"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.

The study details can be found here:

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

Perhaps you should learn to read. As I've noted and documented several times already in this thread, Dr. Young's first statements about the finding of a bullet in the limo and the bullet's appearance were written in his 11/23/63 hand-written essay "What Price a Rose?" So he wrote that essay on the afternoon of 11/23, less than 24 hours after the autopsy.

That wasn't even 40 hours after the fact, much less 40 years. It is revealing that you guys keep ignoring this crucial fact.

Furthermore he wrote his letter to Gerald Ford in December 2000, not 2003, and he gave his first three Navy oral history interviews in 2001, not 2003. Additionally, he brought his 11/23/63 "What Price a Rose?" essay with him to those interviews and read from it during the interviews, as I've also mentioned and documented several times herein.

And, of course, never mind that Chief Mills corroborated Dr. Young's account, right?

Nice try. Loeffler was referring to two separate items: (1) the stretcher bullet, which O. P. Wright assumed had come from Connally's body, and (2) the fragments that were removed from Connally's wrist.

Umm, I already addressed Sibert and O'Neill's ARRB statements. Did you miss that? I notice you said nothing about the problems I noted with them. I also notice you said nothing about their HSCA statements. I also notice you said nothing about Boyers' claim that the evidence bottle contained three or four bullet fragments, not two, and that Sibert likewise indicated there were more than two fragments in his HSCA testimony. I further notice you said nothing about the fact that Sibert and O'Neill failed to say a word about signing for either a missile or bullet fragments in their 11/26/63 report on the autopsy. Let me refresh your memory, mainly for the sake of any newcomers and other readers:

I find it strange that Sibert and O'Neill said nothing about signing a receipt for a missile or fragments in their 11/26/63 report on the autopsy. They mentioned that Humes removed the 7x2 mm and 3x1 mm fragments from the head but oddly said nothing about signing a receipt for those fragments. Could they have omitted this significant event from their report because they were uneasy about having signed a receipt that said "missile" when the evidence bottle contained only three, four, or a few more fragments -- fragments that clearly did not constitute the mass of a bullet? Or, did they omit this important event because by 11/26 the existence of a bullet or bullets at the autopsy could not be acknowledged? 

- In 1978, along came Chester Boyers, the Chief Petty Officer at Bethesda who typed the receipt that Sibert and O'Neill signed. Boyers threw a bit of a monkey wrench into the cover story.

Boyers told the HSCA that he "submitted several missile fragments, probably three or four, all of which came from President Kennedy's head" (Investigation Interview, HSCA, 4/25/1978, p. 4, ARRB document MD 62).

He also said that "even though the receipt only stated that 'a' missile was given to Sibert and O'Neill, several fragments of a missile were submitted and that he only prepared one receipt" (p. 4).

But Humes said that he only removed two bullet fragments from the skull (from the right orbit), the 7x1 mm and 3x1 mm fragments, whose combined weight was only 180 grains, a small fraction of the mass of a bullet.

Boyers did not explain, and was not asked, why he would have used the term "missile" to describe several bullet fragments instead of just writing "three missile fragments" or "four missile fragments."

-- When Sibert was interviewed by the HSCA in 1977, he made a number of statements that contradict the cover story. He referred to more than just two fragments, saying "a lot of the metal fragments were tiny," that "all that were removed" were put in a "jar with a black top," and that they signed a receipt for those fragments (Memorandum: Interview with James W. Sibert, HSCA, 8/29/1977, p. 4, ARRB document MD 85).

So clearly we have a major conflict in the record. Both Boyers and Sibert said there were more than two fragments.

-- When Sibert's HSCA interviewers (Jim Kelly and Andy Purdy) specifically him asked about the receipt for a "missile," he actually criticized the receipt's author and its wording, saying that the receipt "was prepared by someone else," that he "would have listed the items as metal fragments," and that to him "a single 'missile' means quite a bit of substance -- more of a whole bullet" (pp. 4-5)!

We are left to wonder why the HSCA interviewers did not ask him the obvious follow-up question:

"If you thought the receipt was so inaccurate, why did you sign it? Why didn't you just tell the guy to retype it so that it read 'fragments' instead of 'missile,' since this would have only taken a few minutes?"

-- Things get even more curious and suspicious when we consider O'Neill HSCA affidavit.

O'Neill said the "saw" the autopsy doctors remove a fragment from "further back in the head" (O'Neill Affidavit for HSCA, 11/8/78  p. 4, ARRB document MD 47).

This was undoubtedly the back-of-head fragment that Sibert and O'Neill mentioned in their report on the autopsy; they said this fragment was the second-largest fragment in the skull (p. 4). This is surely, unquestionably the very thin 6.3 x 2.5 mm fragment that Dr. David Mantik discovered inside the ghosted image of the 6.5 mm object on the AP skull x-ray via optical-density measurements and high-magnification viewing. This fragment also appears on the right lateral skull x-ray (but it is -- impossibly -- much smaller than the 6.5 mm object).

But Dr. Humes never admitted that he removed a bullet fragment from the back of the skull. He said the only two fragments he removed were the 7x2 mm and 3x1 mm fragments that were very near and slightly above the right orbit.

-- O'Neill added that "a Navy man" made the receipt for the back-of-head fragment and for a fragment that was removed "from just behind the eye," that he and Sibert signed the receipt, and that the doctors did not remove a "full missile" (pp. 4-5).

O'Neill knew that the autopsy doctors removed two fragments from the right orbit -- this is mentioned in his and Sibert's report on the autopsy (p. 4). I suspect O'Neill knew what he was doing when he informed the HSCA that he saw a bullet fragment removed from the back of the head and that it was one of the fragments for which he and Sibert signed.

If the HSCA medical-evidence investigators had been doing their jobs, O'Neill's disclosure should have raised some huge red flags about Humes's version of events at the autopsy.

I think all of this suggests that Sibert and O'Neill were pressured to go along with the cover story. They were never willing to repudiate it, but they were willing to reveal information that raised serious doubts about it.

-- When Sibert and O'Neill were interviewed by the ARRB, they disclosed a lot of important information that destroys the single-bullet theory and the WC/HSCA claims about JFK's head wounds. But, they were unwilling to contradict the story that the receipt they signed referred only to the two fragments that Humes removed from the right orbit of the skull, even though they had previously revealed information that contradicted the story.

O'Neill offered a particularly lame excuse for signing a receipt that used the term "missile" to describe fragments:

Now I know there's been some controversy also about. Because we saw them put into a jar, and Jim and I signed for that jar. We signed for a missile. That was exactly what the Navy terminology is for a bullet -- anything which flies through the air is a missile.

It's changed since then because they now have the guided missiles and things such as that. But at that time anything which went through the air was a missile. And that's the way they wrote it up and that's the way we signed for it. (Deposition of Francis X. O'Neill, ARRB, 9/12/1997, p. 78)

Now, I'm sorry, but that's pure poppycock. If we were only talking about a single fragment, O'Neill's excuse would at least be minimally plausible, but neither the Navy nor any other government entity ever used the term "missile" to describe multiple bullet fragments or even multiple projectiles of any kind. Yes, the word "missile" was indeed Navy terminology "for a bullet," but we're not talking about a bullet, and O'Neill was not signing for a bullet.

The excuse Sibert offered was not much better:

I'd like to elaborate a little further on this. Here we get to this term "missile."

Now some things I've read about the agents giving a receipt. This receipt was prepared by Navy personnel. I think a Navy corpsman typed it up.
 
And this terminology is U.S Navy about the "missile." Now had I been preparing or making out a receipt and giving it to them, I would have said "fragments" here. (Deposition of James W. Sibert, ARRB, 9/11/1997, pp. 89-90)

At least Sibert once again admitted that he would have used the word "fragments" in the receipt, and not "missile," but he repeated O'Neill's specious suggestion that the Navy would use "missile" to describe multiple fragments of any kind. 

Sibert and O'Neill offered no explanation to the ARRB for why they would have signed such a markedly inaccurate receipt in the most important murder case of the century. Their answers smack of guilt and excuse-making. They obviously proved in their 11/26/63 report on the autopsy that they knew that "missile" was not a synonym for "fragments." They themselves distinguished between "missile/bullet" and "fragments."

It is hard to imagine that two FBI agents would have signed a receipt that said "missile" when they could see that the evidence bottle only contained two small fragments, especially when the fragments constituted only a tiny fraction of a bullet's mass.[/font]

You guys just refuse to process and deal with contrary facts that refute your lame explanations.

You want so desperately to reject Dr. Young's account that you repeatedly ignore facts that strongly support it, and just keep repeating your lame excuses, even after being forced to admit that Mills and Martinell did in fact search the limo at the White House garage, and even when faced with the fact that Captain Stover recalled that a bullet was brought to the autopsy in an envelope.

TG--

If what you and John Newman suspect is true about Solie, then Solie is the perfect candidate to leak info to Garrison...that Garrison would naturally believe, given the source.

Somebody inside the CIA leaked to Garrison that Shaw had a history with the CIA.

The KGB "CIA perped the JFKA" narrative in full flower.

In fact, Shaw was possibly monitoring LHO in New Orleans, just as de Mohrenschildt had in Dallas (although De M. may have been a double agent).

The claim that the acoustics evidence found on the Dictabelt recording shows a fourth shot has been thoroughly debunked in so many ways. The following is as good as any:
 
https://www.jfkfiles.com/jfk/html/acoustics_2.htm

Going to the homepage will also give you access to Dale Myers 3D animation of the shooting.

New here.  Can someone please direct me to on this forum or explain the apparent contradiction that J. Thompson uses acoustic evidence in his book, The Last Second in Dallas,  and the previous work that claims to debunk the Dictabelt recordings. Thanks.