The Wounding of James Tague Refutes the Lone-Gunman Theory

[Brian Roselle]

On Carcano strike simulations for that of a head/skull, exit fragment velocities ranged from 800 - 1000 ft/sec.

Ken Rahn mentioned  800 - 1000 fps that fragments emerged with from the test skulls used in the Warren Commission's re-creations run at the U.S. Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland.

Lucien Haag did testing simulating shooting through a (head bone/brain simulant/head bone) setup representing a head shot resulting in larger fragments exiting at 1050 ft/sec.

800 - 1000 ft/sec  for a large fragment  would be enough exit velocity to overcome the drag effects from the headwind/air along with a poor fragment ballistic coefficient to reach the curb by Tague.

[Thomas Graves]

For Mr. Griffith to find a hypothesis to be “nonsensical”, it does not require the relevant experts, ballistic experts, to find it nonsensical. Only himself. Based on his own armchair reasoning, not supported by real-world tests.

Gerald Posner and Jim Moore opinions on the Tague wounding are over 25 years old. Worse, neither were ballistic experts. In the past 25 years, LNers opinion has swung over to accepting the high probability of the Tague wound being caused by a fragment from the head wound. While laymen may find this hypothesis unlikely, ballistic experts, like Larry Sturdivan, Luke Haag and Michael Haag, who do real world experiments with rifles, find this hypothesis to be quite possible and the most likely explanation. Since the 1990’s, the opinion of these experts has persuaded most LNers that this hypothesis is true.

Forcing Mr. Griffith to reach back over 25 years to find prominent LNers, who were not ballistic experts, to make it appear that LNers opinion on this is sharply divided. It isn’t.

Dear Joe,

A bullet fragment, or a bone fragment?

Regardless, how did it loop over the windshield (or penetrate it!) and manage to hit the curb with sufficient force to chip the concrete?

--  MWT 

[Michael T. Griffith]

Sorry, but the claim that bullet fragments from the head shot caused the dent in the chrome and the windshield damage, and that therefore another headshot fragment could have cleared the roll bar and the windshield to streak toward Tague, just doesn't work.

Dr. Tom Canning, the trajectory expert for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, told the committee that the windshield damage appeared to be too high to have been caused by a fragment from the headshot missile. So there's no way that a headshot fragment could have cleared the windshield to fly toward Tague.

If you accept the autopsy x-rays and photos and the Zapruder film as pristine and authentic, where in the world do you see an exit point in the skull that would even come close to allowing a fragment to fly at the necessary horizontal angle from the skull to fly toward Tague? Where? Where is it? And how can anyone posit such a theory given the position of JFK's head in the milliseconds during and just after the headshot? How?

And, for Pete's sake, if your headshot bullet came from the sixth-floor window, it entered the skull at a downward angle of about 20 degrees. So how would a fragment from that bullet exit the skull at an upward angle and with enough velocity to reach Tague with sufficient force to cut Tague or chip the curb? Again, as Dr. Canning noted, the windshield damage was too high to have been caused by a headshot fragment, and that damage was below the windshield chrome.

Three other points:

* Tague could not have been wounded by a fragment from the headshot because he had already ducked under the triple underpass before the headshot occurred. Dr. Thomas notes that photos taken in Dealey Plaza during the shooting confirm Tague's recollection that he took refuge under the triple underpass. Tague also recalled that he heard a shot after he got under the underpass. As Dr. Thomas notes, "Quite obviously, if he heard a shot after he ducked under the bridge, then he could not have been wounded by the last shot" (Hear No Evil, p. 378).

* As part of the research for his book Reasonable Doubt, Rockefeller Foundation scholar Henry Hurt contracted an engineering firm to study the curb mark, and the firm confirmed Harold Weisberg's earlier finding that the mark had been patched (Reasonable Doubt, pp. 136-138). (Weisberg had determined this by getting access to the high-quality color photographs that the FBI's Shaneyfelt took of the curb section in May 1964, and then by gaining access to the curb section itself.)

* The FBI destroyed the small spectrographic plate that contained a scraping from the curb mark in the face of repeated FOIA attempts by Harold Weisberg to have the plate tested by independent experts. The plate was subjected to spectrographic testing by FBI crime lab chemist John Gallagher in 1964, but the FBI withheld the lab report from the WC. Instead, Hoover sent a letter to the commission that--supposedly--summarized the lab findings.

Hoover said the smearing contained lead with a trace of antimony, which at the very least suggested the curb was struck by a bullet fragment. Weisberg sued to get a copy of the FBI lab report. When Weisberg finally received a copy of the lab report, he noticed it was suspiciously incomplete. So Weisberg then sued to be allowed to have the spectrographic plate analyzed by independent experts. After several Weisberg FOIA suits, the FBI announced that in "routine house-keeping" it had destroyed the plate.

Look, it's so simple: The obvious conclusion is that a fourth shot was responsible for Tague's wounding.

[John Mytton]

Look, it's so simple: The obvious conclusion is that a fourth shot was responsible for Tague's wounding.

95% of Dealey Plaza earwitnesses recalled hearing 3 or less shots.



JohnM

[Tim Nickerson]

Sorry, but the claim that bullet fragments from the head shot caused the dent in the chrome and the windshield damage, and that therefore another headshot fragment could have cleared the roll bar and the windshield to streak toward Tague, just doesn't work.

Dr. Tom Canning, the trajectory expert for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, told the committee that the windshield damage appeared to be too high to have been caused by a fragment from the headshot missile. So there's no way that a headshot fragment could have cleared the windshield to fly toward Tague.

If you accept the autopsy x-rays and photos and the Zapruder film as pristine and authentic, where in the world do you see an exit point in the skull that would even come close to allowing a fragment to fly at the necessary horizontal angle from the skull to fly toward Tague? Where? Where is it? And how can anyone posit such a theory given the position of JFK's head in the milliseconds during and just after the headshot? How?

If Canning did indeed say that, then , like you, he was working under the false assumption that the bullet would have traveled in a straight ine trajectory through the head.

[Brian Roselle]

I’ll let others argue if the chrome dent was really there or not from Love field to Dealey Plaza, but I’ve never seen any signs of it on all the photos I have reviewed along the motorcade route.

If the chrome dent was from a fragment that struck it, then a large missing fragment that was never recovered would only need to have been a couple of inches higher than that to exit the limo.

As to the possibility of bone deflecting bullet fragments upwards, this is from Haag’s testing I mentioned earlier, figure 8 from his report shows the results of the Carcano testing with the witness panel catching the fragments at 3 feet.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kaW8iIpsRZ3azKTMsrnCVrK0yCupP7KX/view?usp=sharing
Figure 8: Witness panel displaying fragment impacts from bullets fired through bone
"Figure 8 shows the witness panel following these shots. It is interesting to note that the majority of the bullet fragments were dispersed upward relative to these bullets’ pre-impact flight paths. This strongly suggests that this upward deflection was initiated very early during these bullets’ interaction with the first layer of bone. The importance of this will become apparent later in this article during an inventory of the bullet fragments recovered from the presidential limousine."

I apologize that the pictures I attach are not showing but rather appear linked. I put the jpg location from google drive in the Insert Image operator but it come up as a link. 

[John Mytton]

If Canning did indeed say that, then , like you, he was working under the false assumption that the bullet would have traveled in a straight ine trajectory through the head.

 



JohnM

[Thomas Graves]

Sorry, but the claim that bullet fragments from the head shot caused the dent in the chrome and the windshield damage, and that therefore another headshot fragment could have cleared the roll bar and the windshield to streak toward Tague, just doesn't work.

Dr. Tom Canning, the trajectory expert for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, told the committee that the windshield damage appeared to be too high to have been caused by a fragment from the headshot missile. So there's no way that a headshot fragment could have cleared the windshield to fly toward Tague.

If you accept the autopsy x-rays and photos and the Zapruder film as pristine and authentic, where in the world do you see an exit point in the skull that would even come close to allowing a fragment to fly at the necessary horizontal angle from the skull to fly toward Tague? Where? Where is it? And how can anyone posit such a theory given the position of JFK's head in the milliseconds during and just after the headshot? How?

And, for Pete's sake, if your headshot bullet came from the sixth-floor window, it entered the skull at a downward angle of about 20 degrees. So how would a fragment from that bullet exit the skull at an upward angle and with enough velocity to reach Tague with sufficient force to cut Tague or chip the curb? Again, as Dr. Canning noted, the windshield damage was too high to have been caused by a headshot fragment, and that damage was below the windshield chrome.

Three other points:

* Tague could not have been wounded by a fragment from the headshot because he had already ducked under the triple underpass before the headshot occurred. Dr. Thomas notes that photos taken in Dealey Plaza during the shooting confirm Tague's recollection that he took refuge under the triple underpass. Tague also recalled that he heard a shot after he got under the underpass. As Dr. Thomas notes, "Quite obviously, if he heard a shot after he ducked under the bridge, then he could not have been wounded by the last shot" (Hear No Evil, p. 378).

* As part of the research for his book Reasonable Doubt, Rockefeller Foundation scholar Henry Hurt contracted an engineering firm to study the curb mark, and the firm confirmed Harold Weisberg's earlier finding that the mark had been patched (Reasonable Doubt, pp. 136-138). (Weisberg had determined this by getting access to the high-quality color photographs that the FBI's Shaneyfelt took of the curb section in May 1964, and then by gaining access to the curb section itself.)

* The FBI destroyed the small spectrographic plate that contained a scraping from the curb mark in the face of repeated FOIA attempts by Harold Weisberg to have the plate tested by independent experts. The plate was subjected to spectrographic testing by FBI crime lab chemist John Gallagher in 1964, but the FBI withheld the lab report from the WC. Instead, Hoover sent a letter to the commission that--supposedly--summarized the lab findings.

Hoover said the smearing contained lead with a trace of antimony, which at the very least suggested the curb was struck by a bullet fragment. Weisberg sued to get a copy of the FBI lab report. When Weisberg finally received a copy of the lab report, he noticed it was suspiciously incomplete. So Weisberg then sued to be allowed to have the spectrographic plate analyzed by independent experts. After several Weisberg FOIA suits, the FBI announced that in "routine house-keeping" it had destroyed the plate.

Look, it's so simple: The obvious conclusion is that a fourth shot was responsible for Tague's wounding.

LOL

That's why Max Holland's theory makes the most sense, guys: The sniper in the sixth floor window took a shot at JFK when the limo had just come out of the Elm Street turn and was about even with the clustered black-and-white highway signs on the "island," as reported by Amos Euins and as intimated by Patricia Ann Donaldson-Lawrence in the National Geographic special "The Lost Bullet".

The bullet lost its copper jacket when it struck, at a shallow angle, the mast arm of the traffic light over the limo (from the sniper's POV) and ended up striking a curb about 20 feet from James Tague, who was standing down by The Triple Underpass, leaving a lead and antimony (but copper-less) smear on the curb.

D'oh

--  MWT