Dr. John Lattimer's SBT test was actually fairly realistic, but, as was his habit, he misrepresented the results by falsely claiming that his test produced a bullet with the same minimal damage as CE 399.
For his SBT test, Lattimer used animal tissue to simulate Kennedy's neck, a rib cage to simulate Connally's torso, and radius bones wrapped in simulated forearms to simulate Connally's forearm. Lattimer said four bullets out of 20 struck all three objects.
A picture of one of the test bullets shows it was split at the nose in several places and was markedly deformed, much more deformed than CE 399. When Stewart Galanor asked Lattimer, in a filmed interview, if he could examine the bullets that struck all three simulation objects, Lattimer said he had thrown them away (Galanor,
Cover-Up, New York: Kestrel Books, 1998, p. 42).
Or, let's take the 1967 CBS test when CBS hired Dr. Olivier to conduct a simulation of the SBT. The test was a complete sham because it simply ignored most of the damage that CE 399 supposedly did.
In a televised interview, Olivier admitted that his CBS test did not include striking a rib: "Of course, we have no rib here [in the test], but it still simulates passing through the flesh."
Olivier further admitted that
even without simulating the damage to Connally's rib, some the bullets failed to exit the wrist: "In some cases, it passed through the wrist; in other cases it lodged in the wrist."
Crucially, not a single bullet in the CBS test managed to lodge in the simulated thigh.
A 12-inch gelatin block was used to simulate Connally's chest. By failing to put a simulated rib bone within this block, Olivier ensured that the test bullets would not become badly deformed while passing through the simulated chest. But this led to another complication: It meant the bullets would strike the simulated wrist at a greater velocity than the bullet presumed to have struck Connally's wrist--yet, even so, not one of the bullets lodged in the simulated thigh.
I should add that the CBS test also did not include passing through a human neck. Yes, that's right: The test made no effort to simulate the neck. Its bullets went straight into a simulated chest without first having to rip through a neck.
In 1968, a CBS producer named Stephen White wrote a book titled
Should We Now Believe the Warren Report?, which brazenly misrepresented the CBS SBT test results, falsely claiming they proved the SBT was feasible. White also showed he knew little about wound ballistics.
White claimed "the Governor's chest wound was clearly caused by a bullet traveling at high velocity" (p. 71). But, the alleged murder file was a low-velocity weapon, as FBI firearms expert Robert Frazier admitted to the WC (3 H 414).
Incredibly, White claimed that CE 399 did not hit "a hard structure" during its alleged journey, bafflingly ignoring the fact that CE 399 supposedly destroyed 5 inches of rib bone and then smashed Connally's radius bone! Said White,
"A full-jacketed bullet, wholly sheathed in copper, which does not make direct impact
with hard structure can go a long way and do a good deal of damage without showing
much effect. . . . The bullet, with its tough protective shield, was never subjected to an
abrupt change of momentum. . . . There were at no time forces exerted upon it
sufficient to deform it to any great extent; merely continuous small forces which
robbed it bit by bit of its energy" (p 92).
White falsely claimed that "CBS News went to some great pains to recreate a part of the path taken by the bullet, using carefully measured blocks of gelatin to simulate the resistance offered by tissue, and other artifacts to represent clothing and bone structure." Was White just not aware that the test did not simulate the neck and the rib bone?
White then claimed that the CBS test proved the SBT was plausible. He wrote that under the circumstances people could not expect "precise results" from the CBS test, and that the "approximate answer" was "entirely consistent, within its margin of error, with the single-bullet theory." Right, so even though the test failed to simulate a human neck and a rib bone, and even though some of the bullets failed to exit the wrist, and even though not one of the bullets lodged in the thigh, the test was "entirely consistent" with the SBT!
In 2003, the Discovery Channel created a similar simulation, with similar results. Once again, a bullet, without being asked to strike any simulated ribs at the exit point of a simulated chest, bounced off a simulated thigh, yet the program declared that it duplicated the SBT.
Pat Speer explains why the failure of these tests is not surprising, noting that world-famous forensic pathologist Dr. Milton Helpern dismissed the SBT as abjectly impossible:
The failure of these tests, moreover, should come as no surprise. In 1967, in the book
Where Death Delights, Dr. Milton Helpern, a man who had supervised 10,000 autopsies
on gunshot victims, explained why these tests were doomed to failure. He said:
“The single-bullet theory requires us to believe that this bullet went through seven
layers of skin—tough, elastic, resistant skin. . . . In addition to these seven layers
of tough, human skin, this bullet passed through other layers of soft tissue, and then
these shattered bones! I just can’t believe that this bullet had the force to do what
Mr. Specter and the Commission have demanded of it."
And it's not as if Helpern was just blowing smoke. In 1987, in a much-discussed letter
to the
International Defense Review, Dr. Martin Fackler gave substance to
Dr. Helpern's observations by reporting his conclusion that human skin had the approximate
resistance of four inches of muscle tissue. Yes, that's right. Seven layers of skin have the
resistance of 28 inches of muscle tissue. This suggests, then, that Olivier's tests for CBS
quite possibly under-represented the amount of resistance encountered by the so-called
magic bullet. (
https://www.patspeer.com/chapter11thesingle-bullettheory)
