincenzo!

Here is the link to the ANSA report, I hope. Now with your gift for choice Italian phrases, if you could only post a transcript you will be eligible for a special prize.

http://www.ansa.it/norep/video_new.jsp?t=&...1541.rm&dt=

[Pat Speer]

QUOTE ON The second bullet is thought to have missed its target. According to the commission, the third disintegrated when it hit Kennedy's head. The new research suggests, however, that this is incompatible with the fact that Oswald was only 80 yards away, in a book depository, when he fired. The Italian tests suggest that a bullet fired from that distance would have emerged intact from Kennedy's head, implying that the third shot must instead have come from a more distant location.QUOTE

Actually, the Olivier study on M/C wound ballistics found that bullets broke into pieces on 9 of the 10 skulls. I don't think any of them broke into as many pieces as the bullet striking Kennedy however. The article's statement about the role of distance was bizarre. The closer the target is to the rifle, the MORE likely the bullet is to shatter, and not the reverse.

I suspect these tests were done by some attention-seeker, and will not stand up under scrutiny. 3 shots in 19 seconds? Give me a break! That means almost 10 seconds between shots. Ridiculous. It sounds like they weren't even using a clip.