How could former Marine sharpshooter Oswald miss everything with his first shot?

[Tom Graves]

How in the world could former Marine sharpshooter Oswald miss everything with his first shot?

Background: A 2020 study by Brian Roselle and Kenneth Scearce determined that seven prime witnesses to the assassination of JFK (including everyone in the limousine except for the hard-to-see driver) made conscious head movements in the Zapruder film within half-a-second of each other upon hearing the first of three shots at hypothetical “Z-124,” i.e., half-a-second before Abraham Zapruder resumed filming at Z-133 after about a 15-second pause.

https://d7922adf-f499-4a26-96d4-8ab2d521fa35.usrfiles.com/ugd/d7922a_e280e26982b44f2c97c6e6e27026e385.pdf

https://www.marktyler.org/mc63.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawK4zONleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFFODdsRHVIa2RSUGZJNllFAR6Zx-0JB5zBmwy-qakJKtfLfY5vcW9V2IqOrNXjP-oezkHhb-av38NlRUa-uA_aem_2d95NRPz2dpt6k_03l7iYg

Both JFK and Governor Connally (who was sitting in front of JFK) were wounded by the second shot at approximately Z-222, and JFK was fatally struck in the head at Z-313.


ME: Calculate the angular velocity of JFK's head at "Z-124" from the perspective of a sniper in the sixth-floor window.

(Note: “Angular velocity” is the rate at which an object rotates or revolves around a specific axis. It measures how fast an angle changes over time.)

Claude AI: Complete Analysis: Angular Velocity of JFK's Head at Hypothetical "Z-124"

Background

Zapruder filmed motorcycle policemen turn onto Elm Street, and when he realized the limousine wasn't immediately behind them, he turned his camera off, not resuming until approximately 15 seconds later when he saw the limousine heading toward him down Elm Street. Z-133 represents the first frame of resumed filming. "Z-124" is a hypothetical moment half a second before Z-133, during the filming gap.

The limousine had just completed a near-hairpin turn from Houston Street onto Elm Street, having slowed to approximately 5 mph to negotiate it. By Z-133 it was traveling at approximately 11 mph. At "Z-124" — half a second earlier and only ~117 feet down Elm Street from the corner — the car had only recently straightened out from the turn and was still actively accelerating.

The Warren Commission never considered the possibility of a shot during the filming gap, anchoring its entire analysis to the filmed sequence. It placed the earliest possible first shot at Z-166, constrained partly by an oak tree that obscured the line of sight from the sixth-floor window. However, the oak tree did not obscure the line of sight to the limousine's position at "Z-124," meaning the Commission's earliest possible shot date was unnecessarily conservative.

Geometry

Slant range from sixth-floor window to JFK's head at "Z-124": 160 feet

Elm Street angle relative to shooter's line of sight: ~45-50 degrees

Elm Street downward slope: ~3 degrees

JFK was seated on the right rear side of the limousine.

Velocity Components at "Z-124"

Speed: 11 mph (~16 ft/sec)

The target was moving simultaneously:

Laterally across the line of sight

Away from the shooter

Downward along the slope of Elm Street

Perpendicular velocity components:

v⊥(lateral) = 16 × sin(47.5°) ≈ 11.8 ft/sec

v⊥(vertical) = 16 × sin(3°) ≈ 0.84 ft/sec

Combined perpendicular velocity:

v⊥(total) = √(11.8² + 0.84²) ≈ 11.8 ft/sec

Angular Velocity

ω = v⊥ / r = 11.8 / 160 ≈ 74 milliradians/second

Practical Difficulty of the Shot

The raw figure of ~74 milliradians/second represents a moderate-to-demanding tracking challenge, but the actual difficulty was meaningfully greater than that figure suggests, for the following reasons:

1. Active acceleration

The car had only recently straightened out from the near-hairpin turn and was still accelerating at Z-124. This means the angular velocity was continuously changing, making smooth rhythmic tracking impossible — the required lead was different from one moment to the next.

2. Two-plane tracking requirement

The downward slope of Elm Street, while contributing minimally to the angular velocity figure, meant the sniper could not simply sweep horizontally to track the target. He had to simultaneously depress his aim as the target moved down the slope, making the tracking problem genuinely three-dimensional.

3. Changing geometry

As the limousine moved down the curved section of Elm Street, its angular relationship to the shooter was itself continuously changing — adding another layer of non-linearity to the tracking problem.

Comparison to Later Shots

By Z-210-225, where the Commission placed the first shot:

The car was moving more directly away from the shooter

At a longer range

At a stable constant speed

Presenting a much smaller lateral component

Requiring essentially single-plane tracking

A shot at "Z-124" was therefore the most geometrically demanding of any point in the entire sequence — combining maximum lateral angular velocity, active acceleration, two-plane tracking, and the closest range.

Conclusion

The angular velocity of JFK's head from the perspective of a sniper in the sixth-floor window at the hypothetical "Z-124" was approximately 74 milliradians/second.

This represents a moderate-to-demanding tracking challenge under stable conditions — but the active acceleration of the limousine, the two-plane tracking requirement, and the continuously changing geometry made the shot meaningfully harder than that figure alone suggests.

A miss under these conditions would have been entirely explicable. The Warren Commission's failure to consider this scenario — despite the line of sight being clear, the shot being geometrically possible, and the filming gap providing a window of unrecorded opportunity — represents a significant gap in their analysis.

[Charles Collins]

Interesting analysis, explicable to have missed, but in order to miss the entire limo (with JFK’s head as the target) the miss would have to have been greater than a 36” miss. I cannot imagine that LHO would have missed by that great a margin (if the shot had been intentional). A couple of items that the above analysis doesn’t take into account are the potential interference of the window box and the vertical pipe adjacent to the window plus the fact that he would have had to shoot freehand instead of having a seated and supported shot like he did during the kill zone after the limo cleared the tree. Therefore I believe the shot was inadvertent.

[John Corbett]

The WC never tried to establish a time for a first shot miss, only that if the first or third shot was the miss, the total time for all three shots would be IN EXCESS OFF 7 SECONDS. This offers a wide time frame for when a first shot miss could have been fired, including the time before Zapruder resumed filming. There was a lot more working against Oswald on that first shot besides the angular velocity. Oswald put a box on the floor behind the ones he stacked to create a rifle rest, presumably to sit on. Did he fire at JFK from a sitting position or did he assume a kneeling position once JFK arrived, a position he would have trained from while in the USMC. No way to say for sure and not terribly important to know for sure. Whether he was in a sitting or kneeling position, he likely would have had to raise up out of that position to fire a steep downward shot. He would have fired that shot from an awkward crouching position. The rifle rest boxes would have been of little help steadying the rifle for such a shot. The bottom of the window may have partially obstructed his view of his intended target. With the tree looming, he might have rushed his shot. When a shooter does that, the tendency is to pull the shot down and to the right. We'll never know for sure why Oswald missed that first shot but he had a number of challenges that wouldn't have been present on the subsequent shots.

There is no definitive proof as to when that first shot was fired only conjecture. It all comes down to how one chooses to weigh the clues. I happen to believe the best evidence for when the shot was fired is the camera jump at Z155. Based on the 7-8 frame lag time between the shot and Zapruder's reaction for the second and third shots, that would indicate the first shot was fired in the Z147-148 window. I Z124 shot would mean JBC did not start his turn to the right until 40 frames later at Z164. That's over two seconds. A 147 shot would have JBC reacting in just under one second. That seems more plausible to me.

[John Corbett]

Interesting analysis, explicable to have missed, but in order to miss the entire limo (with JFK’s head as the target) the miss would have to have been greater than a 36” miss. I cannot imagine that LHO would have missed by that great a margin (if the shot had been intentional). A couple of items that the above analysis doesn’t take into account are the potential interference of the window box and the vertical pipe adjacent to the window plus the fact that he would have had to shoot freehand instead of having a seated and supported shot like he did during the kill zone after the limo cleared the tree. Therefore I believe the shot was inadvertent.

I'll never understand why people keep using the phrase "miss the entire limo". It implies Oswald was trying to shoot the limo and makes it seem the miss was by a ridiculous amount. He was trying shoot JFK who was sitting as far right in the limo as was possible. I think a 3 foot miss is a bit of an exaggeration but even that is plausible given the difficulties Oswald faced on that first shot.

[Michael T. Griffith]

How in the world could former Marine sharpshooter Oswald miss everything with his first shot?

Newcomers to the case would not realize how misleading and problematic this statement is. To read this statement, along with the speculation and errant statements that follow it, they'd never know that it has been pointed out to you that there is considerable evidence Oswald was not even on the sixth floor during the shooting, that the kind of ammo Oswald allegedly used could not have caused the bullet fragmentation seen in the JFK autopsy skull x-rays, that the HSCA photographic experts determined JFK was first hit at a time (around Z190) when the sixth-floor gunman's view of JFK would have been obstructed by the oak tree, that voice-stress polygraph analysis of Oswald's statement that he didn't shoot anybody indicates he was telling the truth, and that the WC's three Master-rated riflemen were unable to duplicate Oswald's alleged shooting feat, to name a few problems with your scenario.

Newcomers would also not know that your use of the term Marine sharpshooter is misleading. They would not know that "sharpshooter" is the name of the middle/second of three Marine Corps rifle qualification categories; that some new recruits who've never fired a rifle before manage to qualify in the "sharpshooter" category; that Oswald barely qualified in the "sharpshooter" category on his best day at the range; that he was using a superb rifle (the M1) that had been zeroed and that did not require him to manually operate the bolt, whereas the alleged murder weapon was a bolt-action rifle with a misaligned scope; that nearly all of Oswald's fellow Marines who saw him shoot regarded him as a poor shot; that members of Oswald's hunting club in Minsk regarded him as a poor shot; that even during the so-called "rapid fire" phase of the rifle qualification test, Oswald had 60 seconds to fire 10 shots--and, again, with a semi-automatic rifle that had already been zeroed.

And, newcomers would also not know that in all the JFKA rifle tests that have been done, not even experienced, expert riflemen have been able to score two hits in three shots in 5.6 to 9.0 seconds on the first and only attempt, with the two hits being scored in 5.6 seconds and landing in a small area of the head and upper back no more than 13 inches high and 4 inches wide. This has never been done. Never. Never, ever. Not once. Yet, this is the shooting feat that Oswald supposedly performed.

I won't name any names, but recently a lone-gunman actually posted the grade-school-level circular argument that there was no need for rifle tests to prove Oswald could have done the shooting because, gee, Oswald already proved he could do the shooting! I kid you not. Someone presenting themselves as an adult actually made that argument. Apparently they've never been exposed to even the most basic elements of logical reasoning.

Background: A 2020 study by Brian Roselle and Kenneth Scearce determined that seven prime witnesses to the assassination of JFK (including everyone in the limousine except for the hard-to-see driver) made conscious head movements in the Zapruder film within half-a-second of each other upon hearing the first of three shots at hypothetical “Z-124,” i.e., half-a-second before Abraham Zapruder resumed filming at Z-133 after about a 15-second pause.

You realize that a sixth-floor gunman would have been firing virtually straight down at hypothetical Z124, right? This makes no sense. He would have had far, far easier shots when the limo was coming straight toward the window while it was traveling on Houston Street. But, no, you have him passing up the easiest shots of the day and waiting until he had to fire virtually straight down.

I'm just waiting for Lance Payette and John Corbett to get on here and say, "Yeah, that totally makes sense to us!"

I actually agree that a shot may well have occurred before Z133, but it almost certainly did not come from the sixth-floor window. I think the Zapruder film was spliced to remove the limo's turn from Houston onto Elm. Zapruder did not stop filming. The film was edited to remove the turn. More on this below.

Zapruder filmed motorcycle policemen turn onto Elm Street, and when he realized the limousine wasn't immediately behind them, he turned his camera off, not resuming until approximately 15 seconds later when he saw the limousine heading toward him down Elm Street. Z-133 represents the first frame of resumed filming. "Z-124" is a hypothetical moment half a second before Z-133, during the filming gap. [SNIP]

This, too, makes no sense, and it contradicts what Zapruder himself said. Zapruder never indicated that he stopped filming at this time but only after the shooting when the limo sped out of sight after going under the triple underpass.

If Zapruder had intended to start filming only after the limo turned onto Elm Street, he never would have started filming when the lead motorcycles began turning onto Elm Street. He would have been able to plainly see that the two lead cars in the motorcade were still on Houston Street. He would have simply waited until the limo began to make its turn.

The Warren Commission never considered the possibility of a shot during the filming gap, anchoring its entire analysis to the filmed sequence. It placed the earliest possible first shot at Z-166, constrained partly by an oak tree that obscured the line of sight from the sixth-floor window. However, the oak tree did not obscure the line of sight to the limousine's position at "Z-124," meaning the Commission's earliest possible shot date was unnecessarily conservative. [SNIP]

The WC was not really constrained by the oak tree but by a slavish adherence to the idea that only three shots were fired and that there was only one gunman. That is why the Commission refused to acknowledge the evidence that additional shots were fired and landed elsewhere in Dealey Plaza. That is why the Commission initially tried to ignore the Tague curb shot and wounding.

Extra Bullets and Missed Shots in Dealey Plaza
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WRwhDQ9HMydf5pICsHwgtkoNKw0YSO8T/view

A miss under these conditions would have been entirely explicable.

Utter nonsense. Even though firing virtually straight down, a sixth-floor gunman would have had to be blind to miss the entire gigantic limousine--21.25 feet long, 6.5 feet wide--with a shot aimed at JFK, who was sitting 6 feet from the back bumper and on the righthand end of the back seat. To miss the entire huge limo, the gunman would have had to fire when the barrel was pointed at a part of the street to the right of the limo's passenger side and with no part of JFK anywhere near his aiming point. It boggles the mind to believe he would have fired at that time and with that shot view. Well, unless you want to assume he looked away and then pulled the trigger!

I mean, you really need to stop and think before you post such implausible, illogical theories.

The Warren Commission's failure to consider this scenario — despite the line of sight being clear, the shot being geometrically possible, and the filming gap providing a window of unrecorded opportunity — represents a significant gap in their analysis.

No, the WC did this because they knew that a pre-Z166 shot meant there were more shots than Oswald could have fired, since they were chained to a three-shots-only scenario.

[Charles Collins]

I'll never understand why people keep using the phrase "miss the entire limo". It implies Oswald was trying to shoot the limo and makes it seem the miss was by a ridiculous amount. He was trying shoot JFK who was sitting as far right in the limo as was possible. I think a 3 foot miss is a bit of an exaggeration but even that is plausible given the difficulties Oswald faced on that first shot.

The reason people use the phrase “miss the entire limo” is because there is no evidence that a missed-first-shot bullet hit anywhere in or on the limo, therefore it apparently did miss the entire limo in which JFK (the target) was riding in). It makes no sense to me that LHO would even consider making an attempt to intentionally shoot at a target in which he might miss by such a large margin. Especially since he had apparently set up his sniper’s nest for comfortable, rested and seated (and therefore very stable) shots just after the target cleared the oak tree only a few seconds later.

[John Mytton]

This, too, makes no sense, and it contradicts what Zapruder himself said. Zapruder never indicated that he stopped filming at this time but only after the shooting when the limo sped out of sight after going under the triple underpass.

If Zapruder had intended to start filming only after the limo turned onto Elm Street, he never would have started filming when the lead motorcycles began turning onto Elm Street. He would have been able to plainly see that the two lead cars in the motorcade were still on Houston Street. He would have simply waited until the limo began to make its turn.

There's two reason we know Zapruder restarted his 8mm camera @Z133 and therefore the entire sequence was not filmed continuously!

1. The first frame when an 8mm camera is restarted allows more light to leak into the camera and as can be seen, Z133 is brighter than Z134. Also note that Z001 is even brighter but this effect varies iirc due to mechanical interactions of the camera and the amount of film left.
Look at the light blue car at the top of the frame, the lighter clothing and the lighter shade of the road.



2. When Zapruder restarted his camera and pushed the physical button, this made the next frame much blurrier and the frame after that shows a distinctive horizontal jiggle.



After Zapruder restarted his camera and the initial excitement, his panning becomes relatively smooth, well, up until his startled vertical jiggles after he heard shots.



Zapruder at first filmed over 7 seconds of essentially nothing, just the motorbikes, then he quickly shut off his camera and waited till he saw and confirmed he actually had Kennedy's Limo in his viewfinder.
Then when we first see the Limo in Z133, the cars at this point on Houston were barely visible behind the crowd.



BTW, this is such a silly argument and I don't know why it needs explaining.
Zapruder had about two minutes of film to play with and obviously the main event that he wanted to capture was JFK's Limo driving past him because at the time who knows what he may have filmed, the Limo may have stopped and JFK could have shaken hands with the crowd, who knows? So when Zapruder saw the motorbikes turning into Elm he started filming but when there was no Limo, he instinctively stopped filming to conserve his limited precious film, then when he was certain that the Limo was in sight, Zapruder started filming again. The critics must think that Zapruder had unlimited film but the reality is that Zapruder was well aware of his limited resources and wanted every frame to count!!

JohnM