Inexplicable Wounds made by Special Bullets

[Drew Phipps]

From the size of the mailechort and lead lump in the bullet drawings , I would estimate their mass as being around 10% of the total mass of the bullet.

The little lumps (allegedly) found in the limo weighed a lot less than 1% of the total mass of the cited 91/38 bullet.

Also (apologies if I'm jumping out in front of your narrative here) don't you suppose that the wounds and bullet track through Connally's chest (and presumably also the wrist) more consistent with the standard "elephant drill-like" solid slug?

[Bob Prudhomme]

From the size of the mailechort and lead lump in the bullet drawings , I would estimate their mass as being around 10% of the total mass of the bullet.

The little lumps (allegedly) found in the limo weighed a lot less than 1% of the total mass of the cited 91/38 bullet.

Also (apologies if I'm jumping out in front of your narrative here) don't you suppose that the wounds and bullet track through Connally's chest (and presumably also the wrist) more consistent with the standard "elephant drill-like" solid slug?

As a lethal frangible bullet relies on a hollow point noise to make it open up, those little lumps in the nose would be the part of the bullet where the hollow point would be made. As the jacket nose would likely separate from them, there would be nothing stopping them from fragmenting into many pieces.

One of the popular misconceptions about Connally's wounds is that a bullet went through his chest cavity. The bullet actually went around Connally's ribcage, through soft tissue, following the curve of a rib. It struck a glancing blow on a rib, hard enough to shatter the rib and send shards of bone into Connally's right pleural cavity and cause an open pneumothorax there.

The wrist is another matter, much more interesting, and I'm not giving any hints on it.

P.S. As the base of the frangible bullets was filled with sand, as seen in the photos, I would estimate the solid projectiles in the nose of these bullets to make up much more than 10% of the total mass of these bullets. This has always puzzled me, as these bullets were designed to completely break up and not have any part big enough left over that might ricochet and cause injury.

[Bob Prudhomme]

And now we get to the head injury. For the sake of brevity, and because they are interconnected, I am going to include both entrance wounds in the skull.

To begin the discussion, I would like to state that everything we have been told about the head wound by the WC is a lie. Careful analysis of the Zapruder film shows us a great bag like protuberance hanging down from the right front of JFK's skull following the head shot at z313. As realistic as this may appear, there are problems with it.

First, brain matter has no sinew to hold it together, and an explosive force large enough to blow the brains out through an opening in the skull would also have torn the brain into small pieces. In all the head shots I have made on game, I have NEVER seen the brain hanging out of a wound in one cohesive piece.

Second, no doctor at PH described a large wound in the right front part of JFK's skull. If the massive crater of a wound, seen in the autopsy photos, had been seen by PH doctors, I seriously doubt they would have even begun resuscitation attempts on JFK, with so much of the brain missing. Of course, there is the theory put forth by WC apologists that Jackie pushed everything back into the skull and attempted to put the top of the skull back in place, thus "masking" the head wound from PH doctors. If you believe that one, I have a bridge you may be interested in.

Anyways, the two entrance wounds I believe occurred on JFK's skull are this. The first was in the rear of the skull, just to the right of and slightly above the external occipital protuberance. This also just happens to be where the majority of Parkland and Bethesda witnesses recall seeing a large gaping wound on JFK's skull. See diagram:





The second bullet struck JFK 7/10th of a second later in the right temple. The basis for this belief about these shots involves an interview done with the Bethesda autopsy doctors in which they are actually describing a large wound in the right rear of JFK's head, near the EOP. One of them describes a semi-circular hole in the skull bone at the margin of this opening that, if complete, would have been roughly 1/4" in diameter. They then describe a fragment of bone that was brought in to them that also had a semi-circular 1/4" hole on its margin, and how the two halves matched up. The 6.5mm Carcano bullet is, of course, just over 1/4" in diameter.

If lethal frangible ammunition was employed, as I believe, the first bullet entering JFK's skull from the rear would have disintegrated into powder roughly two inches into the skull, producing no exit wound but weakening the skull at the EOP, where it entered. It would have created an enormous pressure wave that might have ruptured the forward part of JFK's skull if not for the second bullet that entered his right temple 7/10th of a second later. This frangible bullet also disintegrated into powder two inches into the brain cavity, creating its own pressure wave. As the pressure wave from the first bullet would have arrived at the forward section of the brain cavity and stalled there in 7/10th of a second, building up enormous pressure in the forward part of the brain cavity and leaving a lower pressure area in its wake, the pressure wave from the second bullet would follow the path of least resistance (lower pressure area in the wake of the first bullet) and travel toward the entrance wound of the first bullet. As the skull bone was weakened at the EOP by the first bullet, the pressure wave was able to blow out a section of skull at the right rear of JFK's skull just to the right of the EOP, bisecting the entrance wound in the rear of the skull into two halves and leaving one half of the entrance wound on the margin of the opening in the skull and the other half on the margin of the missing bone fragment.

As the large gaping wound in the right rear of JFK's skull was described by doctors as involving the occipital and parietal bones, we can assume the rear entrance wound would have been on the lower margin of this opening. The temporal bone also extends back into this area, as seen in the diagram below, and this may be why some witnesses stated the temporal bone was also involved.



I should reiterate here that I do not believe an intact bullet exited the right rear of JFK's skull. If anything exited at all, it would have been sections of the frangible jacket, part of the small solid projectile in the nose of the frangible bullet, powdered lead or sand. However, the very mechanics of a frangible bullet mandates that the disintegrated bullet arrests in the wound.

The hundreds of dust like particles seen in the x-ray of the skull would be the remains of two disintegrated frangible bullets that came to a stop in the brain cavity.

[Drew Phipps]

Bear with me for a minute here. Assume that only one bullet hit him in the head and its a frangible bullet. Assume that the bullet stuck from behind and it struck near the occipital parietal area. Further assume that the small in diameter lead/mailechort "pellet" travels forward (and slightly up and to the right) and exits the skull in the parietal/temporal area. Would the "pressure wave" that then subsequently builds up be a sufficient force to open up a weakened area of the skull (between the entry point of the bullet and the exit point of the pellet) and expel a fair amount of brain matter and blood in an explosion-like incident which might look like what is seen on the Zapruder film?

I realize I may be asking you to disregard things which you have reason to believe, and do believe, about the assassination. Please treat this as a hypothetical question and (just for the moment) let's put aside conflicting medical reports about the actual location of the blown-out area, how many shooters and their locations, etc.) and tell me what your conclusions might be about my purely hypothetical situation.

[Bob Prudhomme]

Bear with me for a minute here. Assume that only one bullet hit him in the head and its a frangible bullet. Assume that the bullet stuck from behind and it struck near the occipital parietal area. Further assume that the small in diameter lead/mailechort "pellet" travels forward (and slightly up and to the right) and exits the skull in the parietal/temporal area. Would the "pressure wave" that then subsequently builds up be a sufficient force to open up a weakened area of the skull (between the entry point of the bullet and the exit point of the pellet) and expel a fair amount of brain matter and blood in an explosion-like incident which might look like what is seen on the Zapruder film?

I realize I may be asking you to disregard things which you have reason to believe, and do believe, about the assassination. Please treat this as a hypothetical question and (just for the moment) let's put aside conflicting medical reports about the actual location of the blown-out area, how many shooters and their locations, etc.) and tell me what your conclusions might be about my purely hypothetical situation.

Where would this single bullet be originating from?

[Drew Phipps]

Let's pretend for a minute that the target's head is turned to the left of midline and slightly bent forward. Lets assume that the shooter is mostly to the rear of the target and is some distance away (i.e. not a contact wound). Since we are theoretically speaking about the ammunition you described above assume the shooter is armed with a weapon capable of firing that ammunition.


I am not trying to start an argument about the facts of the assassination, just asking a hypothetical.

[Bob Prudhomme]

Let's pretend for a minute that the target's head is turned to the left of midline and slightly bent forward. Lets assume that the shooter is mostly to the rear of the target and is some distance away (i.e. not a contact wound). Since we are theoretically speaking about the ammunition you described above assume the shooter is armed with a weapon capable of firing that ammunition.


I am not trying to start an argument about the facts of the assassination, just asking a hypothetical.

Would this hypothetical shooter be on the SE corner of the 6th floor of the TSBD, by any chance?

[Drew Phipps]

Merely for the purposes of this hypothetical question, I'm going to say "no." The purely hypothetical angle of passage through the skull, from a shooter at such an elevation, starting at such a low point on the skull, would not likely end up higher in the skull, to exit at the imaginary location that I have chosen just for this hypothetical scenario.

If I had started at a higher initial contact point at the back of the skull (for instance the purely imaginary point that the HSCA seems to have selected merely to match up with a presumed shooter location), then you could logically guess that I'm asking about Oswald's alleged position. Truly, though, I am trying to determine the magnitude of the explosive force generated by the frangible bullet.

(I could also simply say that the exact location of my imaginary shooter would not be pertinent to the type of ballistics and physics that my hypothetical example is attempting to illuminate for me poor tired brain.)

[Bob Prudhomme]

Well, the only problem is that the solid lead/maillechort pellet in the nose of the frangible bullet would also be the part that was drilled to make the frangible bullet into a hollow point bullet. As the pressure of semi-liquid matter built up in this hollow point, it would be the first thing to begin opening up and fragmenting, followed by the powdered lead and sand behind it.

As I stated earlier, this type of bullet is not designed to exit. Any "exit" wound seen on the skull would only be a blowout point for a pressure wave, and not the exit point of a bullet.

We have been brainwashed by Rydberg's drawings of JFK's skull, showing a massive exit wound with an almost intact bullet exiting this wound.

[Drew Phipps]

My question stems here from my layman's understanding of how "pressure" works; it is normally going to rupture the weakest area of the container. If you watch those available videos of bullets, passing from rear to front, thru gelatin filled skulls (only an analogy for brain tissue), you will see that inevitably, it is the fragile spots of the skull, namely the nasal areas and eye sockets, that rupture under the pressure wave. Both parts of the skull, occipital or parietal, which might have been location of the blowout (depending on who you believe) are much more robust areas in adults. It doesn't appear that edge of either of the alleged blowout areas corresponds with the natural seams in the skill.

The lack of mention of such injuries to the nasal/eye area, as a part of the autopsy, leads me to believe that, in addition to whatever else happened, the part of the skull that was the site of the blowout had been dramatically weakened, presumably from the passage of the first (or only) bullet, to be less robust even than the nasal/eye socket area.

If the bullet, or a fragment thereof, had entered the skull and exited the skull at a glancing angle, those entry/exit points might have created a "seam" in the skull which weakened it.