Robert Vinson

[Peter Lemkin]

Thanks for the extra details from the book. It makes the story less credible than before.

1. Why would the CIA pilots fly to (or over) Nebraska? It is well north of their ostensible destination (Denver) and further north than they need to go to pretend that they are not going to Dallas. Why would the CIA pilots arbitrarily fly farther north if their true destination was Dallas and they are on an exfiltration mission to pick up agents there?

You don't know. If the hit didn't happen they were likely to fly on, avoiding Dallas altogether. You have no idea of the plans. Your 'reaching' to 'assassinate' Vinson at any and all costs which makes me begin to wonder what your motive is.

2. How does Vinson, who sits in the back, and does not communicate with the flight crew, know that he is somewhere over Nebraska? (More likely he looked at a map in the intervening years and made an arbitrary decision.)

Some of those planes had windows he saw the familiar Dallas skyline too! Certainly there were windows in the cockpit, and this was a military [or CIA] plane - not a passenger plane of today - he could well have gotten up and looked out the front windows to know where he was - if he didn't have windows on the side in the back.

3. Why in the world does Vinson set his pocket watch or wrist watch for Central Standard Tme? Just because he's flying over that time zone? No one does that.

You nor I know what time zone his watch was set to or if he was using a clock onboard to tell time. In his book he has accounted for time zones and nothing is out of order, the probable, and especially the possible.

4. Omaha Nebraska, the closest part of Nebraska to both Arlington AFB and Dallas, is 1430 miles from Arlington AFB as the crow flies. Giving Vinson the benefit of the doubt of a departure time of 8:30 AM EST and adding an hour as he flies west, he has been in the air for 5 hours at the point of the alleged "dramatic announcement and sharp turn". At normal cruising speed of 190 mph he can only have covered 950 miles. At the absolute top speed of the aircraft, 275 mph, he can only have covered 1375, so he is still well short of Nebraska.

WRONG!
280 mph normal flight speed on some engine versions [we don't know which engines!]. Left between 8:30 and 9:00 EST [7:30 - 8:00 CST] per p.24 Vinson; 4.5 - 5 hours x 280 mph = 1260 to 1400 miles possible. Distance between Omaha and D.C. is 1015 miles by air - direct! WE don't know his exact speed, route, wind in his 'face', nor where in Nebraska.

There is absolutely no reason for the fearless CIA pilots to be stressing the aircraft for five full hours flying toward a point that is neither their true, or their cover, destination. Even if they did so, they can not have reached any point in Nebraska. Vinson is just flat wrong, or lying.

You can argue about Vinson's memory or his motivations, but you can't argue with mathematics.

With you math and logic, one can argue!!