The "Shallow" Back Wound and the "Short" Shot

[Chris Newton]

Thank you, Greg!

This:

As far as the mind-set of Kennedy's killers, we aren't dealing with people who settle for the mere possibility of success. We are talking about certainty. A professional's weapon of choice here would be critical. I believe that those on the "mechanic" level who actually executed this murder (pulled the triggers) knew how to get the job done and left nothing to chance in terms of the absolute certainty of its being successful.

And this:

So you can make any number of arguments in your "theoretical firearms/ballistics world" without ever having any practical experience. They may look good on paper (at least those that don't have glaring errors in them) but until you apply them to REAL WORLD scenarios they are rather irrelevant unless proven otherwise.

Are points I've been arguing for years.

There is a complete disregard in most theories and counter-theories (in both camps -LN/SBTer and CT's) for the actual "real world" mechanics of sniping operations.

I don't want to steal Bob's thread but the amount of BS just reaches epic proportions.

Disclaimer: I was never a sniper - I was a Tanker (RA), I was an Inf. Squad Leader (NG). I'm not as fully qualified as Greg B. as to sniper ops but I have practical experience in operating with sniper elements and Infantry tactics.

I know that no sniper is going to carefully plan his OP and then show up with less than a full clip.

[Robert Prudhomme]

I myself have had some experience with what is being referred to as a "short shot". About twenty years ago, I joined an organization in our small town, sponsored by the Canadian government, known as the Canadian Rangers. It is a militia organization, and its members are part time soldiers and receive pay while on exercises. The idea behind forming this group was to help establish sovereignty in Canada's vast and underpopulated north, and to take advantage of local skills and knowledge to help our regular armed forces when they are out in these areas. Plus, it was a good excuse to get out of the house and hoist a few beers with the boys every couple of weeks, and get paid to boot.

The one attractive feature of this group was that every Ranger was to be issued a rifle, plus a few boxes of ammunition, he could take home and use as he saw fit. Of course, no one told us what type of rifle we were getting. It turned out the Canadian government had warehouses full of .303 calibre Lee Enfield No. 4 Mk I rifles, carefully stashed away in the late 1950's when Canada and the rest of the British Commonwealth gave up these bolt action rifles and adopted the Fabrique Nationale C1 semi-auto rifle, chambered for the 7.62x51mm NATO cartridge. With the formation of the Canadian Rangers, they had finally found a use for these museum pieces!

When the rifles arrived in town, along with several personnel from the Canadian Armed Forces to oversee their distribution, I was quick to get in line to try to get my pick of these rifles, as I knew a little known secret about the Enfield. Britain's first foray into Hitler's occupied Europe in 1940 ended in disaster, culminating at the Battle of Dunkirk in France. This ill conceived expedition almost cost Britain the war, and it became necessary to evacuate tens of thousands of British troops from the beaches in France. In their haste to get away, many troops dropped their Enfield rifles, causing a subsequent shortage in small arms.

In order to speed up production of rifles, it was decided to look at the manufacturing process and see if there were shortcuts to be had. As the barrel was the most complicated thing on the rifle, it was decided, to save time and cost, to machine only two riflings into the inside of the barrel instead of the standard five riflings. They knew that some accuracy would be sacrificed but, considering a man presented a 5 foot by 2 foot target, and most combat in Europe during WWII was at ranges under 100 yards, this was a chance they were willing to take.

As it turned out, the majority of the rifles brought to us had only two riflings, and I had to search through several cases before I found an Enfield with five riflings made in 1951 for the Korean War.

The next day, we took our "new" rifles to the range to test them out. We were given .303 full metal jacket cartridges to shoot, although they were commercially made and not military issue, and looked to be fairly new. We attached large targets to 4'x4' plywood stands set up at 100 yards and commenced to shooting.

As there were not enough personnel for every shooter to have a spotter, I had elected to bring a small spotting scope with me that I wore on a lanyard around my neck. After five shots, I decided to see how I was doing, and was quite surprised to see there were no holes on my target, nor were there any holes in the 4'x4' plywood it was attached to. I aimed six inches higher and tried again with the same result. Confused, I asked one of the regular force warrant officers to stand behind me and observe. After I fired one more shot, he laughed and told me what was going on. My bullets were dropping so badly, they were hitting the dirt about 2/3 of the way out to the target. As I was shooting from a prone position, and the centre of the target was about four feet from the ground, this was a substantial drop.

The Enfield is equipped with a stand up peep sight that can be adjusted from 200 yards out to 1300 yards for volley firing. When laid down, one looks through the larger 100 yard peep sight known as the "battle" sight, which I had been using. I was instructed to use the stand up sight, beginning at 200 yards. I eventually had to crank the peep sight up to just over 400 yards before my bullets would hit a bullseye at 100 yards.

It was assumed the barrel on my rifle was badly worn, either from many thousands of bullets or from poor storage. The normal remedy for such a problem is to take the rifle to the armourer, who will either install a new barrel or remove the front blade sight and replace it with a shorter blade sight. The latter has the effect, when aiming, of tilting the end of the barrel higher, and giving the bullet a higher trajectory. But, as barrels and front sights had not likely been made for the Enfield since the 1950's, this was not an option. No worry, though. The warrant officer, a resourceful farm boy from Manitoba, produced a small flat file from his pocket and set about to fine tune my front sight; filing it down in small increments until a shot aimed through the 100 yard battle sight would hit a bullseye at 100 yards.

The interesting thing was, though, (and the point of telling you this long story) was that this rifle, despite the fact the worn out barrel had robbed the bullets of enough velocity to make them hit the dirt 2/3 of the way out to a 100 yard target, was still a lethal deer rifle at 100 yards, once the sights were zeroed in. I often wish we had access to a chronograph to determine what its actual muzzle velocity was.

If my bullets were dropping that quickly, and this rifle was still able to cause serious wounds in deer, how quickly would the bullets drop from a rifle whose muzzle velocity had been reduced to the point the bullets would barely penetrate flesh?

Edited August 15, 2015 by Robert Prudhomme

[Robert Prudhomme]

As I stated earlier, the most likely candidate for this would be a hollow point frangible bullet; made from compressed or glued metal powder and designed to disintegrate back to powder when travelling through soft, semi-liquid tissue (ie. lung, brain or other organs). The same bullet(s) were likely used for the head shot. It is interesting to note that the fellow who discovered the Harper fragment described, in an interview, how he observed the inside of the Harper fragment to be covered in a metal "powder". In all my experience hunting, I have never seen a bullet, even a hollow point, turn to powder. Lead is malleable, not brittle.

Thanks for that Bob, I went back and read you're earlier post. Is a load like the one you're suggesting something that was an option back in 1963? Also one of my concerns is, from a snipers perspective, if I was using something really exotic on a target that I thought might get a ton of scrutiny, might that be a security issue (for the nature of the action and the sniper)?

Frangible bullets, at least the lethal design, were not available on the commercial market in 1963, although designers had been working on a lethal frangible bullet in those days.

Non-lethal frangible range bullets, intended for 300 metre indoor ranges, had been available since the early 1930's. In fact, the 6.5mm Carcano M37 bullet was designed specifically for indoor shooting. It had an unusual two piece bullet jacket with a small amount of sand in the base, powdered lead ahead of that and a small lead or "maillechort" pellet in the nose. As the weight of this bullet was less than that of the standard 162 grain FMJ bullet, the amount of gunpowder was also reduced, until the bullet velocity matched that of a regular bullet.

These bullets were designed to disintegrate to bits of copper jacket and a cloud of sand and lead powder, should the bullet strike a hard metal, stone or concrete surface, although I have never been able to find out what became of the small pellet in the nose. Perhaps one of these pellets made a small wound through the wrist of a certain Texas governor?

As there were no ricochets (none that we know of) this was considered a safe bullet, and the backdrops to the targets in Italian indoor ranges were simple concrete.

A modern lethal frangible bullet is constructed in a similar fashion, with the lead or other metal powder being compressed, glued or "sintered" together inside the copper jacket. There is one major difference, though. The lethal version also has a hollow point nose that, at high velocity in a wound, allows liquid matter to fill this cavity and exert enormous hydraulic pressure on the compressed core. This has the effect of causing the frangible bullet to completely disintegrate to powder and pieces of copper jacket 2-3 inches into a wound, stopping the bullet in its tracks in the wound and wreaking utter havoc to surrounding tissue; far more than is capable with a soft point or hollow point bullet.

If a small hollow point were drilled into the pellet in the nose of the M37 frangible bullet, I believe it would behave similarly in a wound.

P.S.

The leftovers from a frangible Carcano bullet would not appear much different from a Carcano FMJ bullet that had broken up, outside of the hundreds of dust like particles seen in JFK's skull x-ray.

Edited August 15, 2015 by Robert Prudhomme

[Pat Speer]

How tedious.

Pat,

Would you agree that there is a great deal of difference between reading about physical skills and performing them?

For instance, you can purchase a book on "How to Play the Saxophone" from a neighborhood music store. You can also buy a book that teaches you how to read music. You can also buy the sheet music for popular songs.

So if you bought all of those books and gained a very good understanding of them you may even be able to pass a written test about the subject matter. If you were fairly bright and a good "test taker" you may even get an "A" on this hypothetical written exam without ever even having held a saxophone in your hands!

Let's go one more step: Now you buy a book that explains everything there is to "know" about playing the saxophone part for the song "Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen. And, once again, you study it very hard and are given a written exam that you easily ace.

The next night you are at a party being held at a popular club. The band has been playing great cover tunes all evening. They are very popular. Someone in the crowd shouts out "Born to Run--play Born to Run!!!" -- as it is one of this band's best performances. Sadly, the lead singer comes to the microphone and announces that their sax player was in an accident and couldn't be there that night (although his instrument was packed with rest of the band's equipment). He adds that if anyone in the audience "knows the sax part for Born to Run" they are invited to play.

Question:

Do you really believe that you could play Born to Run on the sax if you have never played the sax before? Would it be fair to say that there is a completely different set of skills required to intellectually comprehend a subject versus acquiring hands-on knowledge? Would you enter into a debate with experienced, if not accomplished, saxophone players about the difficulty of playing "XYZ Song" if you had only read about saxophones, but never played one yourself?

So you can make any number of arguments in your "theoretical firearms/ballistics world" without ever having any practical experience. They may look good on paper (at least those that don't have glaring errors in them) but until you apply them to REAL WORLD scenarios they are rather irrelevant unless proven otherwise.

Many on this forum have a lot of firearm's experience.

Correct. People who fire guns on occasion would be more likely to shoot a gun accurately than myself. If you're trying to stretch that analogy into being that they therefore know more about sniping or wound ballistics than someone who's actually done the homework, well, then, you're way off base.

A lot of the problems in this case stem from people with some experience basing their opinions on their own experience, without doing the homework.

The HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel, for instance, had no experience with military rifle wounds, but thought their experience with handgun wounds and shotgun wounds allowed them to come to an informed opinion without doing any homework, beyond a phone call or two. They were wrong. The one "expert" Baden consulted with re full-metal jacket rounds was the Irish doctor who'd performed the autopsies in the Bloody Sunday massacre. This case was later re-investigated a la the HSCA re-investigating the Kennedy assassination. Well, the second investigation revealed that one of the British snipers admitted some of his fellow shooters had used dum-dum rounds and that one of the Irish victims of the British army had a lead snowstorm on his skull x-ray...that went unreported in the autopsy report. When asked about this, moreover, the Irish doctor with whom Baden had consulted claimed that he didn't report the lead snowstorm because he thought it was normal for a full-metal jacketed bullet to leave a lead snowstorm on an x-ray. Oops.

So, no, I don't buy that a guy who shoots a helpless deer has any more insight into what happened in Dealey Plaza than someone who's done the homework. I mean, are you kidding? Do you know how many emails I've received from bubbas boasting that shooting Kennedy would have been shooting fish in a barrel, and that the only question is why it took Oswald "a trained Marine" took three shots to hit the head shot. These guys know nothing and care nothing about the tests performed by Oswald's rifle by the FBI or Army. They don't care because they "know" because, g'darn it, they've shot a rifle, and they've killed a deer, blah blah blah.

So, yeah, I'll go even further. I will not only say that, for most men, shooting and hunting animals fails to provide one with much insight into the assassination, but that it makes most of them less likely to have an informed opinion, as they prioritize their personal experience over the facts of the case, which reflect that the shots attributed to Oswald were highly unlikely given the rifle and circumstances involved.

[Robert Prudhomme]

From autopsy-attendee FBI SA James Sibert's sworn affidavit:

(quote on)

"The doctors also discussed a possible deflection of the bullet in the body caused
by striking bone. Consideration was also given to a type of bullet which fragments
completely....Following discussion among the doctors relating to the back injury, I
left the autopsy room to call the FBI Laboratory and spoke with Agent Chuch [sic]
Killion. I asked if he could furnish any information regarding a type of bullet that
would almost completely fragmentize (sic)."

Now, did they start looking for a bullet that would fragmentize completely only because they could not find a bullet in the back wound, or did they look for a disintegrating bullet because they found particles of metal in the top of the right lung?

Think of it, why would they even think of discussing such a completely broken up bullet, unless they had evidence to support its existence?

Kind of putting the cart before the horse, n'est-ce pas?

P.S.

"Fragmentize" is not synonymous with "disappear". The particles of metal would still be there somewhere, just like the hundreds of dust like particles seen in the x-rays of JFK's skull.

Edited August 15, 2015 by Robert Prudhomme

[Pat Speer]

I thought this video might be relevant to the discussion.

It shows .22 ammo penetrating 5 inches of meat wrapped in denim at 300 yards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAkOzr6cDx0

Hi Martin

Maybe you should look a little closer at these things before posting them. Your video shows .22 LONG rifle ammo, not .22 SHORT ammo.

Pat Speer distinctly said a SUBSONIC .22 bullet, and the only .22 ammo that is slower than the speed of sound, at 1035 fps, is .22 short ammo.

.22 short ammo. 830 fps muzzle velocity. Muzzle energy = 60 Joules

.22 long rifle ammo. Note the velocity advertised, 1650 fps, well above the speed of sound. Muzzle energy = roughly 300 Joules

Not exactly. The CIA Manual on Assassination and other books on sniping specify that long-rifle ammo hand-loaded to be just below the speed of sound is the preferred technique for assassins. And besides, the video posted by Martin showed the specs for the round being fired (If I recall it was around 1400 fps muzzle). And it was hitting a target at 300 yards, by which time the round would have been either subsonic or very close to it. So it wasn't apples to oranges. As the velocity of the impact in the video was about 20% faster than a subsonic round at 100 yards, it was more like apples to pears.

Pat

Why do you think we go to all the expense of buying deer rifles such as .308's or 30-06's when, according to your thinking, all we need is an inexpensive .22 calibre rifle and .22 subsonic cartridges?

Once again, it's apples to oranges. Of course, a 30-06 is superior at killing deer, and people. So is a tank. We're talking about an assassination weapon here, fired at close range, where the shooter intends to get away. In such case, the relative SILENCE of the weapon is imperative. The OSS/CIA recommended one use a .22 caliber rifle with a silencer, firing a subsonic round. They even had some of these specially made. Here's one right here, in an image taken from OSS Special Weapons and Equipment. Note that the caption to this book says it's effective out to 100 yards, which supports the identical claim made in the yet-to-be released CIA Manual on Asssassination.

Edited August 16, 2015 by Pat Speer

[Robert Prudhomme]

Pat

You are embarrassing yourself. Please stop.

[Robert Prudhomme]

Just because some horse's patoot in the OSS office thought .22 rifles were effective at killing people at 100 yards, does not make it true.

Wouldn't it be much simpler for soldiers going into combat to use .22 rifles? Just think, each soldier could carry a couple of thousand rounds on his person.

P.S.

That rifle shoots .22 Long Rifle ammo, not .22 subsonic or .22 Short.

Edited August 16, 2015 by Robert Prudhomme

[Chris Newton]

Once again, it's apples to oranges. Of course, a 30-06 is superior at killing deer, and people. So is a tank. We're talking about an assassination weapon here, fired at close range, where the shooter intends to get away. In such case, the relative SILENCE of the weapon is imperative. The OSS/CIA recommended one use a .22 caliber rifle with a silencer, firing a subsonic round. They even had some of these specially made. Here's one right here, in an image taken from OSS Special Weapons and Equipment. Note that the caption to this book says it's effective out to 100 yards, which supports the identical claim made in the yet-to-be released CIA Manual on Asssassination.

Pat, I agree. I think it's more than likely that if a silencer was utilized it was done so to allow a sniper closer to the target to get away. I even suggested a long time ago that a OSS weapon that was confirmed to be "in inventory" and tested in combat had been used - a Delisle Carbine. I based that speculation on some witnesses' strange descriptions of possible weapons seen in the plaza and the weapon's operational characteristics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Lisle_carbine

The problem with the weapon you cite above is it's length - at 44" long you probably want to be 100 yards out.

Edited August 16, 2015 by Chris Newton

[Robert Prudhomme]

Once again, it's apples to oranges. Of course, a 30-06 is superior at killing deer, and people. So is a tank. We're talking about an assassination weapon here, fired at close range, where the shooter intends to get away. In such case, the relative SILENCE of the weapon is imperative. The OSS/CIA recommended one use a .22 caliber rifle with a silencer, firing a subsonic round. They even had some of these specially made. Here's one right here, in an image taken from OSS Special Weapons and Equipment. Note that the caption to this book says it's effective out to 100 yards, which supports the identical claim made in the yet-to-be released CIA Manual on Asssassination.

Pat, I agree. I think it's more than likely that if a silencer was utilized it was done so to allow a sniper closer to the target to get away. I even suggested a long time ago that a OSS weapon that was confirmed to be "in inventory" and tested in combat had been used - a Delisle Carbine. I based that speculation on some witnesses' strange descriptions of possible weapons seen in the plaza and the weapon's operational characteristics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Lisle_carbine

The problem with the weapon you cite above is it's length - at 44" long you probably want to be 100 yards out.

The DeLisle carbine had a short barrel and fired a .45 calibre ACP pistol round, and was said to be effective out to 200 yards. Once again, the large .45 cal. bullet gives you more hitting power, but we are expected people are going to make 100-200 yard shots with pistol ammunition.

[Chris Newton]

Bob,

I am not suggesting the Delisle would have been helpful anywhere except the Knoll. It would not have been a good weapon for anything beyond 100 meters and probably at it's best at around 50-75 meters. I didn't post it in this thread to suggest it would have been used to create the back wound at all - just responding to Pat's last post.

Was used in WW2 by the OSS specifically for assassinations and used by UK, US and French Special Forces at least until the Falklands Conflict.

Edited August 16, 2015 by Chris Newton

[Robert Prudhomme]

I wish I could take all of the members on this forum to a range, and then go on a deer hunting trip together, using the different weapons we have discussed. It is so much easier to let people try things for themselves than it is to explain it to them.

[Pat Speer]

Just because some horse's patoot in the OSS office thought .22 rifles were effective at killing people at 100 yards, does not make it true.

Wouldn't it be much simpler for soldiers going into combat to use .22 rifles? Just think, each soldier could carry a couple of thousand rounds on his person.

P.S.

That rifle shoots .22 Long Rifle ammo, not .22 subsonic or .22 Short.

Holy smokes, Bob. Focus. I've said from the beginning that the CIA assassination manual suggested the use of long rifle ammunition, hand-loaded to be subsonic.

As far as your next line, you're joking, right? No one has ever said or even suggested that a slienced assassination rifle is an ideal weapon for a common soldier. It is a special weapon made for special jobs, for use by only the most skilled marksman. We have no idea how well they performed in the field, by the way, because that kind of info is classified. Still.

I kind of stumbled into this whole area, by the way, by accident. I was reading Mortal Error, when I noticed that within its pictures was an exhibits list handed out by the HSCA. Well, among this exhibits list was a gelatin block showing the trajectory of an M-16 bullet (essentially a souped-up .22) fired at 800 fps, the approximate velocity of a subsonic bullet upon striking Kennedy. Now, this set off alarm bells. Why was Sturdivan talking about a subsonic M-16 round? I then realized that the caption to this exhibit in Sturdivan's published testimony said this was a bullet fired at 800 mps, not fps, and that Sturdivan's testimony reflected that, yessirree, the bullet was fired at 800 mps. Well, that solves it, right? Only not so fast. I compared this gelatin block to other M-16 gelatin blocks and realized that it was in fact the block of a bullet fired at 800 fps, as shown on the original exhibits list. I then contacted Sturdivan, and he told me that I was right and that it was in fact the gelatin block for a subsonic round, quite possibly around 800 fps. I then asked him who would change his testimony and the title of his exhibit, and he said it would have to have been I. Charles Matthews, an assistant counsel to Blakey.

A few years later, however, I realized that I'd ignored the possibility Sturdivan had mis-stated the velocity as mps in his actual testimony, and that someone had changed the name of the exhibit to match his testimony, and ignored the original exhibits list and the script which they all were supposed to follow. And so I gave in and purchased a tape of Sturdivan's testimony, and found that he did briefly state that the gelatin block reflected an M-16 round traveling at 800 mps, but that he then corrected himself and said it reflected the velocity 800 meters downrange. Well, this was strange, first, because his correction never made it to the published transcript, and second, because he described the bullet in terms of how far it was downrange, and not how fast it was traveling. By then, I'd read dozens of articles by Sturdivan and others in which bullet velocity was discussed, and no one discussed the velocity of a bullet in such terms. I then wrote Sturdivan and asked him if he remembered using those terms, and if he'd been asked to use those terms to disguise that his exhibit reflected an M-16 bullet fired at a subsonic velocity, and/or to conceal that the wound ballistics experts hired by the WC and HSCA had conducted tests regarding the lethality of subsonic ammunition. I got no response, that I recall, but I came away with the ongoing suspicion tests were performed to see if JFK's and Connally's non-lethal wounds could have been caused by subsonic ammunition, and that this all got covered up when the answer came up "Yep."

[Thomas Graves]

Just because some horse's patoot in the OSS office thought .22 rifles were effective at killing people at 100 yards, does not make it true.

Wouldn't it be much simpler for soldiers going into combat to use .22 rifles? Just think, each soldier could carry a couple of thousand rounds on his person.

P.S.

That rifle shoots .22 Long Rifle ammo, not .22 subsonic or .22 Short.

Holy smokes, Bob. Focus. I've said from the beginning that the CIA assassination manual suggested the use of long rifle ammunition, hand-loaded to be subsonic.

As far as your next line, you're joking, right? No one has ever said or even suggested that a slienced assassination rifle is an ideal weapon for a common soldier. It is a special weapon made for special jobs, for use by only the most skilled marksman. We have no idea how well they performed in the field, by the way, because that kind of info is classified. Still.

I kind of stumbled into this whole area, by the way, by accident. I was reading Mortal Error, when I noticed that within its pictures was an exhibits list handed out by the HSCA. Well, among this exhibits list was a gelatin block showing the trajectory of an M-16 bullet (essentially a souped-up .22) fired at 800 fps, the approximate velocity of a subsonic bullet upon striking Kennedy. Now, this set off alarm bells. Why was Sturdivan talking about a subsonic M-16 round? I then realized that the caption to this exhibit in Sturdivan's published testimony said this was a bullet fired at 800 mps, not fps, and that Sturdivan's testimony reflected that, yessirree, the bullet was fired at 800 mps. Well, that solves it, right? Only not so fast. I compared this gelatin block to other M-16 gelatin blocks and realized that it was in fact the block of a bullet fired at 800 fps, as shown on the original exhibits list. I then contacted Sturdivan, and he told me that I was right and that it was in fact the gelatin block for a subsonic round, quite possibly around 800 fps. I then asked him who would change his testimony and the title of his exhibit, and he said it would have to have been I. Charles Matthews, an assistant counsel to Blakey.

A few years later, however, I realized that I'd ignored the possibility Sturdivan had mis-stated the velocity as mps in his actual testimony, and that someone had changed the name of the exhibit to match his testimony, and ignored the original exhibits list and the script which they all were supposed to follow. And so I gave in and purchased a tape of Sturdivan's testimony, and found that he did briefly state that the gelatin block reflected an M-16 round traveling at 800 mps, but that he then corrected himself and said it reflected the velocity 800 meters downrange. Well, this was strange, first, because his correction never made it to the published transcript, and second, because he described the bullet in terms of how far it was downrange, and not how fast it was traveling. By then, I'd read dozens of articles by Sturdivan and others in which bullet velocity was discussed, and no one discussed the velocity of a bullet in such terms. I then wrote Sturdivan and asked him if he remembered using those terms, and if he'd been asked to use those terms to disguise that his exhibit reflected an M-16 bullet fired at a subsonic velocity, and/or to conceal that the wound ballistics experts hired by the WC and HSCA had conducted tests regarding the lethality of subsonic ammunition. I got no response, that I recall, but I came away with the ongoing suspicion tests were performed to see if JFK's and Connally's non-lethal wounds could have been caused by subsonic ammunition, and that this all got covered up when the answer came up "Yep."

Thanks for the feedback, Pat. Your conclusion makes sense to me.

--Tommy

[Larry Hancock]

After following this thread quite a ways, I'd really like to hear both Pat and Robert's thoughts on some basic questions:

1. Was there a shallow, non penetrating wound in the back or not?

2. What is the most probable reason for such a wound if it existed?

3. Why would someone use a weapon and ammo not corresponding to Oswald's if Oswald was to be set up as a lone nut patsy?

-- thanks in advance, Larry