The First Shot

[Zeon Mason]

A guess implies the absence of a memory. But people recalling a distinct tempo of the shots were not guessing. Here is Harold Norman relating the tempo of the shots (at the 0:24 sec mark)

His recreation is 5 seconds. If it had been 10 seconds, it would be noticeably slower. You don’t think Norman would have known the difference?

Norman also recalled that when he heard the 1st shot it was when JFKs right hand was up to his head
As though he was brushing his Hair. That’s remarkably coincidental with JFK at the Z190 frame.

The reason I have not dismissed a Z190 1st shot is because it seems about how long it would take for the shooter to have leaned over , position the rifle on the boxes, adjust rifle to align his scope reticle and start adjusting as for the moving JFK. If the shooter had arranged those boxes to use as a rifle rest , then he most likely had envisioned the 1st  vertical angle that he would  attempt  the 1st shot just as he envisioned the horizontal plane angle by how he positioned the boxes at the angle they were relative to the window ledge.

The Z190 1st shot fits well enough with the 1….2..3 pattern and it’s closer  to Norman’s 5 sec sequence.

As far as the tree foliage , it could be that the shooter was able to have positioned his rifle as early  as Z140-Z170 but he took longer than he had anticipated for tracking JFK in using the scope sight picture.  Because of that more narrowly focused area , the shooters peripheral vision was lessened such that perhaps  tree foliage appeared in his sight picture suddenly just AS he squeezed the trigger.

There is still the Tague problem however. It doesn’t seem to be plausible that a  Z313 fragment could fly over the windshield and drop down if it had enough velocity to haves chipped the curb. Maybe a lead fragment traveling at 200 ft/ sec  can chip off  a small particle of concrete from the curb?   IDK.

[John Corbett]

A guess implies the absence of a memory. But people recalling a distinct tempo of the shots were not guessing.

  Everybody was guessing. Some just guessed better than others.

[Andrew Mason]

The Z190 1st shot fits well enough with the 1….2..3 pattern and it’s closer  to Norman’s 5 sec sequence.

There is still the Tague problem however. It doesn’t seem to be plausible that a  Z313 fragment could fly over the windshield and drop down if it had enough velocity to haves chipped the curb. Maybe a lead fragment traveling at 200 ft/ sec  can chip off  a small particle of concrete from the curb?   IDK.

With the first shot at z190 as CE399 striking JFK, a 1……2…3 shot pattern and the third striking JFK at z313, why would the third shot the only possible source of the Tague fragment? 

[John Corbett]

There is still the Tague problem however. It doesn’t seem to be plausible that a  Z313 fragment could fly over the windshield and drop down if it had enough velocity to haves chipped the curb. Maybe a lead fragment traveling at 200 ft/ sec  can chip off  a small particle of concrete from the curb?   IDK.

i agree it doesn't seem likely that a fragment from the head shot could have caused the concrete to chip, but without knowing the exit velocity of the fragments from the headshot and minimum velocity needed to chip the concrete, it's just a guess. I lean toward a ricochet from the first shot miss continuing down range and striking the curb.

[Tom Graves]

i agree it doesn't seem likely that a fragment from the head shot could have caused the concrete to chip, but without knowing the exit velocity of the fragments from the headshot and minimum velocity needed to chip the concrete, it's just a guess. I lean toward a ricochet from the first shot miss continuing down range and striking the curb.

"Herb Huskr" posted this on 22 August 2024 at the JFK Truth Be Told FB page:


There is some active discussion on another forum where I’m not a member about James Tague being hit, a curb mark, and what happened there. This post is about some modeling and simulation results made awhile back evaluating a possibility to explain that Tague incident.

I’ve not routinely discussed these details before because there is a back story that suggests that the modeling indicated how wrong I may have been with my initial gut feeling, and who wants to embarrass themselves by admitting they may have been misled by an erroneous gut-feeling bias?

The modeling was done a few of years back to try and prove this initial assumption:

A missing fragment from the z313 head shot could not have made it to Tague and created a shallow curb divot sending mortar/sand shards up and out, with some striking Tague in the cheek while he was standing nearby.

The envisioned scenario (initial gut feeling scenario) looked something like the following:

A disfigured lead, or lead with residual copper, bullet fragment flying forward escaped the limo from the third shot, at maybe 400 ft/sec, continued on to strike the curb with a compressive strike from a mostly horizontal trajectory, hitting at a reduced velocity around 200 ft/sec or so. This possibility was expected to be proven untenable and therefore likely wouldn’t happen.

Results:

Embarrassingly enough, the modeling predicted I would be wrong on every single account!

A fragment could have made it to Tague

The initial exit velocity would be more than twice the 400 ft/sec I was thinking

The final velocity would be even less than half the 200 ft/sec I was thinking

The angle at striking would be opposite, nearly vertical, instead of more horizontal like I thought

The curb strike likely presented a shearing force rather than the head-on compression force I expected

Talk about being wrong!

A crude curb-strike simulation was subsequently conducted to look at this because the predictions seemed so unusual.

Overall, the modeling and simulation indicated the scenario looked to be a real possibility, with a limo-exiting fragment able to reach the curb by Tague and cause a spray of surface mortar that could hit him.

It is still possible the model is not accurate enough, or the fresh mark was not related to a bullet at all, but the modeling came up with numbers that were largely predictive of observations that others subsequently measured on such fragments, like what Lucian Haag found for fragment exit velocities in his simulated skull test shots experiments, and Carcano fragment ballistic coefficients.

Two options for base case trajectories for the incident are depicted on the attached graphs. [I couldn't copy-paste them here. -- T.G.]

Based on the modeling and simulation, I now favor that a rogue fragment from the head shot caused the Tague incident.

I will try to make a link to a summary with more details for those interested in ballistics, etc.

edit: the study details can be found here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CcnCy17Hwqqw3zBCK7ls8peA3DxmVzhk/view?fbclid=IwY2xjawUJ9RtwZG9mAWV4dG4DYWVtAjEwAGJyaWQRMU9pYldIMmFVN1lEcWFHcVBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeAGcK-_z2CwDFyqPwaxNjySIe4271E_ylArwt4h0qfEuhMoRgvrWhDkoyXt4_aem_vfS9yrI0_vZnHC-27-PyIw