This Encyclopedia Brittanica interactive video is a few years old, but it's the first time I've seen it. [Watch]
I've always wondered if you set up a course with an elevated firing position and a target following the same track as the limo, how many of us would be able to reproduce Oswald's reputed results using the same rifle and ammunition. Anybody know if it's been tried?
[Via TM]
3 comments:
Oswald's rifle had a loose scope mount, and they couldn't even test fire it successfully until they tightened the screws. A Carcano has a scope that is offset to the left, because of the top loaded clip. It never occurs to anyone that Oswald may have used the iron sights on a moving target at 75 yards.
It has been tried. In 1967, CBS invited a number of gun experts (my reference says 4, but there might have been others) for a special on the assassination. They set up just such a track, and found a spare Mannlicher-Carcano and targets to make it seem real enough to the shooters. Each one was required to fire 3 shots at the "President", all hits, within 5.6 seconds. A guy named Howard Donahue was able to get 3 shots off in the time limit, all hits.
That started a lifelong fascination with the assassination for Donahue, which led him to believe that Oswald fired twice and a Secret Service agent fired a negligent discharge from an AR-15, which delivered the fatal headshot. It got turned into a book (Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK, by Bonar Menninger). The author was sued by the agent named, and after wrangling they came to a settlement that involved an end to publishing the book. You can still find it, very rarely, in used bookstores.
Very detailed book. Highly recommended!
Very odd that the agent sued the writer many years after publication. The Secret Service, and the agent, were given all the details prior to the book going public, and had no reaction or response, so it went to print.
Donahue covered all the odd circumstances that gave other writers fits trying to explain, and had clear explanations for everything. Took something like 25 years before he had all the details covered. Most damning to the SS, they lied about what the agents had for weapons. He already knew what caliber had hit Kennedy in the head, from the bullet debris inside the skull, and it sure wasn't a Carcano bullet.
One of the most interesting facts was that the Warren Commission had NO ballisticians or shooters in the investigation.
BTW, that TV special had a Dozen of the top shooters in the US. After that program, he started looking at the evidence that the Commission had collected, and realized that one of the 3 empty cases found in the Book Depository was being used as a snap-cap by Oswald. It had many firing pin strikes from him practicing while waiting for the motorcade to arrive.
I've lost two copies of the book. Loaned them out, and they never came back, ...sigh
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