Altgens 6 and the Dal Tex shooter on the 2nd floor

[John Butler]

9 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

I've posted about this on other treads before but here goes.  Standing beneath the 1st, second and all other floors former fire escape windows in the 90's I thought...  12-15 feet up, like hunting deer from a tree stand, less than a 100 yard shot.  In this case close to equalizing the slight decline in angle of the street thus making it an almost "flat" shot plus your shooting over the heads of the parade crowd. 

Excellent point.  I apply this also to the 2nd and 3rd floor corner offices near Houston of the TSBD.

Edited March 27, 2020 by John Butler

[Chris Bristow]

On 3/27/2020 at 6:38 AM, John Butler said:

Excellent point.  I apply this also to the 2nd and 3rd floor corner offices near Houston of the TSBD.

I have been playing with this slope calculator. It is the easiest I found. Some require 2 graph points per location but since we usually know the 'run' length already it is not needed.  https://www.blocklayer.com/riserun.asp 

One problem arises: if the bullet is traveling in a flat trajectory relative to Elm  then it passes through the Queen Mary at the same 3.5 foot height as JFK's head. A 15 foot elevation at the DT building plus the slope of Elm which places  JFK's head  9 feet below the DT gives a 24 foot elevation and would result in a 4.1 degree slope of Elm and the almost flat trajectory. So the shot would not work at a 15 foot elevation from the DT building because it would not clear the Cadillac limo. A height of 50 feet at the DT plus the 9 feet on Elm for a total drop of 59 feet to JFK would just clear the windshield of the Cadillac if that windshield is about 20 behind JFK and about 5 feet high. 

[David Andrews]

The Secret Service agents in the Queen Mary testified to rifle reports, but not to bullets passing over their heads.  We can doubt their candor, but Altgens 6 doesn't show agents reacting to shots traveling through their airspace.

[Larry Hancock]

David, an interesting point....of course  you don't hear the round that hits you because the bullet is traveling faster than the speed of sound but the question is can you hear one that has gone past you.  Perhaps someone with significant combat experience can comment, but here is what I found in a quick search:

Can you hear a bullet go by?

"You can be quite a ways away and still hear this (100 yards or so). A CRACK or a SNAP sound means the bullet is supersonic and probably is not a ricochet. The relationship between when you hear the crack and the report (bang) of the gun can tell you a lot. If the crack is very loud, then the bullet passed fairly close."

The difference would be between hearing the report / bang and the crack of the supersonic bullet passing by...

[Chris Bristow]

5 hours ago, David Andrews said:

The Secret Service agents in the Queen Mary testified to rifle reports, but not to bullets passing over their heads.  We can doubt their candor, but Altgens 6 doesn't show agents reacting to shots traveling through their airspace.

That does bring up some interesting points. Since Oswald's height above JFK was about 1/4 of the distance to JFK the trajectory of the bullet would be gaining one foot in altitude for every 4 feet you trace it backwards from JFK. So if the guys in the back seat of the Cadillac we're 25 ft back from JFK the bullet would be about six feet higher than JFK's head as it passed over them. So JFK's head is about 3 to 3 and 1/2 feet off the ground add 6 feet to that and the bullet is about 10 ft in the air. Elm Street raises up about a foot. So subtract 1 foot from the 10-foot altitude of the bullet and the round was about nine feet off the ground when it passed over the back seat of the Cadillac. So how high were those people sitting on the back of the seat? About 6 feet Maybe? So even with Oswald shooting from the TSB the round would have been about three feet over their heads. That's pretty close. Not to divert to a different subject but if the shot through the windshield was real it would have had to have passed within a couple inches a John Connelly's left ear. Actually half the time I calculated the trajectory hit passed through Connolly's head so I'm being generous. He did flip his hat around in a weird way right after emerging from the Stemmons Freeway sign but never mentioned anything about a bullet passing close.

[David Andrews]

3 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

David, an interesting point....of course  you don't hear the round that hits you because the bullet is traveling faster than the speed of sound but the question is can you hear one that has gone past you.  Perhaps someone with significant combat experience can comment, but here is what I found in a quick search:

Can you hear a bullet go by?

"You can be quite a ways away and still hear this (100 yards or so). A CRACK or a SNAP sound means the bullet is supersonic and probably is not a ricochet. The relationship between when you hear the crack and the report (bang) of the gun can tell you a lot. If the crack is very loud, then the bullet passed fairly close."

The difference would be between hearing the report / bang and the crack of the supersonic bullet passing by...

Well, Larry, I was thinking of that VVVVVVVvvvvvvbbbbbbb shockwave that would disturb the air over or between their heads were someone firing "almost on the level" from the lower Dal-Tex at the limo. Since the Queen Mary was a few degrees higher on Elm Street than the limo, and the running board agents are standing considerably taller, it's conceivable that they might have reacted to that shockwave if a bullet followed that path and was of an appropriate velocity to produce that effect,  which is different from a supersonic "crack." sound.  Use of a subsonic weapon to simulate the Mannlicher-Carcano brings other ballistic issues into play

It's not always a "crack."  They even knew that effect in Sgt. Rock comics: Vip!  Vip!  Viiip!  They just spelled it differently.

So, I'm not wrong yet, but I'll leave that to the expert hunters that, strangely, used to populate this Forum.

Kellerman: "A flurry of shots came into the car."  How did he come to feel so enflurried? 

And, as always, I maintain that in Z-125, when Connally makes that swatting motion with his hat, he is reacting in surprise to a bullet flying between him and Nellie and trying to reflexively shoo it away as if it were an insect.

+++

[From wiki]

A bullet bow shockwave is a physical and audible wave created in the air when a bullet travels at supersonic speeds; meaning faster than the speed of sound.

Play media

 

Schlieren image of a bullet travelling in free-flight demonstrating the air pressure dynamics surrounding the bullet.

The bullet bow shockwave is the result of air being greatly compressed at the front-most tip of the bullet as it slices through the air. As the bullet moves forward a broadening wave of compressed air trails out diagonally from the bullet tip. The sides of the bullet create a conical waveform. This conical waveform may be audible to a witness as a whip-crack sound. If the bullet passes close enough to a person (typically <2 feet), it can be felt against the skin.

Edited April 1, 2020 by David Andrews

[Larry Hancock]

Its a really interesting point,  from personal experience I've had a shotgun fire past me only feet away and high powered rifles the same way (in the olden days we were a little less cautious and nobody wore ear plus or sound suppressors) and never heard anything other than the shot and never felt anything....but then my attention was elsewhere.   I would really like some combat vets to chime in on this.  My thought is that the agents were clearly heavily focused on things going on around them and that anything like a hiss would have gotten lost in the other sensations.  There would seem to be no reason for them not to chime in ab about a bullet passing since that was in line with the lone nut, shot from behind, story.  Here is one tidbit I found on a search: 

what would I feel if a bullet (please feel free to give examples for various types and calibres) missed me by passing, say, six inches above the top of my head?
Lets say it was fired from twenty-five yards away and the gun has a magical silencer on it, so that the experience consists entirely of the passing bullet and not the sound of the gun firing.

A.R. Cane

08-14-2006, 08:39 AM

It's a kind of buzzing sound, not unlike a bee, or mosquito. You, probably, don't recognize it for what it was for a second or two, then it's kind of an 'oh, xxxx' moment. I've heard it twice that I can recall, and it's very memorable.

Mangetout

08-14-2006, 08:47 AM

Did you only hear it? Wasn't there anything to feel?

A.R. Cane

08-14-2006, 09:07 AM

I don't recall any feeling, air movement I guess you're referring to, just the brief sound. I really don't know how close they were, just the awareness that it had to be too close. I've worked the butts on rifle ranges and you don't normally hear that sound if the projectile is several feet away, unless it's ricocheting, and a ricochet has a different sound.

silenus

08-14-2006, 10:05 AM

I second A.R. Cane. You don't really feel it, you hear it. I really second the "oh, xxxx" feeling you get immediately after you realize what just happened!

[David Andrews]

When I was young and dumb, I had .22 long rifle bullets fired past me on a more-or-less flat trajectory, and within, say, five feet you can hear that Viiip! and feel an atmospheric disturbance.  It's a lucky thing I lived to be old and dumb.

Edited April 1, 2020 by David Andrews

[Larry Hancock]

Well that sounds like a fun experiment - its good to have people you trust.   After time its probably a bit subjective but do  you think you would have noticed the sound if you were concentrating on something else or if there was a lot of background noise at the same time?    I've nothing comparable to that - did shoot myself in the eye with a BB gun one time though, much like the Christmas program we see every year.

It is a really interesting thought though, as far as I recall none of the SS personnel recall hearing passing rounds much less hearing the impact of shots inside the limo, into bodies or metal.  I guess I had always just assumed they were too distracted and focused on events to pick up on that sort of sound - that plus the motorcade noise including the motorcycles.

[John Butler]

1 hour ago, Larry Hancock said:

After time its probably a bit subjective but do  you think you would have noticed the sound if you were concentrating on something else or if there was a lot of background noise at the same time?  

How noisy was the crowd, the motorcade, and backfiring of motorbikes due to traveling at a slow speed?  I think I remember someone saying, perhaps Jackie Kennedy, there was a lot of noise from backfiring motorbikes and motorcade noise.

Ron Bulman in a post sometime back suggested the De Lisle carbine as an assassination weapon.  The De Lisle carbine, a British WW2 .45 assassination weapon, was the quietest sniper weapon available.  The working of the bolt mechanism was louder than the sound of the weapon firing.  Subsonic weapons with that kind of potential could have been used.

The forehead/hairline wound of Kennedy could have been made by such a weapon.  Temple Logic? has a fair discussion of Kennedy's head wounds. 

Here's what I said in Temple Logic?.  I may have to eat a partial meal of crow here. 

• Report post
•  

Posted April 28, 2019

Oh No!! 

Say it isn't so!!

Not another one or two!!

1.  A shot to the left temple

2.  A  shot to the right temple

3.  A shot to the upper right forehead (frontal bone rather than temporal bone)

4.  A shot from the front which makes a massive occipital wound as seen by Parkland doctors

5.  A shot from the Sniper's Nest blowing out the top and right side of the skull

6.  A shot to the base of the rear skull- an entrance wound

7.  A shot to the top / rear of the skull about midway center of the school .  There is a picture of this wound or is it a scab or bloodspot.

Which ones are real and which ones are imaginary in that alternate reality we call Dealey Plaza.

Doug Horne I believe said three.  That might be a good estimate.

 

 

Edited April 1, 2020 by John Butler

[Matt Allison]

The signal to noise ratio in the Plaza would definitely have been far too extreme to hear a bullet whiz by, IMO.

[David Andrews]

2 hours ago, Matt Allison said:

The signal to noise ratio in the Plaza would definitely have been far too extreme to hear a bullet whiz by, IMO.

It's a feel, also.  The bullet moves air.  You feel it vibrate your eardrum and the shell of your ear.

Me, aged 14: "OK, shoot the next one about a foot closer."  While smoking a Kool.  Viiip!

I once sent Larry Hancock a link to a video of a guy firing into a junkpile on which he had perched a container of some explosive compound that had been discussed on the Forum.  The explosion threw a piece of metal at him that sliced off one leg at the knee.  I now see that I shouldn't have laughed.

Edited April 1, 2020 by David Andrews

[Larry Hancock]

I've looked up a few more examples from combat veterans and they generally do say that there is a feel to it, even in the midst of general shooting...from the air movement.  So what does that tell us about the security detail...based on the official story how close where the bullets passing?   And of course there were impacts inside the presidential limo....impacts into bone, and supposedly fragment denting chrome.  Did anybody mention "feeling" bullets pass them or hearing any impacts...you would almost think as eager as they were to support the official story you would get some remark....Kellerman talks about a salvo of bullets coming into the limo,  was he commenting about hearing shots and didn't sense any impacts inside the car?

[Chris Bristow]

1 hour ago, Larry Hancock said:

I've looked up a few more examples from combat veterans and they generally do say that there is a feel to it, even in the midst of general shooting...from the air movement.  So what does that tell us about the security detail...based on the official story how close where the bullets passing?   And of course there were impacts inside the presidential limo....impacts into bone, and supposedly fragment denting chrome.  Did anybody mention "feeling" bullets pass them or hearing any impacts...you would almost think as eager as they were to support the official story you would get some remark....Kellerman talks about a salvo of bullets coming into the limo,  was he commenting about hearing shots and didn't sense any impacts inside the car?

Somewhere I read Connelly or Kellerman said they heard the sound of JFK's head getting hit I think he described it as being like a watermelon. I have heard ricochets land near me and they make more noise than a regular bullet because of their tumbling or being deformed. When we were very young and dumb an idiot friend of mine walked up to a nickel on the ground and fired his 22 from about 3 inches away. I felt a sting across the front of my stomach and found something grazed me and left a little blood. I never heard anything but it was only like five feet away so any sound would have been obscured by the initial shot. I kept my distance after that but by the end of the day another friend of mine had pretty much the exact same injury as I did. If you went to one of those crazy uncontrolled shooting places in in the Foothills outside of Los Angeles in the 70s there would be goddamn people everywhere not to mention a lot of people had beer

When Kellerman said the last rounds came in as a flurry he must have been referring to the sound or feeling of bullets entering the limo. I guess when Greer said the last rounds came in almost simultaneously he must have been referring to the same phenomena. Don't know if they meant the sound of them coming in or the sound of them impacting or that feeling of a shock wave but it must have been one of those three.

Edited April 2, 2020 by Chris Bristow

[David Andrews]

3 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

Did anybody mention "feeling" bullets pass them or hearing any impacts...you would almost think as eager as they were to support the official story you would get some remark....

Mr. Newman and his eventually mutable account of bullets flying from "behind" his family.

"Hit the deck!"  -- Joe Strummer