FBI Evidence Proves Oswald's Ammunition was not Capable of Sufficient Accuracy to Kill JFK

[Bob Prudhomme]

In all fairness, I should point out something about these two photos, before anyone makes any conclusions about these two bullets. The rifling marks left on the Dr. Bill bullet are obviously nowhere near as tight as those left on CE 399.

There is a story that Dr. Bill posted on a gun forum that went along with this photo. He was attempting to capture a bullet intact in a piece of plastic pipe filled with bird seed, and purposely reduced the gunpowder charge so that the bullet would just make it out the end of the barrel. However, as he related, he reduced the charge too much, and the bullet stopped partway down the barrel, not far from the breech. He actually had to tap the bullet back to the breech with a hammer and a 1/4" steel rod.

Dr. Bill states in the photo that this was an M38 carbine. In order to be an M38, it would have to be a 7.35mm calibre rifle. Dr. Bill actually owns an M91/38, and I thought he was also mistaken about it being a carbine, until I examined the photo more closely. While the M91/38 short rifle was made with standard twist rifling grooves, the M91/38 carbines made during WWII were still being made with progressive twist rifling. What we are seeing is a bullet that was halted in the early part of the progressive twist rifling. If it had exited the muzzle of this rifle, its rifling grooves would have been very close to those on CE 399.

This also answers a question many people have had about progressive twist rifling, that question being how do the rifling marks left on the bullet change as the bullet travels down the barrel and the riflings get progressively tighter? The obvious answer is that the copper alloy jacket is malleable enough to constantly reform as the angles of the riflings change. There have been reports, though, of handloaders using bullets with possibly too hard of jackets and the jacket material getting "torn up" by the progressive twist rifling.

However, should it ever come out that Dr. Bill really does own an M91/38 short rifle, and not an M91/38 carbine, this photo would be ample proof that, contrary to what is claimed, many M91/38 short rifles were not made with new barrels but, rather, were made with the cut short barrels of M91 long rifles which, of course, were made with progressive twist rifling.