Parts 1 and 2 of The Rifle, BYP & Pistol are up at CTKA

[Bob Prudhomme]

Part 1 is a very thorough attack on the chain of custody of these bits of paper tying LHO to the gun. One minor quibble, it isn't steel-jacketed ammo, it's copper FMJ. Edit: you're referring to the Walker shooting, my bad.

I'll read part 2 later today.

(Caught the edited version after I had posted... lol. Great minds thinking alike )

Thanks Drew... the reference to the steel-jacket had to do with the Walker shooting and his being accused*. He'd have to of acquired ammo at some point and we learned that the Walker bullet was steel, not copper jacketed.

The PMO timeline is pretty revealing as well....

Hope you enjoy the BYP piece
DJ


*April 10, 1963 The Walker shooting

Klein's did not send any ammunition with the order as nonewas ordered. Nor did they send a

clip. For Oswald to even be considered a suspect he had toacquire at the very least
ammunition and steel jacketed ammunition at that.

It is a shame that the detectives who wrote the supplementary report on the Walker shooting never elaborated on their pronouncement of the mangled bullet found at the scene being "steel jacketed".

The 30-06 cartridges for the M1 Garand were loaded with a bullet jacketed in an odd three layer bonded combination of brass/steel/brass (it looks like copper but is actually a zinc/copper brass alloy known as gilding metal, roughly 95% copper). If the bullet was mangled as badly as claimed by Walker, it is very likely the centre layer of the jacket was exposed and, if either or both of the detectives were veterans, they might have recognized this as a 30-06 military bullet.

OTOH, Italian military ammo for the Carcano was loaded with bullets jacketed in quite a variety of materials, including steel. The steel jacketed Carcano bullets received a coating of gilding metal or cupro-nickel to keep the steel from corroding. To complicate matters further, the cupro-nickel alloy (also used alone for jacketing bullets) had a very silvery appearance, and could be mistakenly ID'ed as a steel jacket if someone did not know better.

Just playing the Devil's advocate here, there is no record of Oswald ever purchasing ammo for the 6.5mm Carcano but, if he did, how would we know he exclusively bought gilding metal jacketed ammo made by the Western Cartridge Company? Was the bullet found at the Walker residence a steel or cupro-nickel jacketed Italian military surplus Carcano bullet?

In their eagerness to convict Oswald, did the DPD discard the real Walker bullet because it did not match the WCC ammo?