Reasonable Doubts?

[Dan O'meara]

Royell has hit the nail on the head about your Looney Tunes grasp of reality.
You are clearly unaware that you are suggesting the bullet tumbled 180 degrees, straightened up while it passed through his jacket, then resumed a-tumbling.
It is physically impossible for a bullet rotating at such an incredible speed to make such a small hole in his jacket.

In your cartoonish view of the world the bullet exits JBC's chest backwards.
It must then tumble a further 360 degrees in order to enter his wrist (and leg) backwards.
The distance it has to travel is around 12 inches/1 foot.
Let's say the bullet exiting Connally's chest is travelling around 1000 feet per second [Sturdivan estimated "somewhere between 1,100 and 1,300 feet per second, roughly."]
This means the bullet is spinning 1000 times per second!!!
 

1] Where does this incredible rotational energy come from?
2] How can a 3 cm object spinning 1000 times per second leave such a small hole?
3] What nonsense are you going to come up with next?

Bumped for Corbett.
I see a deleted post from you, was this some half-assed attempt at a response to my post.

[John Corbett]

Bumped for Corbett.
I see a deleted post from you, was this some half-assed attempt at a response to my post.

I don't know how to dumb this down for you any more than I have. Even the picture Steve Galbrath posted for you didn't seem to help. It's impossible to say precisely what the orientation of the bullet was at any given instant but we can make reasonable estimates. The smaller hole in the front of JBC's jacket suggests it had continued to tumble after entering his back in a near perpendicular orientation. Whether it had tumbled 150, 180, 210 degrees or somewhere in between is impossible to  say. What we do know is the base was flattened from the side. That indicates the base received the brunt of the blow when the bullet struck bone which is evidence the bullet was tumbling. Further evidence is that lead fragments were deposited in JBC's wrist and thigh. That came from the lead core which was only exposed at the bottom of the bullet.

[Dan O'meara]

That has always been an interesting aspect of Gov. John Connally's wounds: His two surgeons thought the SBT did not hold water.

Dr. Robert Shaw and Dr. Charles Gregory were not activists or leftists, and Shaw had military experience of working on hundreds of wartime gunshot victims. Shaw, without dispute, is an authority on the topic.

My take is Shaw and Gregory gave their earnest opinions and had no axes to grind.

Gregory found that a projectile had entered JBC's wrist on the dorsal side...almost an anatomical impossibility for a slug that first entered JBC's chest from the rear.

Shaw thought it most likely JBC had been hit by a separate shot, that shot had not been impeded before hitting JBC.

The small round hole in the rear of JBC's assassination day shirt strongly suggests a direct shot, and not a slug that hit JBC "sideways" after tumbling.

There are a lot of reasons to have reasonable doubts about SBT, including that it was fabricated by Arlen Specter based on the premise that only two shots had struck JFK and JBC. Specter's job was to present the SBT-LNT narrative, not to investigate the truth. The WC concluded that one shot struck near Tague.

That CE-399 was not found in Trauma Room 2 adds another layer of perplexity. Even then hospital procedures were to retain bullets and report bullet wounds to police. JBC recalls the bullet fell from his leg on clicked on the floor of Trauma Room 2.

Yet somehow a slug is found in the Parkland hospital corridor, described as a "pointy-head" slug by OP Wright, hospital administrator and former police chief, and then that slug is purported to be CE-399.

I have reasonable doubts about the LNT-SBT.

Take away CE399 and there is no issue with the SBT.
The only reason Shaw and Gregory doubted it was because they were trying to account for CE399 as the bullet involved.
Both JFK and JBC getting shot through by a single bullet fired from the SN is to be fully expected given that it passed through nothing but soft tissue until striking JBC's ribs.
As you point out, the bullet (fragment?) in JBC's leg fell onto the Trauma Room floor and was picked up by a nurse. Henry Wade, visiting his good friend at the time, reports the nurse coming up to him and asking him what to do with the bullet. He told her to give it to a policeman. She put it in an envelope and gave it to officer Bob Nolan who eventually put it on Fritz's desk.
While all this was going on, Audrey Bell was placing the small bullet fragments retrieved from JBC's wrist into a small plastic box and envelope when two FBI agents came in and confiscated the fragments. Miraculously, while it was in the FBI's Washington Labs, the bullet left on Fritz's desk by Nolan morphed into the small bullet fragments taken from JBC's wrist. The same miracle morphed the pointed "hunting slug" found by Tomlinson into CE399, also in the Washington Labs.
Hmmmm...

The bullet that passed through JFK and JBC at z222/223 fragmented when it struck JBC's radius.
This accounts for the various holes in the clothing and why there is no hole for a bullet to pass through in the X-Rays of JBC's wrist. It explains why there is no metal fragments from this bullet found in JFK or JBC until the wrist then leg.

[Royell Storing]

Take away CE399 and there is no issue with the SBT.
The only reason Shaw and Gregory doubted it was because they were trying to account for CE399 as the bullet involved.
Both JFK and JBC getting shot through by a single bullet fired from the SN is to be fully expected given that it passed through nothing but soft tissue until striking JBC's ribs.
As you point out, the bullet (fragment?) in JBC's leg fell onto the Trauma Room floor and was picked up by a nurse. Henry Wade, visiting his good friend at the time, reports the nurse coming up to him and asking him what to do with the bullet. He told her to give it to a policeman. She put it in an envelope and gave it to officer Bob Nolan who eventually put it on Fritz's desk.
While all this was going on, Audrey Bell was placing the small bullet fragments retrieved from JBC's wrist into a small plastic box and envelope when two FBI agents came in and confiscated the fragments. Miraculously, while it was in the FBI's Washington Labs, the bullet left on Fritz's desk by Nolan morphed into the small bullet fragments taken from JBC's wrist. The same miracle morphed the pointed "hunting slug" found by Tomlinson into CE399, also in the Washington Labs.
Hmmmm...

The bullet that passed through JFK and JBC at z222/223 fragmented when it struck JBC's radius.
This accounts for the various holes in the clothing and why there is no hole for a bullet to pass through in the X-Rays of JBC's wrist. It explains why there is no metal fragments from this bullet found in JFK or JBC until the wrist then leg.

   DAN - As always, your opinions carry weight due to being based on your tireless JFK Assassination Research. Your Bart Kamp/Prayer Man work is noteworthy. Please come by more often. You always raise the bar around here.

[Michael T. Griffith]

Dr. Charles Gregory, the Parkland surgeon who operated on Connally's wrist, provided important information on the wounding of Governor Connally in his interview with Dr. Josiah Thompson, Richard Billings, and Ed Kern. After reviewing high-quality enlargements of the relevant Zapruder frames, Dr. Gregory said that Connally must have been hit no earlier than Z234 based on his Z238-242 reactions, that he and Dr. Robert Shaw (Connally's chest surgeon) concluded that JFK and Connally were hit by separate bullets, and that both he and Dr. Shaw concluded that Connally's back wound indicated the bullet had not hit anything else beforehand. Dr. Thompson discusses this crucial information in his 2021 book Last Second in Dallas:

I was already in Dr. Gregory’s office and talking with him when they arrived. I had made photocopies of his deposition, and Kern and Billings had brought with them the four-by-five-inch Ektachrome transparencies from the Zapruder film. I did most of the questioning, and Kern and Billings showed the transparencies on a light table.

After the transparencies were laid out, I asked Dr. Gregory to look closely at what happens between frames 237 and 238, three-quarters of a second after the president has clearly been hit. We moved the other transparencies aside and looked closely at 237 through 240. In this series of frames Governor Connally is turning in his seat to the right. This means that the angle between his right shoulder and the car door gets smaller over time. Then, quite suddenly, it reverses direction and gets larger. What brings about this change in angle is the collapse of Connally’s right shoulder. But that is not all. In frames 238, 239, and 240, Connally’s cheeks puff out and his hair is disordered.

I pointed this out to Dr. Gregory and asked his opinion about what caused it. He explained that the epiglottis is like a trapdoor at the top of the windpipe. A shot through the chest such as Connally received would shock the chest wall and force air upward through the epiglottis. Since it couldn’t all escape from his mouth immediately, it would puff out his cheeks. The three effects we were seeing, Gregory said, were the effects of a bullet driving through the chest.

I asked him what was the maximum time before frame 238 when the bullet could have hit Connally. He thought for a moment and then replied, “A quarter of a second. Maybe 234 at the earliest.” This was generally in line with his testimony before the commission, where he said that “in frames marked 234, 235 and 236, Governor Connally was in a position such that a single missile . . . could have passed through his chest.”  Obviously, this was much too late for Connally to have been hit by the same bullet that hit Kennedy. . . .

But there was more.

We mentioned to Dr. Gregory that we had looked forward to talking with Dr. Shaw but that he was unavailable. Dr. Gregory said he and Shaw had talked about the wounding of Connally, and both believed that Connally and Kennedy had been hit by separate shots. Why? Because of the character of Connally’s back wound, Gregory explained. It was small and elliptical in shape. But most importantly, it had very clean edges. No fibers had been carried into Connally’s back wound, while his wrist wound was fouled with numerous fibers from his wool suit.

Dr. Gregory pointed out that he’d been a field surgeon during the Korean War and later had made a study of gunshot injuries, examining more than five hundred gunshot wounds. It was his opinion, supported by Dr. Shaw, that the small, clean and elliptical wound in Connally’s back had come from a projectile that had hit nothing else first. (Last Second in Dallas, pp. 157-158)

[John Corbett]

Dr. Gregory pointed out that he’d been a field surgeon during the Korean War and later had made a study of gunshot injuries, examining more than five hundred gunshot wounds. It was his opinion, supported by Dr. Shaw, that the small, clean and elliptical wound in Connally’s back had come from a projectile that had hit nothing else first. (Last Second in Dallas, pp. 157-158)[/font]

As usual, the people you cite don't say why they reached their conclusion.

Does Gregory say why he thinks the wound on JBC's back was elliptical?

[Michael T. Griffith]

As usual, the people you cite don't say why they reached their conclusion.

HUH? Did you miss the statements below in the passages I quoted about Dr. Gregory's interview, or did you just not understand them? Let's read them again:

We mentioned to Dr. Gregory that we had looked forward to talking with Dr. Shaw but that he was unavailable. Dr. Gregory said he and Shaw had talked about the wounding of Connally, and both believed that Connally and Kennedy had been hit by separate shots. Why? Because of the character of Connally’s back wound, Gregory explained. It was small and elliptical in shape. But most importantly, it had very clean edges. No fibers had been carried into Connally’s back wound, while his wrist wound was fouled with numerous fibers from his wool suit.

Do you understand now? The projectile that hit Connally's wrist carried with it numerous fibers from his wool suit into the wrist wound, but Connally's back wound had no fibers in it. If the bullet that hit Connally's back had just torn through four layers of JFK's clothing, it would have carried fibers from that clothing into Connally's back wound, but Connally's back wound had no fibers in it.

This is one of the reasons that both Dr. Gregory and Dr. Shaw concluded that the bullet that hit Connally's back had not hit anything else first. 

Does Gregory say why he thinks the wound on JBC's back was elliptical?

Seriously? I'm sure Dr. Gregory didn't think that years later someone who doesn't even know the basics about the wounds in the case would question why he said the wound was elliptical.

He said the wound was elliptical because . . . it was elliptical. Dr. Shaw, the guy who operated on it, said it was elliptical: "The wound entrance was an elliptical wound" (6 H 95).