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JFK Conspiracy Theories IV: The One With The Whales

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Just google "zero-in rifle". This isn't some pet theory of some random person. It's a well-documented phenomenon that the first shot of many newly-assembled rifles will always be very inaccurate if aiming through the scope.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwD5zu7yTeI

Are you gravitating towards a theory that Oswald used the iron sights? Bugliosi seems to go that direction, because he knows how truly terrible the scope is. I'm just wondering how Oswald could use the iron sights with the world's worst scope mounted to it. Or maybe the first shot(s) were from a more sophisticated weapon.

Not enough to make an 88 yd shot impossible.

Somebody familiar with their piece can always use a liberal dose of "Kentucky Windage"

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Kentucky Windage

to compensate for misaligned or even missing sights.

It could have been a unicorn with a hush-a-bomb.
 
Yep. You have done that too.

I pointed out exactly why experiments you cited were not only flawed, but asking the wrong question. You embarked on that loop, and tried to project it onto others.

Laughably you go sat far down the loop you openly stated you would assume the PennJillette experiment was a farce, and suspicious, while failing to acknowledge how that lesson should apply to your own claims.

http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/frazr1.htm

I think Robert Fraizer was the one who originally found that it took about a minimum of 2.3 seconds to cycle and accurately fire. Fraizer's experiments actually used stationary targets.

Your citations? A video of Penn Jillette rapidly cycling a Carcano without even aiming, and a video of a man rapidly cycling a Carcano while firing in a level aiming position.

Try again now. Consider those attempts to replicate LHOs shots and you "Olympic snipers". See if you can spot why your claims fail to convince.

"Olympic snipers" was a screwup. The expert consensus for the average minimum for cycling and accurately firing the rifle is and has always been 2.3 seconds. Gunny Hathcock and some other very significant experts have claimed that they could not duplicate the shots even then, so even with 2.3 seconds we're kind of stretching it. I was mostly talking about the last two shots being close together.

AGAIN, this is POINTLESS if you do not accept that the last two shots were close together.
 
Not enough to make an 88 yd shot impossible.

Somebody familiar with their piece can always use a liberal dose of "Kentucky Windage"

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Kentucky Windage

to compensate for misaligned or even missing sights.

It could have been a unicorn with a hush-a-bomb.

Here's the problem: If we accept that Oswald ordered and owned the rifle, then we was most certainly not familiar with it. Also, the inaccuracy of a newly-assembled rifle would be random considering that it was the worst scope in the world.
 
I think Robert Fraizer was the one who originally found that it took about a minimum of 2.3 seconds to cycle and accurately fire. Fraizer's experiments actually used stationary targets.

What was your source for the 2.3-second figure? Did all the members of the commission agree with Frazier's assessment? What is the source for your claim that this figure is "generally agreed upon?" How well has that 2.3-second purported minimum held up over time?

The expert consensus for the average minimum for cycling and accurately firing the rifle is and has always been 2.3 seconds.

The same claim again made without citation or evidence. What "experts" concur?
 
Is shooting at stationary targets enough to "duplicate" the shots from the TSBD?

I found this video; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSWSgcuYqDo

In it Ventura claims he was an expert in the past. In this video he fumbles around with the rifle like a person who has never handled a bolt gun before. There is no excuse for that. He could have made himself familiar with the rifle by dry firing or some limited target practice like Oswald allegedly did. Instead he choose to pass himself off as a fumble fingered bumpkin with a gun he barely knows how to handle.

I suspect that Ventura is prostituting himself to promote theory that he has no rational reason to believe.

Aside from any question about Ventura, who I wouldn't trust to water my lawn, you can read the biography of Richard Marcinko, an actual SEAL who was eventually the founding officer of SEAL team 6.

In his book he describes preparations he undertook with his Platoon prior to deployment on their first Vietnam tour. He decided to have his guys do a live fire test on a moving wooden sampan sized target.

14 SEALs, armed with various M16 variants, a couple of Stoner 63's in LMG configuration.

The towed target goes by their position, the whole bunch opened up at cyclic rate at under 50 yds and not one round hit the target.

Much yelling, cussing and condemnation before ordering his guys to get their act together and keep doing the drill over and over till they got it right.

Navy SEAL qualification is absolutely no guarantee that an individual qualifies as a precision marksman. There are indeed SEAL snipers, but Ventura wasn't even a SEAL, he was UDT and spent his tour in the PI, not Vietnam.
 
http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/frazr1.htm

I think Robert Fraizer was the one who originally found that it took about a minimum of 2.3 seconds to cycle and accurately fire. Fraizer's experiments actually used stationary targets.
You didn't actually read that document did you?

Just read it and you will find that they people testing the rifle fired 3 rounds from 4.6 to 9 seconds. This is as short as about 1.5 seconds per shot. Frazier went on to say that the rifle was accurate.

Gunny Hathcock and some other very significant experts have claimed that they could not duplicate the shots even then, so even with 2.3 seconds we're kind of stretching it. I was mostly talking about the last two shots being close together.

The only person who claims Hathcock ever participated in any effort to duplicate Oswald's shots was Craig Roberts. Roberts has provided zero evidence that Hathcock ever did this or that anyone ever witnessed him doing it.

What evidence do you have that Hathcock did anything like this?

Here's the problem: If we accept that Oswald ordered and owned the rifle, then we was most certainly not familiar with it. Also, the inaccuracy of a newly-assembled rifle would be random considering that it was the worst scope in the world.
You're like a broken record. Evidence that the scope was the worst in the world?

What does it take to become familiar with a new (or surplus) rifle anyway? I'm a reasonably good shot, but can't claim to be good as any Marine. I shot expert for the Navy and have scored 199/200 on an A-23 target in competition. In my opinion it takes a matter of minutes to become familiar enough with a strange bolt action rifle if I only need to use it on a large slowly moving target at short range. Don't sell yourself short. Get a bit of range time prior to making such naive statements.
 
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My citation wad of an unskilled man apparently replicating a part of the "impossible" feats.

Try taking your critique of it, and apply it to those other experiments you mention.

Try seeing, just for a moment, why they don't convince others of what you seem to think they should.

Dare to think for a moment, if you are citing experiments whose foundation is entirely flawed.

Here's a better question, that does not word pointlessly about the spacing of shots and ether plucked figures for cycling bolts: Can a shooter with suitable skill stand at the snipers nest, fire three shots, and expect to score at least two hits?

Establish that first, then worry how long they hesitate between working the bolt, or the trigger, without trying to second guess how long LHO would take to draw a bead.

He missed a shot. Maybe because he took less than 2.3 seconds one time, or maybe he did not need as long as he corrected as he slid the bolt.

Getting the timing exact is pointless. Asking if somebody could get three shots and two hits is a different matter.
 
Here's the problem: If we accept that Oswald ordered and owned the rifle, then we was most certainly not familiar with it. Also, the inaccuracy of a newly-assembled rifle would be random considering that it was the worst scope in the world.

WTF?

The owner of an item can't be familar with it? that doesn't even go in the direction of making sense.

Evidence for the second bolded would be handy to have at hand.
 
http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/frazr1.htm

I think Robert Fraizer was the one who originally found that it took about a minimum of 2.3 seconds to cycle and accurately fire. Fraizer's experiments actually used stationary targets.

Your citations? A video of Penn Jillette rapidly cycling a Carcano without even aiming, and a video of a man rapidly cycling a Carcano while firing in a level aiming position.



"Olympic snipers" was a screwup. The expert consensus for the average minimum for cycling and accurately firing the rifle is and has always been 2.3 seconds. Gunny Hathcock and some other very significant experts have claimed that they could not duplicate the shots even then, so even with 2.3 seconds we're kind of stretching it. I was mostly talking about the last two shots being close together.

AGAIN, this is POINTLESS if you do not accept that the last two shots were close together.

Since you seem to want to ignore facts, let me simply repost my comment on this subject. Evidently you couldn't be bothered to read the post the first time I posted the link:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9486646&postcount=3934

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In the other thread

Ladmo:

To say it was only LHO is to reject subsequent findings that drew from a greater pool of information. The House Select Committee on Assassinations came to the conclusion that LHO fired 3 shots and that the 3rd shot killed him. The HSCA did eliminate many suspected groups like: the Soviets, the Cubans, the CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service, et al. most Lone Gunman theorists believe all of the above but depart when the committee said that a fourth (4th) shot was fired. Read the report and then come back and explain why they did not get that element correct.

I don't need to go back and read the report, because if you go far back enough in this thread I explained how the multiple shots/multiple shooters scenario occurred, and the science involved.

For your enlightenment, I'll do so again, and address the "open mic" evidence that even under ideal conditions would be suspect.

When a projectile is fired, and the velocity of the projectile surpasses supersonic velocity (approx. 1100 feet per second, depending on atmospheric conditions) the projectile creates a following sound wave in it's wake. Here's an animation with aircraft as the example:

Video link removed

As the projectile moves through the air, at every single terrain feature it passes, organic or otherwise, it creates (for lack of a better term) a mini sonic boom that is clearly audible if A) the projectile passes along past your location in the bullet path B) you're downrange being shot at and the round is a clean miss C) you're the shooter, firing a well suppressed firearm.

This phenomenon was first noted on record by Hiram Maxim, the inventor of what he called a Silencer, when he fired a 1903 Springfield rifle in the standard Gov. 30/06 caliber with his invention - Maxim fired down a country road lined with telegraph poles, and his observation was that it sounded like a "battalion of machine guns" as the bullet passed each pole, the sonic boom was clearly audible to him.

How does this relate to Dealy? as LHO fired, different observers at different points along the bullet's path heard these MSB's, mistook the MSB's for muzzle blasts or misinterpreted them as being shooter locations, and from those observers came their eye (or ear, if you want to be accurate) witness accounts of more shots than the three established and documented rounds, different directions of fire, etc. and the rest is CT grist for the mill

What goes right along with the reality of this phenomenon is the inability of an open mic to do anything other than record ambient sounds. A mic at different points in a bullet trajectory could easily record multiple "shots" from one single round fired.

At this point, I need to make an argument from my personal experience.

During the course of my professional life I've been around, and have a bunch of personal experience with firearms all across the board, I'm a qualified expert witness, instructor, armorer, etc. I did six years in the Army and 15 years in the PD, I've worked overseas, and in the ABC examples I noted above I'm three for three.

Every so-called "impossibility" wrt the actual firearm, ballistics and the mechanics of marksmanship noted by the JFK assassination CT hawkers is flat out ********.

The shooting was nothing special, the 6.5 x 52 is a good if not great cartridge, the projectile has a very high sectional density (better penetration) compared to other common .30 caliber class service rifle rounds and one of the stupid mistakes JFK CT hawkers made early on is that many of them didn't account for the simple fact that LHO's first round was chambered before he mounted the piece for a cheek weld - early explanations tried to assert that LHO had to mount, aim and then chamber the first round...stupidity that only a non trained individual would even consider.*

Go back to the other thread and read my post on the first page - like I said, I had an unusual childhood and was raised to believe one of the standard CT's, but my life out in the world living in the reality of the piece of this story I'm most familiar with taught me that the various CT's out in the wild are based on misunderstanding at best, flat out ******** and opportunism at worst, and belief in those CT's are based more in ignorance than knowledge.

*Note. There is one JFK "researcher" and CT hawker that has an actual background as a trained professional.

Unfortunately, this individual wasn't satisfied with his own version of events, or maybe his book editor wanted some more horsepower in the story, so this individual claimed that when he attended LE marksman training run in conjunction with one of the greatest combat and competition marksman that ever lived, this individual claimed that the great man told him that the Marine scout/sniper school at Quantico had run a test to duplicate LHO's shooting, but nobody could duplicate the feat, including the great man.

The only problem?

No such test has ever taken place at the school - the military is very funny, they keep records of everything, and no such records exist.

For my part, I went through the same LE school run by the great man, and although he taught much, LHO, JFK and assassinations never came up, and no other individual involved with TGM or the school had ever heard him make any such claim.

The book written by the hawker dropped into obscurity afaik, but I wanted to touch on it because non-professionally trained JFK hawkers have grabbed onto this particular ******** story as "proof."

The other fact germane to this story, the book was published after the death of the The Great Man - Carlos Hathcock, USMC, 1942 - 1999.

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I addressed Roberts ******** about Carlos Hathcock three years ago
 
Gunny Hathcock and some other very significant experts have claimed that they could not duplicate the shots even then, so even with 2.3 seconds we're kind of stretching it.
Craig Roberts is the only person making this claim; he does it in his book Kill Zone. Here is a review of his book which shows he behaves as if you and everyone else who reads his book are complete idiots. https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-...=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1494985667
 
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You didn't actually read that document did you?

Just read it and you will find that they people testing the rifle fired 3 rounds from 4.6 to 9 seconds. This is as short as about 1.5 seconds per shot. Frazier went on to say that the rifle was accurate.
The tests were conducted by 3 people at a distance of 15 yards for accuracy; another test was conducted at 25 yards to test how fast the weapon could be fired. Results for the first test:

"The bullets landed approximately--in Killion's target, No. 549, approximately 2 1/2 inches high, and 1 inch to the right, in the area about the size of a dime, interlocking in the paper, all three shots.

On Commission Exhibit 548, Cunningham fired three shots. These shots were interlocking, or within an eighth of an inch of each other, and were located approximately 4 inches high and 1 inch to the right of the aiming point. The three shots which I fired were landed in a three-quarter inch circle, two of them interlocking with Cunningham's shots, 4 inches high, and approximately 1 inch to the right of the aiming point."

Frazier also tested it at 100 yards and found the scope to be unstable. The bullets landed 5 inches too high and 5 inches to the right of the aiming point.
 
You didn't actually read that document did you?

Just read it and you will find that they people testing the rifle fired 3 rounds from 4.6 to 9 seconds. This is as short as about 1.5 seconds per shot. Frazier went on to say that the rifle was accurate.



The only person who claims Hathcock ever participated in any effort to duplicate Oswald's shots was Craig Roberts. Roberts has provided zero evidence that Hathcock ever did this or that anyone ever witnessed him doing it.

What evidence do you have that Hathcock did anything like this?


You're like a broken record. Evidence that the scope was the worst in the world?

What does it take to become familiar with a new (or surplus) rifle anyway? I'm a reasonably good shot, but can't claim to be good as any Marine. I shot expert for the Navy and have scored 199/200 on an A-23 target in competition. In my opinion it takes a matter of minutes to become familiar enough with a strange bolt action rifle if I only need to use it on a large slowly moving target at short range. Don't sell yourself short. Get a bit of range time prior to making such naive statements.

Can we please cut to the chase? Sure, 2.3 seconds is more than enough. Do YOU, Ranb, think that two bullets were fired 1.5 seconds apart in the actual assassination? This all goes back to what the witnesses say about the event, since we do not have an audio recording.
 
Craig Roberts is the only person making this claim; he does it in his book Kill Zone. Here is a review of his book which shows he behaves as if you and everyone else who reads his book are complete idiots. https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-...=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1494985667

I can barely stand to say the *******'s name.

Something that the AIQ didn't mention is that some of the shooting scenarios at the Tactical Marksmanship Training institute were on moving targets at greater than 100 yds, and were considerably more difficult than Dallas due to shoot/no shoot and hostages in the target mix - I doubt LHO cared about anything other than shooting - anything in front of the muzzle could have gone down and it didn't make any difference to him.
 
Since you seem to want to ignore facts, let me simply repost my comment on this subject. Evidently you couldn't be bothered to read the post the first time I posted the link:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9486646&postcount=3934

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

In the other thread

Ladmo:

To say it was only LHO is to reject subsequent findings that drew from a greater pool of information. The House Select Committee on Assassinations came to the conclusion that LHO fired 3 shots and that the 3rd shot killed him. The HSCA did eliminate many suspected groups like: the Soviets, the Cubans, the CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service, et al. most Lone Gunman theorists believe all of the above but depart when the committee said that a fourth (4th) shot was fired. Read the report and then come back and explain why they did not get that element correct.

I don't need to go back and read the report, because if you go far back enough in this thread I explained how the multiple shots/multiple shooters scenario occurred, and the science involved.

For your enlightenment, I'll do so again, and address the "open mic" evidence that even under ideal conditions would be suspect.

When a projectile is fired, and the velocity of the projectile surpasses supersonic velocity (approx. 1100 feet per second, depending on atmospheric conditions) the projectile creates a following sound wave in it's wake. Here's an animation with aircraft as the example:

Video link removed

As the projectile moves through the air, at every single terrain feature it passes, organic or otherwise, it creates (for lack of a better term) a mini sonic boom that is clearly audible if A) the projectile passes along past your location in the bullet path B) you're downrange being shot at and the round is a clean miss C) you're the shooter, firing a well suppressed firearm.

This phenomenon was first noted on record by Hiram Maxim, the inventor of what he called a Silencer, when he fired a 1903 Springfield rifle in the standard Gov. 30/06 caliber with his invention - Maxim fired down a country road lined with telegraph poles, and his observation was that it sounded like a "battalion of machine guns" as the bullet passed each pole, the sonic boom was clearly audible to him.

How does this relate to Dealy? as LHO fired, different observers at different points along the bullet's path heard these MSB's, mistook the MSB's for muzzle blasts or misinterpreted them as being shooter locations, and from those observers came their eye (or ear, if you want to be accurate) witness accounts of more shots than the three established and documented rounds, different directions of fire, etc. and the rest is CT grist for the mill

What goes right along with the reality of this phenomenon is the inability of an open mic to do anything other than record ambient sounds. A mic at different points in a bullet trajectory could easily record multiple "shots" from one single round fired.

At this point, I need to make an argument from my personal experience.

During the course of my professional life I've been around, and have a bunch of personal experience with firearms all across the board, I'm a qualified expert witness, instructor, armorer, etc. I did six years in the Army and 15 years in the PD, I've worked overseas, and in the ABC examples I noted above I'm three for three.

Every so-called "impossibility" wrt the actual firearm, ballistics and the mechanics of marksmanship noted by the JFK assassination CT hawkers is flat out ********.

The shooting was nothing special, the 6.5 x 52 is a good if not great cartridge, the projectile has a very high sectional density (better penetration) compared to other common .30 caliber class service rifle rounds and one of the stupid mistakes JFK CT hawkers made early on is that many of them didn't account for the simple fact that LHO's first round was chambered before he mounted the piece for a cheek weld - early explanations tried to assert that LHO had to mount, aim and then chamber the first round...stupidity that only a non trained individual would even consider.*

Go back to the other thread and read my post on the first page - like I said, I had an unusual childhood and was raised to believe one of the standard CT's, but my life out in the world living in the reality of the piece of this story I'm most familiar with taught me that the various CT's out in the wild are based on misunderstanding at best, flat out ******** and opportunism at worst, and belief in those CT's are based more in ignorance than knowledge.

*Note. There is one JFK "researcher" and CT hawker that has an actual background as a trained professional.

Unfortunately, this individual wasn't satisfied with his own version of events, or maybe his book editor wanted some more horsepower in the story, so this individual claimed that when he attended LE marksman training run in conjunction with one of the greatest combat and competition marksman that ever lived, this individual claimed that the great man told him that the Marine scout/sniper school at Quantico had run a test to duplicate LHO's shooting, but nobody could duplicate the feat, including the great man.

The only problem?

No such test has ever taken place at the school - the military is very funny, they keep records of everything, and no such records exist.

For my part, I went through the same LE school run by the great man, and although he taught much, LHO, JFK and assassinations never came up, and no other individual involved with TGM or the school had ever heard him make any such claim.

The book written by the hawker dropped into obscurity afaik, but I wanted to touch on it because non-professionally trained JFK hawkers have grabbed onto this particular ******** story as "proof."

The other fact germane to this story, the book was published after the death of the The Great Man - Carlos Hathcock, USMC, 1942 - 1999.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

I addressed Roberts ******** about Carlos Hathcock three years ago

Okay, there's one problem with your theory: It means only two shots were fired in the assassination.

EDIT: You can do that, you know. You just have to theorize that two spent hulls and one live round were found on the floor, and the third spent hull with a dented lip was planted as evidence later to be consistent with three shots.
 
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Can we please cut to the chase?

No, you may not sidestep the requirement to produce evidence in favor of your claims and references or citations to what you claim other people have said and done. You may not ask your critics to accept your shoddy research and bald say-so as adequate.
 
Can we please cut to the chase? Sure, 2.3 seconds is more than enough. Do YOU, Ranb, think that two bullets were fired 1.5 seconds apart in the actual assassination? This all goes back to what the witnesses say about the event, since we do not have an audio recording.

I posted above concerning "ear" witnesses and gunshots and the difficulty in distinguishing muzzle blast from projectile tracjectory msb's.
 
Rosemary Willis herself would probably tell you that you're over-analyzing.

I'm taking her at her word. How is that over-analyzing?

If she stopped in reaction to a gunshot, that puts the first shot before frame 177, a shot that most certainly missed.

Where are all of the other witnesses reacting?

Kennedy turns to his right before frame 190. So does Jackie. So does Connally a reaction he explicitly said was due to a gunshot.

Why has no Dealey Plaza witness ever stated "I heard the first loud shot, and the President just continued smiling and waving"?

Check out Mary Woodward. She says in no uncertain terms that the first shot hit nothing, and she was as close as anyone. She's been saying it since the day of the assassination.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLQ4id9AN38
 
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