Yes, it's too bad Landis didn't reveal his bombshell at the time. I will grant that the autopsy doctors' inability to trace the path of the bullet that caused the back wound is puzzling. I will grant Cliff Varnell's point that the alignment of the holes in the clothing with the throat wound is problematical (yes, I know all about the "bunching" argument regarding the clothes). Add in the condition of CE 399 for all the damage it is supposed to have done, together with Connally's insistence he was hit by a different shot, and the SBT is somewhat (or considerably more than somewhat) difficult to swallow. On the other hand, it's quite difficult to accept the back wound being a Carcano dud that found its target 80+ yards away and penetrated two layers of clothing and an inch or two of skin. In my past experience with reloading, in which I managed to create a fair number of duds, that isn't realistic dud performance.
We're not talking about the autopsy doctors' "inability" to "trace the path" of the back wound bullet. They never tried to trace the wound's path. The only way to trace a wound's path is to dissect the wound, an Autopsy 101 procedure, but the autopsy doctors, incredibly, did not dissect the back wound or the throat wound (they falsely claimed they didn't know about the throat wound until after the autopsy, but the ARRB disclosures destroy that lie).
Connally did not insist he was hit by a different shot than JFK. He allowed that he may have been hit by the same shot that hit JFK, although he clearly doubted this was the case. What he insisted on was that he was not hit before Z229. This was the key part of his adamant position that he was not hit by the first shot. He studied high-quality prints of the Zapruder frames under high magnification for hours and concluded there was "no doubt about it" that he was not hit before Z229. After this, Connally remained adamant that he was not hit by the first shot.
A misfire bullet is a plausible explanation for the back wound's shallow depth and lack of an exit point. A misfired rifle bullet can have a velocity of 800 to 1,000 FPS, which could certainly enable the bullet to penetrate two layers of clothing and penetrate an inch or two of soft tissue. That is entirely possible.
No bullet in the known history of forensic science has done the damage attributed to CE 399 and emerged with only 3-4 grains of its substance missing and with its lands and grooves intact. Even Lattimer's rigged SBT reconstruction did not produce such virtually pristine bullets. The far more realistic AAT SBT simulation produced a severely damaged FMJ bullet.
I tend to think the SBT, with all its problems, is the most likely solution. There are so many variables as to EXACTLY how the rifle was positioned, EXACTLY what the particular cartridge was like, EXACTLY how the car was positioned and moving, EXACTLY how JFK's clothing was positioned (including the possible effect of his back brace), EXACTLY how JFK and Connally were positioned, and EXACTLY what the bullet did upon impact, transit and second and third impacts, for me to place much stock in forensic reconstructions supposedly showing the SBT is impossible. I do like to play around with alternative scenarios and am not convinced the SBT is absolutely essential to the LN narrative.
The SBT is not only the least likely solution but is impossible. The recent Knott Lab SBT trajectory analysis, the most sophisticated analysis ever done on the SBT, proves the theory is impossible.
The fact that the tie knot had no hole in it proves the SBT is impossible. The fact that the shirt slits were made by the nurses not only obviously refutes the SBT but it explains why the slits were below the collar band, why the FBI found no metallic traces around the slits, why there was no fabric missing from the slits: because no bullet exited the throat. This also explains why the throat wound was so small (3-5 mm), punched-in, and neat, and why the damage beneath/behind the throat wound was larger than the throat wound itself--all classic, textbook indications of an entry wound.
The ARRB medical evidence disclosures are historic, partly because they show that on the night of the autopsy, the autopsy doctors established beyond any doubt that the back wound had no exit point. Rigor mortis will not prevent probing of a back wound if you remove the chest organs and manipulate the body "every which way," which is what the autopsy doctors did: they removed the chest organs after the initial probing and then put the body in numerous positions to facilitate and observe the follow-up probing. They probed with fingers and with surgical probes. Witnesses at the autopsy table could see the end of the probe pushing up against the stomach lining. We now know that Dr. Finck, the only forensic pathologist among the autopsy doctors, also determined from his own probing that the back wound had no exit point. He stated this out loud during the autopsy. That's why the first draft of the autopsy report did
not claim that the throat wound was made by the bullet that hit the back.
The SBT is crucial to any lone-gunman theory. If the SBT is wrong, then there had to be two gunman. That's the whole reason the WC cooked up the theory in the first place, since they could not admit that more than three shots were fired. If JFK and Connally were hit by separate bullets, then you have at least four bullets: the bullet that hit JFK before Z207 and caused him to reach for his throat, the bullet that hit Connally at Z234-237, the bullet that hit the curb near James Tague, and the bullet that hit JFK's head. And this isn't counting the bullet that five witnesses saw hit the street early in the shooting, the bullet that hit the grass near a manhole cover on the south side of Elm Street (the hole was photographed and appeared in local newspapers the next day), the bullet that tore out 4 inches of concrete on the north side of Elm Street (the Aldredge bullet strike), and the bullet that visibly jolted JFK forward starting in Z226.
