This is important because Warrenatti have stated that a frontal shot must by necessity cross over to JFK’s left side of his skull. Assuming you accept the official autopsy results, which I ignore, the question is valid. The Warrenatti base their bold statement upon the following picture which they believe shows JFK’s head looking down and toward his left at a thirty degree angle.
In this picture it appears as if his head is directed down and to his left, but that is a deception, a product of projecting a 3-d image on a 2-d surface. We know it is a deception because of the Moorman photo. Here is the Moorman photo.
His chin is lateral to the vertex of his skull. If he was turned 30 degrees to his left we would not be able to see an almost full profile of his face which we can. We can see his ear, his nose. We do not see his chin because it is obscured by his wife’s hand.
What contributes to the illusion of JFK looking to down and moderately to his left is that he is listing to his left to about 30 degrees. This is tilting the sagittal axis of his head away from Zapruder. As a result the face is not caught in complete profile. Mrs. Kennedy’s hand covering his chin contributes to the illusion because your mind does not fill in JFK’s chin. Your mind sees his chin ending where her glove begins. A foreshortened chin tells your mind that JFK is turned toward his left.
Here is a diagram I drew of what I feel is going on. The angles of Zapruder, Moorman and Elm are pretty close. Mrs. Kennedy’s hand is acting as a fulcrum maintaining JFK’s chin as the most lateral portion of his head. Because JFK is listing to his left, her hand, as a more stationary object, is forcing his head into a clockwise motion as you stand looking over him.
The front assassin shot JFK with a glancing blow to the right parieto-temporal area causing a blowout in the right occiput, Essentially a flap lesion was created.
Shots Fired
In a nutshell, the shots fired in Dealey Plaza came from two teams of assassins, front and back. The front assassins were behind the picket fence; the rear assassins were in the Dal-Tex building. Each team of assassins had two shooters and one handler to pace the shooting. Each shooter had two bullets for a total of 8 bullets fired. One shooter from each team would fire subsonic rounds; the other would fire supersonic rounds. There were 8 shots fired and 4 shots heard. Most witnesses perceived the first shot as backfire or a firecracker. The kill zone was from Z180 to Z360 centered on the pergola. At 18.3 Zapruder frames per second, the kill zone was approximately 10 seconds, the time a lone gunman would need to get off 4 rounds. The lone gunman, Oswald, would set up the decoy nest, then leave the TSBD to Oak Cliff where he would be extracted. Two field people, known as Umbrella Man and the Accomplice, served as signalers to the assassin team handlers that the halfway point of the mission has been reached. It was essential that the bullets be paced – four before the halfway point and four after. The Accomplice was also known as The Cuban, but he was not Cuban; he was Israeli. His dress and Middle Eastern features indicates as much. The assassins chosen were Israeli because they were excellent, experienced and emotionally detached.
Composite of Shots
Front Shots
Rear Shots
Detail
What’s missing from other analyses of the shot sequence that I have seen is the time it takes the body to react to a bullet. The human body, other than the cornea, requires anywhere from 150 to 250 ms to respond to pain or touch. If we think a person is reacting at ZX, he has probably been struck at ZX – 3 or ZX – 5. Also missing is the logic of how JFK is supposed to move his arms if his brachial plexus and/or corresponding cervical cord level has been shattered.
Weapons Used
One can only speculate. I ignore the ballistics reports, the autopsy reports and x-rays. These pieces of evidence were under the exclusive control of the federal government who had a dog in the fight. I don’t trust pathological liars; I walk away from them. Maybe the evidence is valid; maybe it isn’t; I don’t know.
What I suspect is that subsonic weapons were used and that they were modeled after the DeLisle carbine, an extremely effective and quiet subsonic weapon. The rifles used by the front assassins were custom-made periscope rifles supported by a front strut for stability. This would, of course, enable the assassins to be invisible behind the stockade fence. This may be seem a little far-fetched until you accept that the mission was practiced to perfection. In other words, the mission would not have proceeded unless certainty of success was assured.
I’m not totally sold on the idea of periscope rifles, because I have never fired one. I suppose it is possible with enough practice to become proficient at anything. Even if periscope rifles were not chosen, it should be possible with the right camouflage to hide the assassins.
An important note: these weapons were customized by the best rifle makers; they weren’t purchased off the rack at Sears.
Why was this shot scenario chosen?
The shots the assassins fire have to conform with what you are selling to the public. You need four shots that are heard, but …
You don’t fire just four shots because doing so does not give you enough margin for error. What if a shooter has a bad day? What if it is windy? It was. 1/4 is a 25% failure rate. 1/8 is a 12.5% failure rate. I’ll take the latter.
Why do you have two teams front and back? You have to spread risk. There are variables you can’t control. You can’t predict which yahoo or citizen may mess up your mission. You need an in-line shot (rear) and you need a close-up shot (front). The rear assassin gives you an in-line shot but not necessarily a close shot. The front assassin gives you a close shot but not an in-line shot.
The Moorman Photo
Why don’t we see the assassins in the Moorman photo? Is the picture a victim of low quality film and amateur photography, or are the assassins not there at all? The picture was shot at precisely the time JFK was shot in the head from a shooter behind the knoll. So if you believe in a conspiracy and a shot from the front, that shooter should be there. Regardless of which Z frame you believe the Mooorman photo represents, anywhere from Z312 to Z315, no shooter can get the shot off and move away that quickly. So what is going on?
My opinion: I believe the shooter is there wearing a camouflage shawl, a hi-tech scrim, over the head and shoulders that is rendering the shooter almost invisible. Indeed, I believe there are two shooters there.
The man who planned the assassination (see Playwright) would have anguished over this part of the assassination more than any other part. He would have entertained innumerable ways of taking a front shot. Here are a few:
Place the shooters in the trees hidden by netting.
A fixed netting attached to the fence.
Periscope rifles with the assassins below the fence line.
Ultimately he chose to use a camouflage shawl because it was easy, portable, easily folded away, and more in-line with what snipers are accustomed to using. A fixed netting would require deconstruction after the shooting; a periscope rifle would be bulky. Placing a sniper in a tree, while seductive, is usually a bad idea.
Note
You will notice in the above scenario that shots 1, 5 and 7 are depicted twice. This is because I wanted to demonstrate the sequencing of the shots plus their approximate point of impact. Shot 5 may have gone through the limo windshield to strike the Main Street curb and then James Tague. Shot 8 at Z350 missed and either buried itself in the ground or the Presidential limo.
Shot Angulation
Another problem with the single bullet theory is the horizontal angulation. The vertical angulation, of course, is ridiculous in spite of Warrenatti attempts to stretch JFK’s neck to the length of a giraffe.
Let’s look at the horizontal angulation. The red dot is JFK’s neck. The diagonal edge of the green triangle is the bullet’s tracing. The apex of the green triangle is JFK’s adam’s apple. The black bar at the bottom is JFK’s back. You are looking down on JFK from a polar projection. I did this on a scale of 1/2.
Back bullet mark 1/2 inch off midline; 1/4 inches here
Average neck diameter is 6 inches; 3 inches here
This diagram is based upon the anatomical location of the Warren Commission’s entrance and exit wounds.
The angle is 5 degrees. This is consistent with the degree of angulation coming from the TSBD if you accept Warrenatti gospel of a sole TSBD shooter at Z313, but not earlier at Z230. I’m being generous, way too generous. The degree of angulation from the TSBD is 10 degrees at Z230. This would make it even more likely that a magic bullet traversing JFK would strike Governor Connolly in the left chest, not the right. And it doesn’t matter if the Governor is turned to his right like a cork screw.
Given a five degree trajectory, the bullet would then travel 0.25 inches medially leftward for every 3 inches forward. Assuming that the Governor was 2 feet in front of JFK, this would yield 2 inches of medial movement into the vehicle. Thus if the Governor was lined up with JFK you would think the bullet would enter the Governor on the left side of his chest, not the right. Yet the visual evidence does not suggest that the Governor was sitting slightly to JFK’s left.
Note: If JFK were twisted to the right, in order to get the bullet to not drift laterally from JFK’s right to left, the shot would have to come from directly behind JFK. Ah, but this can’t happen, right? Unless, of course, someone was in the Dal-Tex Building. Umm, never mind.
Fix the Bus 