HOW
LONG WOULD THE ALLEGED LONE-GUNMAN HAVE HAD TO FIRE?
PROBLEMS
WITH THE CURRENT LONE-GUNMAN SHOOTING SCENARIO AND
MORE
EVIDENCE OF CONSPIRACY IN THE JFK ASSASSINATION
Michael T. Griffith
1999
@All Rights Reserved
Revised and Expanded on 7/3/2001
For years nearly all supporters of the
Warren Commission (WC) assumed that Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy by
scoring two hits out of three shots in 5.6 seconds as he allegedly fired from
the southeast corner window of the sixth floor of the Texas School Book
Depository Building (TSBD).
But soon after the WC released its report,
critics raised questions about the Commission's version of the shooting. They
noted the evidence indicated Oswald was a rather poor shot. They cited the fact
that none of the experienced, expert shooters who took part in the government's
assassination reenactments of the shooting was actually able to duplicate
Oswald's alleged performance. They pointed out that Oswald had little target
practice in the four years leading up
to the assassination, and that he apparently had no target practice whatsoever
in the forty days preceding the shooting.
The extreme unlikelihood of the 2 hits/3
shots/6 seconds scenario was highlighted in the 1967 CBS rifle test. Eleven
highly skilled marksmen participated in a fairly (though not totally) realistic
simulation of the conditions under which Oswald would have had to fire. Not one of the eleven expert shooters
managed to score two hits on his first attempt--and Oswald would have had only
one attempt. In fact, of the eleven CBS shooters, seven failed to score two hits on any of their attempts.
As it has become increasingly apparent that
no gunman, no matter how skilled, could have scored two hits in three shots in
5.6 seconds on his first attempt, lone-gunman theorists have sought to
"expand" the supposed single assassin's firing time to over 8
seconds. Some WC supporters say he would have had 8.2 seconds, while others put
the time at 8.4 seconds. However, the only way WC supporters can increase the
time span is to assume their lone gunman fired at around frame 160 of the
Zapruder film (Z160) and that he completely
missed, not only Kennedy, but the
entire huge limousine.
By any objective standard, this is an
extremely farfetched suggestion. At Z160 the sixth-floor gunman would have been
firing at the limousine from a distance of less than 140 feet, and from 60 feet
up. How could even a mediocre rifleman have possibly missed the entire car from
such a distance? One can imagine that the gunman could have completely missed
Kennedy: Perhaps he fired at Kennedy's head and just missed the target by a
fraction of an inch. But the entire limousine? How?
Obviously, the issue of how the shooting was
accomplished is a crucial matter. For if no gunman could have done what the
Commission said Oswald did, then this would constitute
further evidence of conspiracy in the shooting.
Let's be clear about what would constitute
"duplicating" Oswald's alleged feat: Oswald would have had one and
only one attempt. No practice rounds. No previous shooting series. No chance to
zero his rifle that morning. No nothing. Supposedly, he took the disassembled
rifle to work that morning, reassembled it, and then, when the motorcade drove
by the sixth-floor window, whipped off two hits out of three shots in no more
than 8.4 seconds. On his first and only attempt.
I believe the evidence strongly indicates
that no rifleman of average ability could have scored two hits out of three
shots in 8.2 to 8.4 seconds (or even in 10 seconds, since the gunman still
would have had only 5.6 seconds for his final two shots). And, as discussed
above, the whole expanded-time shooting scenario is based on the extremely
unlikely assumption that the sixth-floor gunman fired at around Z160 and
completely missed, not only Kennedy, but the entire
limousine.
I am perfectly willing to believe that a
shot or two was fired from the identified TSBD sniper's nest. I seriously
doubt, however, that three shots were fired from that window, and I don't
believe Oswald was in the sniper's nest during the shooting. If, on the other
hand, one assumes there was only one gunman, that he fired three shots from the
sixth-floor window, and that that gunman was Oswald, then the new single-assassin
shooting scenario becomes all the more untenable because the evidence indicates
Oswald was a rather poor shot--not just a mediocre shot, but a rather poor one.
The new lone-gunman shooting scenario is in
some ways even more unlikely and implausible than the initial WC scenario of
two hits out of three shots in 5.6 seconds. At least the Commission admitted it
was hard to believe the alleged lone gunman could have missed the entire
limousine with his first and closest shot, and the Commission also noted that
the first shot was usually the most accurate.
What is often not appreciated is that any lone-gunman shooting scenario
requires us to believe that one of the shots completely missed the entire
limousine. How could even an average marksman have missed the whole limousine
with any of his shots?
Most WC supporters now claim that the
Carcano's firing time has been reduced to 1.66 seconds per shot. Says Gerald
Posner,
According to the
Warren Commission, the fastest he [the alleged lone assassin] could have fired
all three shots was 4.5 seconds. However, that minimum is now out of date. CBS
reconstructed the shooting for a 1975 documentary. Eleven volunteer marksmen
took turns firing clips of three bullets at a moving target. None of them had
dry runs with the Carcano's bolt action, as Oswald had had almost daily while
in
Posner makes several errors here that need
to be corrected, and he also omits important information:
* All of the eleven marksmen in the CBS test
were experienced, expert riflemen.
* The shooters in the CBS test did in fact practice working the Carcano's
bolt prior to the simulation (Menninger, Mortal
Error, pp. 7-8).
* The CBS shooters did not fire from a
window that was at least halfway closed, as Oswald would have had to do;
rather, they fired from a window that was wide open.
* The best of the CBS shooters, Howard
Donahue, did not score at least two hits out of three shots in less than 6
seconds until his third attempt
(Menninger, Mortal Error, pp. 8-10).
(Donahue scored three hits on his third attempt.)
* The HSCA's shooters fired at stationary
targets and merely point aimed for their fastest time.
* The HSCA's shooters did not actually score two hits out of three
shots while firing at a rate of 1.66 seconds per shot (8 HSCA 185; Henry Hurt, Reasonable Doubt, p. 101). Even though
the Committee's chief counsel tried to put the best possible face on this fact,
he stated that this feat was "difficult" and admitted that none of
the Committee's shooters actually accomplished it:
It is apparently difficult, but not impossible--at least
with only minimal practice with the firearm used--to fire 3 shots, at least two
of which score "kills," with an elapsed time of 1.7 seconds or less
between any two shots, even though in the limited testing conducted, no shooter achieved this degree of
proficiency. (8 HSCA 185, emphasis added)
I would add that in the HSCA's tests, any
shot that landed anywhere in the silhouette targets, which portrayed a man from
waist to head, was counted as a "hit" (or "kill") (8 HSCA
184).
* Neither the CBS nor the HSCA riflemen used
the sixth-floor Carcano. They used other Carcanos.
This last point brings us to the biggest
problem with the claim that the Carcano's firing time has been reduced below
2.3 seconds per shot, namely, that the sixth-floor Carcano itself was not used in any the tests in which the
firing time was lowered. In the only tests where the alleged murder weapon
itself was used, the fastest firing time that could be achieved, by expert
rifleman, was 2.25 seconds per shot (which is usually rounded up to the figure
of 2.3 seconds).
What follows are excerpts from dialogues I
have had with WC supporters as they attempted to defend the new lone-gunman
shooting scenario.
If Oswald fired at Z160 and missed, then
he would have had over 8 seconds to shoot. That would have given him 5.6
seconds to fire his next two shots.
First, allow me to address the theory that
the sixth-floor gunman completely missed, not only Kennedy, but the entire
limousine with his first and closest shot (the first shot, by the way, is
normally the most accurate, especially when you have the opportunity to track
and draw aim on the target, as the gunman would have been able to do for a
Z145-160 shot).
Even the WC labeled as an
"improbability" the idea that its lone gunman would have completely
missed the entire limousine with his first and closest shot. It is extremely
hard to believe that any halfway competent gunman in the sixth-floor window
could have missed the whole car from 60 feet up and from less than 140 feet
away--and using a scope no less.
A second-shot miss, which the WC favored,
would have been more plausible (or at least not as implausible) because (1) the
target was farther away, and (2) the target had just reemerged from beneath the
oak tree. The gunman would have had to take at least 1 second to reacquire the
reemerging target (i.e., to spot it and then aim at it). It takes the human eye
1/6th/sec just to register and react to data. Seeing that the car had cleared
the tree, the gunman could not have known that it wouldn't suddenly speed off
down the road. He would have wanted to get the first post-tree shot off as
quickly as possible, as opposed to the first shot where he would have had
plenty of opportunity to draw aim on Kennedy as the car had slowed down
markedly to make the turn onto Elm Street (which also makes it very hard to
understand how he could have managed to completely miss the vehicle).
However, you're still stuck with trying to explain how any bullet fired from the sixth-floor
window could have missed the whole car. This is one of the many weaknesses of
the lone-gunman scenario. A shot fired from any number of alternate locations
in the plaza could have just barely missed Kennedy's head and quite easily have
missed the limousine as well. Yet, while one can understand how the sixth-floor
gunman could have missed Kennedy with
his second shot, one cannot understand how he could have missed the whole
car--with any of his shots. That's
the problem for the WC's scenario. No such wild miss from the sixth-floor
window makes sense.
In my article "Extra Bullets
and Missed Shots in Dealey Plaza," I document evidence that more than
three shots were fired.
Why not? What rule of nature is there
that says such a shot [an early, Z160 shot from the sixth-floor window] had to hit? When one takes into account
the tension felt by Lee Harvey Oswald [LHO] as he got himself ready, or the
possibility of the shot being deflected by the tree, this is no great mystery.
You must realize that the first shot did not
come at Z160, but at around Z145. This is one reason that the tree-deflection
theory is wholly untenable, and perhaps why it has been repudiated by some
lone-gunman theorists. If the first shot wasn't fired until Z160, how, then, do
you explain Kennedy's rapid turn to the right at Z154, the blur at Z155, the
splice from Z154-156, and the eyewitness testimony that the first shot occurred
as or just after the limo turned onto
Also, Governor John Connally, sitting in
front of JFK, turns his head rapidly to the right at Z162. Are we supposed to
believe that Connally (1) heard the shot, and (2) managed to begin to turn his
head, in just 1/9th of a second? The fastest reflex reaction known to man is
the eyeblink, which takes 40-50 milliseconds, or about one Z frame. The classic
hot-stove reaction, that of pulling the hand away
after touching a hot object, takes a
minimum of 268 milliseconds, or about 4.5 Zapruder frames. It is virtually
certain that Connally was reacting to a shot that was fired at least five frames earlier,
and quite possibly ten to twenty frames earlier. As you can see from CE 889,
the tree branches would not have in any way obscured the sixth-floor gunman's
view of Kennedy until Z166 (WCR, p.
100).
The CBS shooters were limited to 6 seconds
because CBS's technicians, along with everybody else, didn't give a moment's
serious consideration to the idea that the sixth-floor gunman missed the whole
limo with a first shot at Z145-160. In fact, Dan Rather correctly called the 2
hits/3 shots/6 seconds scenario "the WC's scenario." He said that
because that's what it was, and everybody knew that was what it was, since
nobody, until fairly recently, took seriously the idea that "Oswald,"
or any other gunman who wasn't legally blind, could have missed the whole car
from less than 140 feet.
Moreover, JFK shows signs of reactions to
severe external stimulus at around Z200, as the Photographic Evidence Panel of
the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) determined, and as everyone
from Richard Trask to Howard Donahue to Raymond Marcus has likewise noted. This
is also the time frame (ca. Z188-200) when others in the film seem to react to
the sound of a shot as well. And, it is right around this time when there's a
very strong blur episode. You take the early shot at Z145-160, the shot at
Z188-200, the hit on Connally at Z234-237, and the head shot at Z313, and you
have four shots.
What of the alleged hit at Z224? One thing
is certain: If Connally was hit in this frame, he was
not struck by the same bullet that hit Kennedy at around Z188. In order for
Kennedy and Connally to have been hit by the same missile, Connally would have
had to be sitting 10-12 inches to Kennedy's left and would have had to be
rotated some 20 degrees to his right, as shown in the single-bullet
trajectories proposed by Posner, by NOVA, and by the HSCA. Yet, Z224 clearly
shows Connally's shoulders rotated only slightly to the right, and he is not
seated far enough to the left to make a single-bullet trajectory from Kennedy's
throat possible. So clear is the Zapruder film on this point that even the
FBI's Lyndal Shaneyfelt acknowledged to the WC that in the frames immediately
following Z222 Connally was facing pretty much straight ahead. Leaving aside
the alignment problem, there is also the fact that to accept the idea that
Connally was hit at Z224, we would have to believe that he showed no obvious
reaction to his severe wounds until 50-52 frames, or nearly 3 seconds, after they occurred. Connally himself,
after studying high-quality enlargements of the Zapruder film at Life magazine, insisted he was positive
he was NOT hit prior to Z231. It's possible, though, that the Z236-238 reaction
was a continuation of a reaction that started just after Z224. I don't dismiss
this possibility. Regardless of when this bullet struck, it could not have been
the same missile that hit Kennedy.
5.6 seconds for two shots is not
unremarkable for a sharpshooter Marine, and the fact that the target was much
clearer while proceeding away in a straight line gave him a better angle.
Let's assume the gunman was Oswald, who was
at the very most a mediocre shot. It would have taken Oswald at least 1 second,
and quite possibly 2 seconds, to reacquire Kennedy's upper body as it reemerged
from beneath the tree. As mentioned, when I say "reacquire," I'm
talking about spotting the target's general location and then drawing aim on
it. Let's say it took "Oswald" only 1 second to spot and aim at
Kennedy's head or upper back. One second is 18 frames, so now he's only got 4.6
seconds left, and he hasn't squeezed the
trigger for his second shot yet. OK, so he pulls the Carcano's trigger,
which had an odd pull to it. But never mind that--he squeezes the trigger,
since he couldn't just jerk it down, for that would have thrown off his aim.
Let's say it took him only half a second to squeeze the trigger, which is
rather fast. Anyway, so now he has used up 27 of his 103 frames, and he's only
just now gotten off his "second" shot. He's got one more shot to get
off; his target is moving; and he has 76 frames left, or right around 4
seconds, give or take a few milliseconds. Unlike his first post-tree shot, this
time he has to take his eye off the scope, because he has to work the Carcano's
difficult bolt, which means he has to reacquire the target all over again. He
also has to carefully squeeze the trigger again. Could he have done this in
only 4 seconds? Could he, in 4 seconds, have (1) taken his eye off the scope,
(2) reworked the difficult bolt, (3) put his eye back on the scope, (4)
reacquired the target, and then (5) carefully squeezed the trigger so as to
ensure a dead-eye hit on Kennedy's skull? Possibly, but not
very likely.
Now, would this have been an
"easy" feat? Would it have been easy for "Oswald," or for
anybody, to score two hits in two shots in no more than 5.6 seconds? Absolutely not. Two of the WC's three Master-rated shooters
fired no faster than 3.35 seconds per shot on their first series.
"Oswald" would have had only attempt, and by all accounts he did not
target practice for a good month prior to the assassination. Staley took 3.35
seconds per shot, while Hendrix took 4.1 seconds per shot. Purely theoretically
speaking, could Oswald have gone two for two in 5.6 seconds? Yes. But is this
probable? No, it isn't. If two Master-rated shooters required 3.35 and 4.1
seconds per shot on their first series (and, again, Oswald would have had only
one attempt), and 3.2 and 3.5 seconds per shot on their second series, it
certainly would have been very difficult for Oswald to go two for two in 5.6
seconds. And was this the same guy who, according to some WC supporters, missed
the entire limousine with his first and closest shot?!
Yes, later "Carcano tests"
reportedly pushed the firing time down, in one case to as low as 1.6 seconds,
but none of these tests used the alleged murder weapon itself, but
rather they used different Carcanos. When the WC's three Master-rated test
shooters fired the weapon, the fastest among them, Miller, fired at a rate of
2.3 seconds per shot. The FBI's renowned Robert Frazier fired at 2.25 seconds
per shot.
And there's the rub: One can't even resort
to this expanded-time shooting scenario without making the wholly implausible
assumption that the sixth-floor gunman completely missed the limousine with his
first and closest shot.
Incidentally, it should be pointed out that
the three Master-rated riflemen in the WC's rifle test missed the head and neck
area of the target boards 20 out of 21 times, even though the target boards
were stationary, even though the riflemen were firing from only 30 feet up, and
even though one of them took 8.25 seconds to fire. Some of the misses didn't
even strike anywhere in the silhouette area of the target boards. If three
Master-rated riflemen missed could only hit the head and neck area of their
targets 1 out of 21 times, what are the odds that a mediocre shot like Oswald
could have hit the head and neck area of his target 2 out of 3 times on his
first and only attempt?
Unless you want to argue for a ground
level shot, there is no way that a shot fired from behind JFK could just barely
miss his head and still miss the limo. It is far more likely that the gunman
would hurry a shot before the target disappeared behind the tree than that he
would hurry a shot after the target was completely in the clear.
First, if you want to see, easily and
quickly, that there are several
alternate shooting locations from which a shot could have barely missed JFK's
head and then missed the whole car, take a look at the diagrams and overlaid
photos in Shaw's book Cover-Up. And
we're not talking only about
ground-level shots.
Second, an early first shot from the
sixth-floor window would not have
been hurried. Indeed, the gunman would have been able to track the limo and
take his time in drawing aim on the target therein.
Firing downward from the SN [sniper's
nest, i.e., the sixth- floor window] would be extremely awkward especially in
light of the fact the window was open only about one foot. LHO would have to
raise the butt end of the rifle abruptly which may have caused the window frame
to obscure the view through the scope. It may also have caused him to raise up off the boxes that served as his brace.
How would the window have obscured the view through
the scope? Unless you want to assume the window was rather dirty, this would
not have been a problem. And, if he
would have had to raise the butt so high that the window would have become a
factor, and if the window was so
dirty that it actually obscured his view through the scope, then why in the world would he have taken
this shot? How would he have gone 2 for 2 on his last 2 shots?
Even with a markedly obscured view through
the scope through the window glass, the outline of the car still would have
been quite visible, which again raises the question of how "Oswald"
or anyone else could have missed the entire huge limousine. But would the
window have come into play? No, as I'll explain in a moment. However, let's
assume for the sake of argument that the gunman would have had to aim through
the window glass.
When we in the Army fire at targets while
wearing our chemical protective masks, we have a severely obscured view through
the thick glass of the protective eyeglasses, and we're using iron sights, not
scopes. Yet, in spite of these factors, I've personally never seen anyone miss
the entire target board, which is much smaller
than the limousine.
I really don't think you're stopping to
consider just how wild a miss you're advocating here. Do you understand how
large the limousine was? This was a three-row, six-to-eight-passenger luxury
limousine. The rear hood alone was large enough for a grown man like SSA Clint
Hill to lie on, as we see in the Z film. You're talking about missing this entire huge object from no more
than 135 away and from 60 feet up. I don't think you grasp just how wild a miss
this would have been.
If this would have been a truly
"extremely awkward" shot, why wouldn't the gunman have just waited a
few seconds? For that matter, why on earth wouldn't he have fired at the limo
as it came up
Now, finally, would the gunman have had to
sight the limo through the window glass? The answer to this questions appears
to be No. How can we say this? Because of the footage of the WC's reenactment of the shooting.
You can see this footage in any number of documentaries on the assassination,
such as NOVA's Who Shot President Kennedy? It seems clear from this footage that the
window would not have come between the scope and the limousine. You can also
deduce this by comparing CE 887 with the Dillard and Powell photos of the
sixth-floor window, which photos were taken within a few minutes of the
shooting. CE 887 shows Robert Frazier aiming the rifle through the window with
a camera attached to the top of the rifle, and the window is open no higher
than it's open in the Dillard and Powell photos. That
was the idea, of course--to simulate the view the gunman would have had at the
time, so they only had the window open as much as it was during the shooting
(or at least so it appears, and so one would presume). Again, to judge from
this visual evidence, the window would not
have obscured the gunman's view of the limousine, whether he had used the scope
or in the unlikely event that, for some reason, he decided to use the iron
sights.
An early first shot from the sixth-floor
window would have required a sharply downward angle, probably in the
unsupported position, but the gunman would have had a clear view of the car,
and thus it is very hard to imagine how anyone could possibly have missed the
entire limousine. As I've said before, go out to a rifle range, mark off 140
feet, and get a target even just 2/3's the size of the limo, and then fire
straight at the target from the unsupported position. Then you'll see why even
the WC viewed as improbable the idea that its lone assassin could have missed
the entire car with his first and closest shot. You'll see what an utterly
unbelievable miss this would have been, and why it's still unbelievable. You'll
see that you won't once miss the entire target, that you won't even come close
to doing so, even if you fire rapidly with a bolt-action rifle (or simulate
this by pulling your eye away from the scope or iron sights for a second and
jerk the rifle around). To miss a target this large from such a distance, you
would really almost have to try to miss
it. And, my goodness, see how impossible it would be to miss so badly while
using a scope! It's abject nonsense.
***********************************************************
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Michael
T. Griffith holds a Master’s degree in Theology from The Catholic Distance
University, a Graduate Certificate in Ancient and Classical History from
American Military University, a Bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts from
Excelsior College, and two Associate in Applied Science degrees from the
Community College of the Air Force. He
also holds an Advanced Certificate of Civil War Studies and a Certificate of
Civil War Studies from