JFK's Head Was Hit with Frangible Ammo, not FMJ Ammo

[Joe Elliott]

This is embarrassingly, comically wrong. "It occurs to me" that you obviously don't do any hunting or shooting and don't know much about ammo. WCC/MC FMJ bullets do not magically behave differently than do other FMJ bullets. Furthermore, WCC/MC FMJ bullets are copper-jacketed, as are most other FMJ bullets. For decades, the vast majority of FMJ bullets were copper-jacketed. Even today, most FMJ bullets are copper-jacketed. If you doubt this, just go to any major website that sells ammo, such as the Ammo.com website:

It occurred to you? I have stated on several occasions that I am not a ballistic expert, do not shoot rifles, do not go hunting. But I do read the material of genuine ballistic experts.

"The term full metal jacket means the lead bullet is encased in a separate harder metal – this is typically copper, but can sometimes be other materials and even hybrid composites." (https://ammo.com/bullet-type/full-metal-jacket-fmj)

Yes. But most (I believe) full metal jacket bullets have a minimum deformation velocity that is greater than the muzzle velocity of the rifles that fired them. So, these bullets will not be fragmented by human bone. Agreed? While a full metal jacket bullet that has a minimum deformation velocity significantly less than the muzzle velocity of the rifle that fire them can deform and be fragmented. So, our discussions should be limited to WCC/MC bullets that does have a higher muzzle velocity then it’s minimum deformation velocity where such deformation is possible.

And, uh, have you forgotten that you claim that CE 399, a WCC/MC FMJ bullet, penetrated seven layers of skin, smashed 4 inches of rib bone, and shattered a radius bone, and yet supposedly emerged with its lands and grooves intact and with less than 3-4 grains of its substance missing? Did that slip your mind?

No, but it didn’t strike human bone at 1900 feet per second, like the bullet that strike President Kennedy’s did. It was slowed by President Kennedy’s neck before it struck the rib.

You can't have it both ways: You can't argue that it would not have been unusual for an FMJ bullet to have done all the SBT damage and still have emerged virtually pristine, and then turn around and say that it would not have been unusual for an FMJ bullet to have (1) left over 40 fragments inside JFK's head, (2) impossibly left two fragments on the outer table of the skull--one in it and one just underneath it, and (3) ejected its nose and tail from the skull and deposited them in the limo. You need to pick which of those two myths you're going to defend.

Oh yes, I can have it both ways. There is a big difference in the effect of a WCC/MC hitting bone at 1900 feet per second, like the bullet that struck President Kennedy’s skull and a WCC/MC first hitting bone at 1400 feet per second, like the bullet that struck Governor Connally’s rib. If you had read the work of a real ballistic expert, like Larry Sturdivan, you would know this. The same type of bullet can behave very differently depending on the details of what exactly happened.

Oh, and did you forget that not one of the WCC/MC FMJ bullets fired into skulls in Olivier's ballistics tests for the WC fragmented into dozens of fragments inside and/or outside the skull, much less magically deposited two fragments on the outer table of the skull on the wrong side of the entry site? Not a single one of them did this. Did that slip your mind too?

But none of those were living human heads. Or even recently living human heads. Or living animal heads. Or recently living animal heads. How long had the owner of these skulls died? How much had these skulls dried out? How much less dense than living skulls had they become?

Even so, at least one human skull did fragment a WCC/MC bullet. The one through Skull # 8170. Despite the fact it was not a living head.

Finally, you still have not read my article "Forensic Science and President Kennedy's Head Wounds," have you?

No. I have read articles and an entire book by a genuine ballistic experts on the President Kennedy assassination. But I haven’t found the time yet to read an article on President Kennedy’s Head Wounds written by a non-ballistic expert such as yourself. Right now, I am reading Steven Pinker’s “The Better Angles of our Nature”. I fear it will be some time before I can wade through the work of superior writers before I can start to delve into the works of writers of your level.

How about this for a deal. Why don’t you read a book by a genuine ballistic expert, Larry Sturdivan? The JFK Myths. He is a genuine ballistic expert. He is talking about the properties of WCC/MC bullets, not other bullets. If you read this one book by a genuine expert, I will read your one article, even though it is written by a non-ballistic expert, who has never been trusted by a court of law or any investigative group to give testimony as a ballistic expert.

[Michael T. Griffith]

Joe, you are not answering the question I asked and that was what size are the WCC/MC fragments compared to the frags left by the frangible round?

That is the crux of the issue and one of the fatal flaws of the lone-gunman theory. In Olivier's ballistics tests for the WC, the 10 WCC/MC bullets fired into skulls simply did not behave anything like the lone-gunman theory's head-shot bullet. The record shows that the 10 bullets produced 29-31 fragments. CE 859 shows the fragments from the tests. The fragments in CE 857 were all included in CE 859, according to Olivier. If there were more fragments, Olivier did not say so, and there is no record of any other fragments from his tests.

Suspiciously, Olivier did not specify how many bullets did not fragment or if all of them fragmented. However, we know that not one of those bullets shattered into dozens of pieces, leaving 40-plus fragments inside the skull, depositing two fragments on the outer table of the skull, and ejecting its nose and tail from the skull.

The importance of the two outer-table fragments cannot be overstated. Those two fragments alone refute the lone-gunman theory. If they came from the WC's head-shot bullet, they must have been scraped off the bullet as it entered the skull, which is unheard of behavior for FMJ bullets, and then they somehow ended up 1 cm below the entrance wound! Even more fantastically, if these fragments were the WC's head-shot bullet, they must have come from the mid-section of the bullet, which is a ballistic impossibility, as even Sturdivan admitted.

As many other researchers have noted, Olivier just bald-facedly lied when he told the WC that his tests showed that an FMJ bullet could have caused all of JFK's head wounds. His tests showed no such thing. But, that's a subject for another discussion.

[Michael Carney]

What do you mean by: For many, but not all types of FMJ, this will never happen in the real world, because these velocities are greater than the muzzle velocity of the rifle that fires them.

If you are insinuating that the round is moving faster than the muzzle velocity from the gun which it was fired from that is wrong. The maximum velocity reached is when it leaves the muzzle then it gets slowed down by air resistance.

[Michael Carney]

Joe,

“Hence, some differences between the bullet that went through Skull # 8170 and President Kennedy. The bullet that went through President Kennedy’s head broke up into 3 fragments. The Skull # 8170 bullet remained in one extremely mangled fragment that did not quite separate into multiple fragments, but came close to doing so, as one can see from Figure 20 on Page 122 from Larry Sturdivan’s book “The JFK Myths”. Also, while a string of tiny fragments was left in President Kennedy’s head, there was no string of tiny fragments left within Skull # 8170, suspended in air. Nor should we expect to see such.”

And were two of these fragments deposited on the outside back of his head? And where was the third frag found?

A string of tiny fragments found in JFK’s head and not in skull #8170. This is because #8170 was shot with a FMJ  round and JFK was shot with a frangible round.

[Michael T. Griffith]

Joe,

“Hence, some differences between the bullet that went through Skull # 8170 and President Kennedy. The bullet that went through President Kennedy’s head broke up into 3 fragments. The Skull # 8170 bullet remained in one extremely mangled fragment that did not quite separate into multiple fragments, but came close to doing so, as one can see from Figure 20 on Page 122 from Larry Sturdivan’s book “The JFK Myths”. Also, while a string of tiny fragments was left in President Kennedy’s head, there was no string of tiny fragments left within Skull # 8170, suspended in air. Nor should we expect to see such.”

Sturdivan goofed horrendously on this point. He was simply unaware of the cloud of fragments in the frontal part of the head on the x-rays. In Sturdivan's defense, he was never shown the original lateral x-rays but only the HSCA FPP's doctored "enhanced" version of them. I have pointed this out to Elliott at least once. Dr. Michael Kurtz:

Sturvidan also stated that Kennedy was not struck in the front of the head by an exploding bullet fired from the grassy knoll. The reason, Sturdivan declared, was that the computer-enhanced x-rays of Kennedy's skull do not depict "a cloud of metallic fragments very near the entrance wound." In cases where exploding bullets impact, he asserted that "you would definitely have seen" such a cloud of fragments in the x-ray. Sturdivan's remarks betrayed both his own ignorance of the medical evidence and the committee's careful manipulation of that evidence. Sturdivan saw only the computer-enhanced x-ray of the skull, not the original, unretouched x-rays. Had he seen the originals, he would have observed a cloud of metallic fragments clustered in the right front portion of the head. Furthermore, the close-up photograph of the margins of the large wound in the head shows numerous small fragments. The Forensic Pathology Panel itself noted the presence of "missile dust" near the wound in the front of the head. One of the expert radiologists who examined the x-rays noticed "a linear alignment of tiny metallic fragments" located in the "posterior aspect of the right frontal bone." The chief autopsy pathologist, Dr. James J. Humes, remarked about the numerous metallic fragments like grains of sand scattered near the front head wound. The medical evidence, then, definitely proves the existence of a cloud of fragments in the right front portion of Kennedy's head, convincing evidence, according to Sturdivan, that an exploding bullet actually did strike the president there. (Michael Kurtz, Crime of the Century, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, pp. 177-178)

I forgot to mention two other ballistics tests. In tests conducted by forensic pathologist Dr. John Nichols, FMJ bullets emerged in virtually perfect condition after penetrating several feet of tough Ponderosa pine wood. Dr. John Lattimer fired Carcano bullets through test skulls. X-rays of these test skulls revealed no bullet fragments, not even near the wound of entry in the rear top of the head (Kurtz, Crime of the Century, p. 98).

[Joe Elliott]

Sturdivan goofed horrendously on this point. He was simply unaware of the cloud of fragments in the frontal part of the head on the x-rays. In Sturdivan's defense, he was never shown the original lateral x-rays but only the HSCA FPP's doctored "enhanced" version of them. I have pointed this out to Elliott at least once. Dr. Michael Kurtz:

Larry Sturdivan is well aware of this case. I have never heard a true ballistic expert, agree with your point. Have you? If so, can you name them and provide a link?

I forgot to mention two other ballistics tests. In tests conducted by forensic pathologist Dr. John Nichols, FMJ bullets emerged in virtually perfect condition after penetrating several feet of tough Ponderosa pine wood.

Stop the presses. Yes, this is well known. If you had read a Larry Sturdivan’s book, “The JFK Myths”, you would know what property of a material is most important in what damage it will do to a bullet. And that property is density. It’s not hardness, it’s density. So soft tissue, which has the same density as water, will not deform a WCC/MC bullet, even if hit at muzzle velocity. But bone, which generally has a density of twice that of water, will.

What is the density of Ponderosa pine wood? Slightly less than that of water. So, even through wood is hard, it won’t damage a WCC/MC bullet anymore than soft tissue will. So naturally it will come out undeformed after going through, as I recall, 47 inches of soft wood.

Dr. John Lattimer fired Carcano bullets through test skulls. X-rays of these test skulls revealed no bullet fragments, not even near the wound of entry in the rear top of the head (Kurtz, Crime of the Century, p. 98).

What ballistic expert says that there are lead fragments near the wound of entry (the back of the head) of JFK’s X-Rays? Do you consider the wound of entry near the front?

And again, this brings up the question as to how old were the test skulls? How much had they dried up? Was the density of the bone still twice the density of water, as it is with living bone?

Now, on the question of why we don’t small lead fragments within the test skull X-Rays, like we do with JFK’s head X-Rays. You do realize that these test skulls were bare skulls, don’t you? How can I explain this to you? The test skulls were similar to your own head. There was nothing between the ears. There was no organic material, like the brain, that the badly deformed bullet would travel through, which strips off small fragments as the bullet with its exposed lead core moves through the brain. And even if, somehow, such fragments were created, they would not remain suspended in space within an empty skull. So, we should not expect to see any X-Ray of a test skull to look identical to an X-Ray of JFK’s skull, with both showing a trail of fragments along the bullet’s path.

We know that with the test result of Skull # 8170, a bullet will get very badly mangled upon striking a skull, even of just a bare skull which has, no doubt, undergone some drying after death. So, if some skulls have dried out enough so that they no longer can mangle a WCC/MC bullet, that doesn’t matter. All that counts is what the skull of a still living man will do to such a bullet.

[Michael Carney]

Let’s take inventory here; supposedly there were 3 large fragments found, two on the back of the head, not in the head. Where was the third frag found? Also we have a spray of tiny frags on the interior of the skull. The large frags would be from a FMJ round and the spray of tiny frags would be from a frangible round. This indicates he was hit with two different bullets. Before I go any further with this I want the three large fragments location, where they were found. So if we can all agree where the large fragments were found…….. I know of 2 large fragments found on the back of JFK’s head, I don’t know where the third one was found.