i agree it doesn't seem likely that a fragment from the head shot could have caused the concrete to chip, but without knowing the exit velocity of the fragments from the headshot and minimum velocity needed to chip the concrete, it's just a guess. I lean toward a ricochet from the first shot miss continuing down range and striking the curb.
"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
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