07-09-2014, 11:50 PM
Lauren Johnson Wrote:Bob, in the x-ray of the wrist, the white dots are metal fragments are the not? Has in LNer tried to explain those fragments from the nearly pristine CE399?
Sorry, a little off-topic.
No problem, Lauren. There are two ways of explaining those fragments.
If a full metal jacket bullet, such as the nearly pristine CE 399, left these fragments, it did so because there is a 4.5 mm diameter opening in the base of the copper alloy jacket of a Carcano 6.5mm FMJ bullet. The lead core of the bullet can be seen through this opening. This opening acts as a sort of "pressure relief valve" in the event the FMJ bullet should become deformed, as, in most cases, the space inside the jacket becomes smaller as the bullet deforms, and internal hydraulic pressure inside the bullet can rise to the point the bullet will rupture. As the whole point of a military FMJ bullet is to make it a non-expanding, non-fragmenting "humane" bullet, rupturing of the bullet jacket would have the total opposite effect and cause the bullet to make a horrific wound. As the base of CE 399 is slightly flattened, it was put forth by the LN that a tiny portion of the lead core extruded from the base as fragments.
However, lead extruding under pressure from the base of a 6.5mm bullet, through a 4.5 mm hole (much like toothpaste), usually comes out in the shape of 4.5 mm diameter flakes. None of the fragments in JBC's x-ray, except for one, are anywhere near that large.
The second way tiny fragments, such as those seen in the x-ray, could have been deposited is if the bullet that struck the radius bone was a hollow point frangible bullet. The frangible bullets made for the Carcano were filled with granular lead particles very similar in size to those seen in the x-ray. As there was also sand in the base of the bullet jacket, the particles in the x-ray may actually be particles of sand.
I will be discussing this very thing in greater depth in the next post on "Inexplicable Wounds made by Special Bullets".
Mr. HILL. The right rear portion of his head was missing. It was lying in the rear seat of the car. His brain was exposed. There was blood and bits of brain all over the entire rear portion of the car. Mrs. Kennedy was completely covered with blood. There was so much blood you could not tell if there had been any other wound or not, except for the one large gaping wound in the right rear portion of the head.
Warren Commission testimony of Secret Service Agent Clinton J. Hill, 1964
Warren Commission testimony of Secret Service Agent Clinton J. Hill, 1964