Bob Prudhomme Wrote:"There are other Carcano variants, but these tend to be extremely rare or conversions of other types. For example, there are the Guardie del Re (King's Guard) and Moschettieri del Duce (Mussolini's Guard) variants, both of which are rare, and are distinguished by the coloring (gilded ornamentation and black stock, respectively), and non-standard stock/bayonet treatments."

As C2766 is clearly a standard M91/38, and there is no gilding on it, this proves, beyond a doubt, it is the garden variety of short rifle.

Drew Phipps Wrote:That particular site wasn't more clarifying, but I did find a site that said that the importer "Ry...something" did sometime stain stocks with a black color and people just remove the color, so I guess that's a false alarm. I do recall seeing the name of that importer in the chain of ownership prior to Klein's.

Last question re the gun here. It is said that all period Italian firearms, in addition to the year in Arabic, also had a roman numeral corresponding to the year of the march on rome, i.e. the beginning of fascist rule in 1922.(?) So shouldn't Oswald's rifle barrel have a XVIII or something similar? There's no mention of it in Frazier's testimony and the pics you have displayed in your various threads don't show Roman numerals...

Bob Prudhomme Wrote:Special Agent Robert A. Frazier of the FBI was considered a firearms expert. He gathered most of the ballistics evidence in the JFK assassination and presented his findings in evidence to the Warren Commission. However, a careful examination of his work and evidenvce reveals a plethora of errors.

One such error is revealed in the excerpt from his testimony below, and this error will explain why the bullet shown in the evidence photo and known as CE 399 could never have been fired from Oswald's rifle, or any other 6.5mm Carcano.

"Mr. EISENBERG - Well, no; not at this time.
Can you explain the American equivalent to the 6.5 mm. caliber?
Mr. FRAZIER - That is the same as .25 caliber. Such weapons in the United States as the .25-20 Winchester, .25-35, the .250 Savage, and the .257 Roberts, are all of the same barrel diameter, or approximately the same barrel diameter. So a decimal figure of .257 inch is the equivalent of 6.5 mm."

This is a popular misconception in the shooting world regarding .25 calibre and 6.5mm calibre rifles. Mr. Frazier is 100% wrong in his belief.

The bore diameter of a .25 calibre rifle is .250"; the bore diameter of a 6.5mm calibre rifle is .256".

The groove diameter (also bullet diameter) of a .25 calibre rifle is .257"; the groove and bullet diameter of a 6.5mm calibre rifle is .264" (.268" in a Carcano).



The confusion between the two calibres stems from the bore diameter of the 6.5mm and the groove diameter of the .25 calibre both being .257".

This misconception plagued Frazier throughout his investigation and shows up again in the Walker bullet.

"Mr. EISENBERG - Can you describe the general rifling characteristics which you referred to?
Mr. FRAZIER - Yes. They consist of impressions from four lands and grooves. The bullet is mutilated on a portion of its surface. However, it can be determined that there were four land impressions and four groove impressions originally on this bullet.
The width of the land impression is 7/100ths of an inch, that is 0.07 inch--whereas the width of the groove impression is 0.13 inch, or 13/100ths of an inch.
The bullet is flattened so that it was not possible to measure its diameter. However, by adding the land width to the groove width, and multiplying by the number of lands and grooves, you can determine the circumference of the bullet and mathematically determine its diameter, which in this case corresponds to 6.5 mm. ammunition, or approximately .267 inch."

As I pointed out in another thread, adding the measurements from the Walker bullet of a land impression (.070" or 1.778 mm) and a groove impression (.130" or 3.302 mm) and multiplying by 4 to determine circumference, and then dividing by pi (3.1416) to obtain diameter, does not produce .267".

(.070 + .130) x 4 = .800 divided by 3.1416 = .255"

Amazingly, this is almost exactly the diameter of a .25 calibre bullet.

The REAL specs for the lands and grooves of a 6.5mm Carcano rifle are lands = .085" (2.159 mm) and grooves = .125" (3.175 mm). With these specs, let's try Frazier's formula again.

(.085 + .125) x 4 = .840 divided by 3.1416 = .267" (the correct diameter for a Carcano bullet)

With this in mind, let us look at CE 399 again:



We now know the width of the Carcano land to be .085" or 2.159 mm. Even a rough measurement of the above land impression shows it to be well under 2 mm and actually close to the measurement Frazier obtained from the Walker bullet of .070" or 1.778 mm.

There is no doubt now that the CE 399 in the photo above was not fired from a 6.5mm Carcano rifle, nor any other 6.5mm calibre rifle.

The theory I have, and it is rapidly becoming the ONLY possibility, is that Frazier and his assistants honestly believed the bullets from a .25 calibre rifle and a 6.5mm calibre rifle were the same diameter of bullet and would, therefore, be interchangeable as evidence. If the bullet presented as the Walker bullet (Edwin Walker swore it was a substitute) and CE 399 were both plants, it seems highly probable that the FBI used a more common .25 calibre rifle to produce their substitutes.

There are a number of other things wrong with CE 399, and I will produce them in the next few posts.