Not surprisingly, WC apologists continue to assume their alleged magic bullet was tumbling through Connally's chest after supposedly hitting his back while traveling sideways or while markedly tumbling.

In one of the HSCA's wound-ballistics test, two types of bullets were fired into 12-inch blocks of ballistics gelatin: a 6.5 mm FMJ missile (Oswald's alleged ammo), a .30 caliber FMJ bullet. and a .223 M-16/AR-15 frangible bullet. Side-view photos showed that the 6.5 mm and .30 caliber FMJ bullets punched straight, relatively narrow channels through the gelatin, contradicting the theory that the Connally chest bullet was yawing when it passed through the governor's torso (see JFK Exhibit F-116 in 1 HSCA 392).

Dr. Shaw, Connally's chest surgeon, noted that the bullet created a small tunneling wound and shattered the rib while doing only minor damage to the muscles beside it. He reported that the bullet created a "small tunneling wound" (7 HSCA 149), and he noted "the neat way in which it stripped the rib out without doing much damage to the muscles that lay on either side of it" (4 H 116).

In addition, the fact that the entry wound in Connally's back was only 1.5 x 0.8 cm rules out a sideways-striking bullet, or even a markedly tumbling bullet. The wound's dimensions simply show that Connally was turning when the bullet struck, just as he said he was. Stewart Fillmore, a retired FBI agent who has conducted SBT wound-ballistics tests, has noted this point in another thread in this forum:

I would point out that WC apologists here still have not explained how a bullet striking at T1, i.e., slightly below the throat wound and entering at an upward angle, could have traveled downward through the neck unless JFK had been leaning markedly forward when the bullet struck.

The OP of this thread includes a link to a page that shows Dr. Baden demonstrating for the 1988 NOVA JFKA documentary just how far forward JFK would have had to be leaning to make the T1 trajectory align with the sixth-floor window. Baden even demonstrated the bullet's upward trajectory through the neck with a wooden pointer stick. The problem, of course, is that no photo or frame shows JFK leaning markedly forward during the timeframes of the various versions of the SBT.

You see, for years WC apologists have trumpeted the fact that the HSCA FPP majority endorsed the SBT. They've endlessly pointed out that the majority consisted of "eight eminent forensic pathologists" (vs. only one dissenter, Dr. Wecht) and that these experts "studied the medical evidence for two years."

But, as we see from their replies in this thread, WC apologists have been trumpeting the FPP's SBT endorsement without realizing that the FPP's SBT destroys the SBT.

They obviously did not realize (or perhaps in some cases hoped nobody knew) that the FPP moved the back wound at least 2.5 inches downward from where Humes fraudulently placed it in CE 385, that the FPP acknowledged that the back wound was below the throat wound, that the FPP acknowledged that the bullet hit the back at an upward angle, and that the FPP acknowledged that the only way to make the trajectory align with the sixth-floor window is to assume JFK was leaning markedly forward when the bullet struck.

Another amateurish blunder. Umm, the distance is definitely relevant because it affects the velocity at which the bullet strikes the object. The longer the bullet has to travel through air, the more its velocity will be reduced.

Plus, as the scientists who conducted the test explained, the very short distance meant the bullet did not have time to stabilize its flight: "We hypothesized that this was the result of a short shooting distance that did not allow the bullet to stabilize properly."

When are you going to back up your spurious claim that WCC 6.5 mm FMJ bullets behave differently than all other FMJ bullets? Where do you get that piece of fiction? Can you cite a single forensic source that even implies this?

Why do you suppose Dr. DiMaio did not specify that his statements about the behavior of FMJ bullets did not apply to WCC 6.5 mm FMJ bullets? Obviously, because those FMJ bullets behave like all other FMJ bullets.

You constantly just make up nonsense that you want to believe and then pretend that it explains facts that refute your theory.

MG: I should add that by "very short distance," I mean very short, like 5 meters (15 feet).

In a ballistics test done in 2023 and published in the July 2023 issue of the International Journal of Legal Medicine, three bullets were fired into blocks of 10% ballistics gelatin from a distance of just 5 meters (15 feet). The bullets were fired from a Tikka M65 Sporter rifle, a high-velocity weapon (2700-2900 fps). The bullet were a full metal-jacketed Norma Jaktmatch bullet, a full-copper Norma Ecostrike bullet, and a soft-point Norma Oryx bullet.

Predictably, the soft-point (i.e., frangible) bullet left behind over three times more fragments than the FMJ bullet did, and the frangible bullet fragments were more than three times smaller than the FMJ bullet fragments.  Also, the frangible bullet's "fragment cloud" was more than two times larger than the FMJ bullet's fragment cloud. In addition, the FMJ bullet did not begin to fragment until it traveled 21.3 cm (8.3 inches) into the gelatin block, whereas the frangible bullet began to fragment virtually upon impact, fragmenting just 0.3 cm (0.1 inch or 1/10th of an inch) after it entered the gelatin block.

The distance is irrelevant. What matters is the velocity a bullet strikes the object at.