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

[Jim Hargrove]

I was in HS, just shy of age 17 when JFK was murdered. I do think I felt it was all surreal, with something dark and deep going on, and the suspect being murdered while in police custody only solidified that feeling.

I was just a year younger, but I remember my mother saying something like, "As soon as Oswald was killed, we all knew it was some kind of conspiracy."

Does anyone recall ever hearing of a survey in which a majority of Americans indicated they believed the Warren Commission's conclusions? I can't think of one.

[Marc Ellis]

Although I have nothing in the way of proof to back up my beliefs, I tend to think the people that brought us the assassination would have been very pleased if other conspirators beside LHO had turned up and they all could have been tied in to Cuba and Russia.

The reason the coverup looks so "thrown together" is that it may very well be just that; a last minute scramble to implicate a lone assassin and avoid a nuclear exchange with the USSR. LBJ and the WC, should the truth ever come out, may go down in History one day as patriotic heroes that saved the lives of 120 million Americans.

Yeah. There was no shortage of anti-Castro Cubans they could have turned up. But that wasn't the sort of Cuban they wanted.

BTW Robert, I'm just a student and reader - not a researcher. But I think your ballistics information are the most important and original research I've read this year. I wish more ballistics experts would get involved with it.

[Bob Prudhomme]

Although I have nothing in the way of proof to back up my beliefs, I tend to think the people that brought us the assassination would have been very pleased if other conspirators beside LHO had turned up and they all could have been tied in to Cuba and Russia.

The reason the coverup looks so "thrown together" is that it may very well be just that; a last minute scramble to implicate a lone assassin and avoid a nuclear exchange with the USSR. LBJ and the WC, should the truth ever come out, may go down in History one day as patriotic heroes that saved the lives of 120 million Americans.

Yeah. There was no shortage of anti-Castro Cubans they could have turned up. But that wasn't the sort of Cuban they wanted.

BTW Robert, I'm just a student and reader - not a researcher. But I think your ballistics information are the most important and original research I've read this year. I wish more ballistics experts would get involved with it.

Thank you for those encouraging words, Marc. I wish more people would get involved in the ballistics discussion, too. As far as I know, some of the discrepancies I have pointed out in Robert Frazier's testimony have never been addressed in 50 years. However, a thread about Oswald's tonsils or how tall Marguerite Oswald was will generate pages of discussion.

[Drew Phipps]

Bob: Do you know if the cartridges produced either in 1944 or 1954 by the WCC were made exactly to the specs of the original Italian MC ammo?

[Bob Prudhomme]

Bob: Do you know if the cartridges produced either in 1944 or 1954 by the WCC were made exactly to the specs of the original Italian MC ammo?

No, I don't believe they were. There are foreign rifle enthusiasts who have measured the bullet diameters of this WCC ammo with micrometers and found the bullets to be .264" in diameter.

According to some sources, the manufacture of this ammunition, by the Western Cartridge Company, began well before 1944. If you re-read the first post in this thread, you will see that it was not intended solely to arm Italian partisans. The eventuality of the Greek Civil War was seen by many analysts in the early 1940's while Greece was under occupation by the Germans and Italians. As the groove diameter of a 6.5mm Mannlicher-Schoenauer Greek rifle is only .264", as opposed to the .268" groove diameter of a Carcano, loading the WCC cartridges with bullets .264" in diameter allowed these cartridges to be used in both the 6.5mm Carcano and the 6.5mm M-S; albeit not nearly as accurately in the Carcani. Greece inherited many 6.5mm Carcano rifles after the Germans departed, as the Germans disarmed the departing Italian troops following the signing of the Italian Armistice in late 1943. The Germans greatly feared these rifles being turned against them by partisans in Italy if the Italian troops were allowed to keep them, which is exactly what happened.

The distance from the base of a Carcano cartridge to the shoulder is 1 mm less than the same distance on a 6.5mm M-S cartridge. This means that a 6.5mm cartridge, as long as it is loaded with a .264" diameter bullet, can be chambered and fired from a 6.5mm M-S rifle. The brass casing is quite malleable and will "grow" under the pressure of expanding gases to match the shape of the M-S chamber.

Whether supplying Italian partisans in Italy or anti-Communist factions in the Greek Civil War, the WCC cartridges loaded with .264" diameter bullets were capable of meeting the demand.

[Marc Ellis]

Although I have nothing in the way of proof to back up my beliefs, I tend to think the people that brought us the assassination would have been very pleased if other conspirators beside LHO had turned up and they all could have been tied in to Cuba and Russia.

The reason the coverup looks so "thrown together" is that it may very well be just that; a last minute scramble to implicate a lone assassin and avoid a nuclear exchange with the USSR. LBJ and the WC, should the truth ever come out, may go down in History one day as patriotic heroes that saved the lives of 120 million Americans.

Yeah. There was no shortage of anti-Castro Cubans they could have turned up. But that wasn't the sort of Cuban they wanted.

BTW Robert, I'm just a student and reader - not a researcher. But I think your ballistics information are the most important and original research I've read this year. I wish more ballistics experts would get involved with it.

Thank you for those encouraging words, Marc. I wish more people would get involved in the ballistics discussion, too. As far as I know, some of the discrepancies I have pointed out in Robert Frazier's testimony have never been addressed in 50 years. However, a thread about Oswald's tonsils or how tall Marguerite Oswald was will generate pages of discussion.

FWIW, as I see it, you're using the state's evidence to disprove the state's case. It's easy enough for me to understand. The FBI made a simple math error. The official description of the ammo is larger than it actually was. The rifle allegedly used to kill JFK could be fired using that smaller ammo, but the accuracy would compromised and there would be no way to compensate for it.

Do I have that right?

Your work might have the potential to once and for all, eliminate the M/C as the weapon used to kill JFK. The conclusions need to be tested, verified. But what you're doing seems like important research to me.

[Drew Phipps]

I got the bullet caliber and land/groove business down pat, I think. I'm talking about the shell casing that is discarded after the bullet is shot. (for this discussion, CE 543, CE 544, and CE 545 iirc) Are those WCC casings the same specs as the Italian military specs for the spent part of the cartridge? I'm sure they have to be close, but are they exactly the same?

[Bob Prudhomme]

I got the bullet caliber and land/groove business down pat, I think. I'm talking about the shell casing that is discarded after the bullet is shot. (for this discussion, CE 543, CE 544, and CE 545 iirc) Are those WCC casings the same specs as the Italian military specs for the spent part of the cartridge? I'm sure they have to be close, but are they exactly the same?

Without having a WCC 6.5mm cartridge in my hands to measure with a micrometer, it is difficult to say. As there was only one batch made over 60 years ago, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get hold of one of these cartridges, especially for someone such as myself living in northern Canada. Our ammunition import laws are a bit sticky.

Anyways, I can provide you with the specs in this diagram for 6.5x52mm casings.




One difference I am positive would exist is the Italian casings would be made for Berdan primers, as is typical with European cartridges, while the WCC would be made for the Boxer primer, as is typical with North American cartridges.




Another possible difference is that the Italian SMI casings had a shoulder inside the cartridge neck that the base of the bullet butted up against. This shoulder prevented the bullet from accidentally being pushed further into the casing. This is an unusual feature I have never seen on North American ammunition. In our countries, the crimping of the casing neck at the cannelure is meant to prevent this, and I doubt if the WCC casings would have had a shoulder inside the neck.

As you live in Texas, you may have a much easier time locating WCC 6.5mm ammo than I would.

Interestingly, if the empty casings (CE 543, 544 and 545) were not the same specs as the Italian ammo when they were chambered into a Carcano rifle, they would be the same specs after the cartridge was fired; except for possibly the rim of the casing base. As brass is malleable, irregular sized casings get "fire formed" to the shape of the rifle's chamber, due to the pressure of the gases inside the casing. This is what I meant by shooting a 6.5x52mm Carcano cartridge (loaded with a .264" bullet, of course) in a 6.5x54mm Mannlicher-Schoenauer rifle. The Carcano brass casing "grows" by 1 mm until the Carcano shoulder contacts the M-S chamber shoulder and the casing fills the chamber of the M-S rifle and becomes, essentially, a M-S casing. If these three casings had been fired in a 6.5mm MS, it would be easy to tell, simply by measuring the distance on them from the base to the shoulder.

This phenomenon is utilized by handloaders in a process called "neck sizing". Normally, most handloaders will re-size the entire spent brass casing to bring it back to original specs, prior to reloading it with fresh powder and a new bullet. However, there is a school of thought that believes once a cartridge is fired in a particular bolt action rifle, that casing is now perfectly matched to that rifle's chamber. These devotees re-size only the neck of the cartridge, to allow it to hold a new bullet, and leave the rest of the casing untouched. These cartridges, of course, are slightly more difficult to chamber than fully re-sized cartridges. The jury is still out on whether or not neck sizing promotes greater accuracy than full length re-sizing.

Of course, in either type of re-sizing, it is necessary to check the length of the casing against the specs for that casing, as a casing will grow in length each time it is fired. A special tool called a case trimmer takes care of this.

[Drew Phipps]

Bob: When you say measure the "shoulder length" of the cartridge, do you measure it to the wide part of the shoulder (1.62'') or to the neck end (1.77") ?

And no, this is not an attempt to start an argument about the location of one of Kennedy's wounds.

[Bob Prudhomme]

In this case, and in most cases, we would be measuring from the base of the casing to the widest part of the shoulder; just before it begins to taper. As this distance is 1 mm longer on the 6.5x54 Mannlicher-Schoenauer casing than it is on the 6.5x52 Carcano casing, a 6.5mm M-S cartridge cannot be chambered into a 6.5mm Carcano rifle and the bolt closed behind it; at least not without a fight, and a big one at that.

No argument here about the wound location, I KNOW it was in the shoulder.

Edit: I can see how this could be confusing for many. As the 6.5mm Carcano casing and the 6.5mm Mannlicher-Schoenauer casing both have shoulders with almost identical angles, the narrow part of the shoulder on the M-S casing would also be 1 mm further from the base of the casing than the narrow part of the shoulder on the Carcano casing.