Scenarios On How JFK Survived Dallas?

A child is sitting on the curb with his parents to see the president. As the motercade approaches he drops his ball, and before anyone can stop him runs into the street after it. The driver sees him and brakes and swerves causing Oswald to miss his shots. In the confusion he does not get another chance.
 
Carlos Hathcock disagrees with you about the easiness of the shot. He was an expert marksman.

"Let me tell you what we did at Quantico. We reconstructed the whole thing: the angle, the range, the moving target, the time limit, the obstacles, everything. I don't know how many times we tried it, but we couldn't duplicate what the Warren Commission said Oswald did". (KILL ZONE, pp. 89-90).

http://www.leatherneck.com/forums/showthread.php?50970-Kennedy-assassination-Gunny-Hathcock-s-take

This is probably a debate for experts greater than myself, but I've done enough shooting to believe my own eyes and trust my own judgment as to what is an achievable shot. And if you don't believe me, other, more expert, analysts have stated that it was not a particularly challenging shot while others have been able to replicate the conditions in Dallas and found that the assassination was indeed possible with the Carcano at the angles and ranges set forth in the Warren Commission findings. Perhaps I was wrong to characterize the shot as "easy" for that is a subjective term without clear meaning. There is little debate, however, that the shot was "possible", notwithstanding the piece you cited.
 

hipper

Banned
This is probably a debate for experts greater than myself, but I've done enough shooting to believe my own eyes and trust my own judgment as to what is an achievable shot. And if you don't believe me, other, more expert, analysts have stated that it was not a particularly challenging shot while others have been able to replicate the conditions in Dallas and found that the assassination was indeed possible with the Carcano at the angles and ranges set forth in the Warren Commission findings. Perhaps I was wrong to characterize the shot as "easy" for that is a subjective term without clear meaning. There is little debate, however, that the shot was "possible", notwithstanding the piece you cited.


hmm I thought Kill zone was gunny Hathcocks book, I see now it quotes him and endorses alternative theories to the warren commissions account of Delaney plaza, my apologies.

I believe the main difficulty is firing three shots in under 6 seconds and hitting with the last two, rather than hitting something at 90 yards.

Cheers Hipper
 
hmm I thought Kill zone was gunny Hathcocks book, I see now it quotes him and endorses alternative theories to the warren commissions account of Delaney plaza, my apologies.

I believe the main difficulty is firing three shots in under 6 seconds and hitting with the last two, rather than hitting something at 90 yards.

Cheers Hipper

On the timing, remember that it runs like this:

Bolt action to load first round
Clock now at zero
First shot
Bolt Action
Second shot
Bolt action
Third shot
Stop clock

Working the bolt twice in six seconds is very doable, but people often think it involves working the bolt three times in six seconds, which it does not.

All I can say is that a trip to Dallas really clarifies your thinking on the assassination. You can read about it all you want, but seeing it with your own eyes and taking it in personally is worth reading 20 volumes on the topic. There will always be questions on the assassination, but my own view on the subject is that while we will never know beyond all doubt that Oswald did it, the evidence is overwhelmingly on the side of proving that he could have done it with the tools he had to work with. And if you apply Occam's Razor to that -- the simplest explanation is usually the right one -- you come to the conclusion that Oswald was the assassin.
 
The smallest details can cause a profound change in some situations. Prior to the assassination, the Lincoln convertible did not have certain features. One in particular was solid aluminum rims fitted inside the tires which made them flat proof. So something as small as a nail to a tire prior to the assassination could change the time table a bit. The 1961 Lincoln was a well-built car but things can happen...
 

hipper

Banned
On the timing, remember that it runs like this:

Bolt action to load first round
Clock now at zero
First shot
Bolt Action
Second shot
Bolt action
Third shot
Stop clock

Working the bolt twice in six seconds is very doable, but people often think it involves working the bolt three times in six seconds, which it does not.

All I can say is that a trip to Dallas really clarifies your thinking on the assassination. You can read about it all you want, but seeing it with your own eyes and taking it in personally is worth reading 20 volumes on the topic. There will always be questions on the assassination, but my own view on the subject is that while we will never know beyond all doubt that Oswald did it, the evidence is overwhelmingly on the side of proving that he could have done it with the tools he had to work with. And if you apply Occam's Razor to that -- the simplest explanation is usually the right one -- you come to the conclusion that Oswald was the assassin.


Coming to the opposite conclusion leads to unpleasant thoughts about American politics, which are ultimately unprovable.

But I suspect that it was the time to aim effectively on a moving target after working the bolt that gave Gunny Hathcock the trouble.

Hipper.
 
Coming to the opposite conclusion leads to unpleasant thoughts about American politics, which are ultimately unprovable.

But I suspect that it was the time to aim effectively on a moving target after working the bolt that gave Gunny Hathcock the trouble.

Hipper.

The 1960s and 1970s subsequently gave us plenty of unpleasant conclusions about American politics. From Vietnam to Watergate to COINTELPRO to the work of the Church Committee, a lot of rocks were uprooted that revealed rather nasty things crawling underneath. There were plots to do false flag operations (Operation Northwoods) and plots to kill Castro. Hell, we nearly blew up the world a year before JFK was killed on the basis of poor military advice and bad intelligence that missed the fact that the Soviets had tactical nukes to greet an invasion and submarines with nuclear torpedoes. Bob McNamara and his crew at Defense, the "best and brightest" of their generation, completely misread Southeast Asia and led us into a disastrous war in Vietnam. The government that led us out of the Depression and to victory in two world wars was shown to be imperfect, capable of great error and also capable of doing bad things. It was a disillusioning time and the assassination played into that; the vaunted Secret Service, the best of the best, couldn't keep a President alive on a simple motorcade through an American city.

But in the end, in the middle of the tumultuous events of the 1960s, people still have trouble grasping the idea that a very pathetic 24 year old nobody armed with a $12 rifle could change the world. It was an event of almost complete randomness: Oswald's job at the Depository, the route of the motorcade, the timing of everything giving Oswald the opportunity to be alone at that sixth floor window during lunch. People find that more disturbing than the idea that the CIA, the Mafia, LBJ, the FBI, or any other people or organizations planned and carried out an assassination. Senselessness and randomness is always more distressing than slick plots and conspiracies, for with the latter there is the hope of controlling dark forces. With the former, people are frightened by random events which lie beyond the realm of human control.
 
Someone disturbs him before he can lay a shot?
All that would be needed to disturb him is a bug flying into his field of vision / tickling his ear. Indeed, a stray breeze stirring up just enough dust to make him sneeze or cough would do it.
 
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