The FBI's fib about the Mannlicher Carcano

[Jim DiEugenio]

A Mili Cranor classic about the accuracy of the alleged Oswald rifle:

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kenne...er-carcano

[Albert Doyle]

Trejo is too much. He ignores the strong evidence that all the evidence for Oswald's ownership of the Carcano was manufactured. Even the bizarre forging of the Money Order evidence on Friday night.



He scoffs at Ruth Paine being CIA and says she was a communist.

[Bob Prudhomme]

A Mili Cranor classic about the accuracy of the alleged Oswald rifle:

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kenne...er-carcano

I don't know who Ms. Cranor consulted with on the ballistics in this article but, she is way off with her calculation of the bullet being 14 inches high at 100 yards, if the rifle is shooting 2.5 to 4 inches high at 15 yards.

On most rifles fitted with a telescopic scope, 15-25 yards out from the muzzle is right about where the "crossover" point is. What this means is that your scope is situated higher than the barrel, and is looking right at your target. As the bullet must follow a parabolic curve from the muzzle to the target, and the barrel is lower than the scope, the bullet will actually cross the "line of sight" twice; once just out from the muzzle and again at the target.





In other words, if the rifle is sighted in to hit a target accurately at 100 yards, it should also be accurate at 15 yards (see above diagram).

By my calculations, if the bullets were impacting 2.5 to 4 inches high at 15 yards, the scope was wildly out of adjustment, and the bullets would have been impacting at least 32 inches high at 100 yards.

If the rifle was shooting that high at 100 yards, I seriously doubt there was enough adjustment in that toy scope to correct for this, and it is an indication the gunsmith that mounted the scope on this rifle drilled the holes in the wrong place.This is an easy mistake to make and, considering the price of this rifle, can be forgiven. On a scope mounted in the normal fashion, one would simply exchange one of the bases under the scope mounts for a taller base. However, C2766 had a very unique scope mount, and I would like someone to tell me how this mount could be shimmed for vertical adjustment, as I don't believe it can be done without drilling new holes in the receiver.

[Jim DiEugenio]

Bob:

So you are saying that the misalignment would have resulted in even more of a miss?

Like three feet?

[Bob Prudhomme]

Bob:

So you are saying that the misalignment would have resulted in even more of a miss?

Like three feet?

Absolutely. There are many online ballistics calculators and it is a simple matter of plugging in such information as bullet weight, muzzle velocity, ballistic coefficient, etc. In this case, which I worked out a few years ago, it was necessary to work things out in reverse and find a situation where the scope would be zeroed on a target at 15 yards and the bullet would be impacting 2.5 to 4 inches high at 15 yards.

In this case, the scope would be looking severely downwards in relation to the plane of the barrel (or the barrel would be tilted severely upwards in relation to the scope - all a matter of perspective). With the bullet impacting WAY high of the target, I don't believe this cheap pellet gun scope had enough adjustment to bring it down in order to be 2.5 to 5 inches high at 100 yards.

Which brings me to the next point. It was shown to me, on which forum I do not recall, that the set of tests at 15 and 25 yards were not conducted at the same date and locale as the 100 yard tests, and that adjustments were made to the scope between the 15-25 yard tests and the 100 yard tests. Ms. Cranor was quite right on one point, that being a rifle shooting 2.5 to 4 inches high could not be shooting 2.5 to 5 inches high at 100 yards. By my calculations, if it was that high at 15 yards, the bullet would be travelling on a very high parabola, and would not come back down to the line of sight for at least 600 yards.

The question is, with limited internal adjustment, how did they adjust the scope vertically so that instead of shooting 36 inches high at 100 yards, it was only shooting 2.5 inches high? Do you understand, after looking at the photo of the scope mount on C2766, why it was impossible to "shim" the front end of the scope mount, in order to raise the front of the scope, which was necessary to allow this rifle to shoot 2.5 inches high at 100 yards?

I'll give you the answer. This scope mount was not forgiving at all of mounting mistakes by a gunsmith. With the two mounting holes drilled horizontally into the side of the rifle's receiver, it would be possible to use shims under the mount, on front or back end, if you only wanted to make adjustments laterally to the line of sight (side to side). BUT, to adjust the scope mount vertically, it was necessary to re-drill at least one of the two mounting holes, in order to raise either end of the scope. Obviously, this was never done, or we would see a screw hole above the forward screw hole currently used to attach the front end of the scope mount. Unless no one has bothered to remove the scope mount in the last 53 years, and it is hiding another screw hole?

[Bob Prudhomme]

I should point out that this particular side mounted scope was a bastard child in more ways than one, and the gunsmith at Klein's should be given points for originality.

The purpose of mounting the scope offset to the left of the receiver was twofold. First, the six round en bloc clip had to be inserted vertically into the top of the magazine, and a scope mounted in the normal fashion would interfere with this. Second, the Mauser type bolt rotated 90° during cartridge extraction and, even with the turned down bolt handles on the short rifles, the bolt handle would run into a scope mounted in the normal fashion.

However, just offsetting the scope to the left was not enough.



As with other scopes, this 4x18 Ordnance Optics Inc. scope had caps on the windage and elevation adjustment screws. Viewed from the back end of C2766, these caps would be on the left and top sides of the scope tube; elevation on top and windage on the left. This is not how an Ordnance Optic or any other scope I know of is designed. Traditionally, the elevation knob is still on top but the windage knob is on the right and not on the left, as viewed from the rear. Obviously, when Klein's first attempted mounting this scope on a Carcano, they quickly would have discovered the windage knob was still interfering with the clip and the bolt handle. The solution was obvious; rotate the scope tube 90° in the rings, turning the elevation knob into the windage knob and vice versa.



Traditional scope with windage knob on right, as viewed from the rear.

What is very odd about the Ordnance Optics Inc. scope is that mounting it rotated 90° to the left places the printing on the scope tube in a position it is very easy to read. There is a slim possibility I am mistaken, and this scope, with a left sided windage knob, was unique among rifle scopes.

How Oswald ever managed to sight this rifle in is beyond me.

[Albert Doyle]

If I'm not mistaken the engineer at Klein's said he did not put scopes on the 40 inch Carcano...

[Bob Prudhomme]

If I'm not mistaken the engineer at Klein's said he did not put scopes on the 40 inch Carcano...

All Carcano rifles, whether they are carbines, short rifles or long rifles, have identical receivers on them; meaning that a bolt from a carbine can be inserted and used in a long or short rifle.

He may not have mounted a scope on a 40 inch short rifle but, after mounting scopes on the 36 inch carbines, he would certainly have had the knowledge to mount scopes on 40 inch rifles.

The main point here is that SOMEONE mounted a scope on C2766 and, in my opinion, did not do a very good job of it. As the FBI admitted, this rifle was shooting nearly 36 inches high at 100 yards when they first received it.

To explain this, and to make it appear the rifle was, pre-assassination, accurate enough to allow Oswald to assassinate JFK, the story was concocted that the scope must have been "bumped" at some point after the assassination, throwing the scope off and making it shoot high. This is, of course, utter nonsense. I have had rifle scopes thrown out of adjustment by rough handling but, it has never been by more than an inch or two.

Now, if the scope tube had actually been bent, there story might just have been believable. HOWEVER, they blew it and showed themselves as prevaricators when they claimed they were able to adjust this "bumped" scope to the point it was only shooting 2.5 to 5 inches high at 100 yards. That cheap pellet gun scope simply did not have enough of a range of adjustment to bring it down that much from shooting almost 36 inches high at 100 yards. It would have either been necessary to re-bend the scope tube (good luck) or shim the front end of the scope mount in order to raise the front of the scope mount. The last was, of course, impossible, and raising the front of the scope mount would have involved drilling and tapping for threads a new mounting hole in the rifle's receiver.

[Albert Doyle]

The mis-mounted scope is probably evidence of a rushed framing of Oswald with a CIA rifle.



Trejo is nuts.

[Bob Prudhomme]

"Frazier minimized the problem, claiming it wasn't really defective, that "only the adjusting mechanism does not have enough tolerance to bring the crosshair to the point of impact of the bullet," simple to fix by slipping a "shim" under the sight. But, the defect is apparently inherent with that brand, and was there before the hypothetical bump. When, for his experiments, John Lattimer bought four Carcanos "a favorite among European riflemen" and four telescopic sights identical to Oswald's, he found that all four needed shims, and hinted that Oswald had used one. No shim was ever found on or near Oswald's gun."

As I pointed out earlier. the two screws holding the scope mounted onto the receiver are threaded horizontally into the side of C2766's receiver. What i don't seem to be able to make anyone understand is this makes it possible to shim the scope mount for lateral (windage) adjustment but IMPOSSIBLE to shim the scope mount for vertical (elevation) adjustment. The only way to adjust the scope mount vertically is by drilling a new screw hole at one end or the other.

In the case of C2766, it would be necessary to drill a new hole, for the forward end of the scope mount, and to drill it slightly higher than the first hole. This would have the effect of bringing the scope up (or the barrel down - perspective again) and stop the rifle from shooting so high.[/FONT]