My article, "The JFK assassination - Could Oswald have made the shots?"

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80-100yds, 3 shots in 8 seconds? This is do able with virtually any repeater, and please remember that "marksman" is the LOWEST qualification.

While I have a great deal of respect for Marine Corps training, a Marine Corps "marksman" award is not given to really good shots. Those people score "sharpshooter" and the best score "Expert". Marskman means you didn't fail qualification, and very little else.

While the Carcano and the scope on it are far from the easiest to use within the allotted time, it has been recreated many times, so arguing about whether or not it could be done is moot.

As to whether Oswald did it/could have done it, well, the Warren Commission and history say Oswald did it. If you don't believe it was Oswald or only Oswald, nothing I can say is going to change your mind. And now, half a century later, I don't much care to argue.
 
As to whether Oswald did it/could have done it, well, the Warren Commission and history say Oswald did it. If you don't believe it was Oswald or only Oswald, nothing I can say is going to change your mind. And now, half a century later, I don't much care to argue.
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+1

And since there has been no new earth shaking evidence put forth a half century later, there's really no need to argue.

Where's that 'dead horse getting beat' icon when ya need it? :D
 
The only thing I found to debate in the linked article was the comment that the 6.5mm Caracano was a good rifle because if it wasn't a good rifle they'd have replaced it & they didn't do so.

Actually they did, twice.

Unfortunately the corresponding "new caliber" ammo couldn't be made in time & with enough quantity so they swapped back to the old rifle, even re-working some that had already been converted.

Was it a great rifle like the classic Mausers, Lee-Enfields, '03's & Garands, not really it was a kind of second place runner up along with many other ok, but not great W2 rifles.
 
Oswald qualified as a sharpshooter out of boot camp. He later re-qualified as a marksman while serving in Japan.

There was testimony from his wife that Oswald spent hours dry firing and working the action of the Carcano.

One of the problems people have using the 6.5mm Carcano is that the bullet size is slightly larger (6.80mm) than other more common nominally 6.5mm bullets.
Unfortunately many modern commercial cartridges sold as 6.5x52mm Carcano were/are made with smaller diameter bullets. That was one cause for people saying the Carcano was not accurate.

My own experience with the Carcano was a few afternoons shooting a friends gun. It had paper plate accuracy at about 50yds off hand.
 
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"The only thing I found to debate in the linked article was the comment that the 6.5mm Caracano was a good rifle because if it wasn't a good rifle they'd have replaced it & they didn't do so.

Actually they did, twice."

I'll grant you that one as my argument that "If the Carcano was really so bad they would have replaced it" is more subjective than the rest of the arguments I tried to use in the article.

The basic point though is it was a serviceable military issue rifle and not nearly as bad as it's been made out to be ever since.
 
I do have one odd technical question on the Caracano. It involves the charging of the clips. Could they be loaded with less than 6 rounds & still function, or were they similar to the M-1 Garand in that they had to be fully loaded to function?
 
Like Oswald, I scored sharpshooter,not in the USMC, in the US Army. I know for a fact I could have made those 2 shots from the 6th floor with that rifle,practicing with it as LHO did. Remember,the first shot missed. So the clock starts at ZERO with the miss. The second shot hits both JFK and Governor Connolly at 3.7 seconds.
The fatal third head shot is at 8.4 seconds. He really took his time on that fatal hit. Almost 5 full seconds. Just count out 5 s-e-c-o-n-d-s slowly. It's a lifetime

8.4 seconds to run out 2 shots at a slow moving vehicle going slightly downhill AWAY from you (a advantage) at 11-15 MPH is putty for a good shooter. Plus,the Secret Service driver,William Greer, jamming the brakes before the fatal shot instead of speeding up,which he spent the rest of his life regretting.

Now, I am trying to kill the POTUS,the most powerful man in the world,knowing my chances of escape are miniscule IF I can pull it off. Will my nerves hold up? Can my hand and eye co-ordination be steady enough to do this fairly simple mechanical task?

Maybe not for me and thousands of others who normally would be capable. But Lee Harvey Oswald made those two shots that changed the world.

This PBS documentary run last week, JFK:Cold Case adds much weight to the discussion of the second shot hitting both JFK and Gov. Connally. 53 minutes:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/cold-case-jfk.html
 
The question is this: Could Oswald have fired three shots with a Carcano carbine from the Texas Schoolbook Depository, and hit the President twice, at distances up to 81 meters, in the roughly 5 ¼ to 8 ½ seconds allowed by most estimates."
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I one of the current News specials about Oswald, it was stated that Marina had observed him "sitting on the porch, working the action of his rifle rapidly and he continued to do that for a long time." It would seem Oswald was practicing(dry firing), with the Carcano. Presumably, he had the opportunity to master the action and acquire the speed necessary to do it within that amount of time. He was known to diligently apply practice to other pursuits (Reading, Writing and speaking Russian without an accent), so if follows that he could be very motivated and diligent in his practice to the point where, between time of his acquiring the rifle to the Kennedy shooting, he very well could have been an expert in rapidly shooting the Carcano accurately.
 
Yes ,he spent long hours on their front porch in New Orleans before the move to Dallas ,working the bolt and adjusting the scope.

On the evening of April 10,1963, after the the move to Dallas, he fired at General Edwin Walker with the Carcano as Walker stood in his living room. Only a wood cross lattice in the window saved Walker,the bullet hitting one inch from his head on the wall behind him.

Oswald had left written instructions with Marina on what to do if he was captured after killing the General.
 
"I do have one odd technical question on the Caracano. It involves the charging of the clips. Could they be loaded with less than 6 rounds & still function, or were they similar to the M-1 Garand in that they had to be fully loaded to function?"

Actually, you can load both the Mannlicher and the Garand clips with fewer than their standard number and they will function...

IF...

You can get them into the rifle without spilling the rounds and, in the case of the M 1, if you can get the cartridges properly staggered.

The biggest problem with the Mannlicher style clip is that it is actually slightly warped when the first round is fed, and that can make it very hard to get a partial clip loaded, or reload a used clip.
 
"The only thing I found to debate in the linked article was the comment that the 6.5mm Caracano was a good rifle because if it wasn't a good rifle they'd have replaced it & they didn't do so.

Actually they did, twice."


Well, no, really.

In the 1930s the Italians did develop and begin to field a new rifle cartridge, the 7.35x51 Carcano, but it was based on the 6.5x52 Carcano round.

More importantly, the rifle itself saw only minimal alterations. The basic Carcano rifle, the bolt and trigger mechanism as well as the Mannlicher packet clip feed magazine system, were unchanged.

So, in reality, the Italians began to change their service cartridge, but they never changed their service rifle.

When it became apparent that they were never going to be able to rearm completely with the 7.35, and it was a burden on logistics, they recalled the 7.35s and converted them to 6.5 by simply rebarreling the Carcano action. I don't believe that they even needed to alter the magazine system at all.
 
Not to change the subject, but I have been watching some of the original films from news organizations of the time of the killing and it was humors :( how many got the gun wrong, one reporter (who was said to be a gun expert) said that he saw the gun when they carried it out of the depository and recognized it as a 30 caliber Mauser Caracano. Another said it was a 30-30 and another said it was a German 30-30 hunting rifle.
 
Reference the "Newspaper reports" getting things/details wrong.

My Dad had a good quote, "The only thing you can trust written in a newspaper, is at the top of the front page, top right hand corner, the price"

Not much has changed in 60 years.
 
I owned a carcano carbine for a while. It was one of the slickest functioning bolt actions I have owned. The en bloc clip worked great, and the bolt was very smooth. In fact, the carcano I owned was was slicker to operate than just about any other military bolt gun, with the exception of the Swiss K31 straight pull.
Plus, the 6.5 round had a low recoil impulse.
Shooting the carcano made me believe Oswald's weapon was capable of the job.

I still don't believe he acted alone.
 
I owned a carcano carbine for a while. It was one of the slickest functioning bolt actions I have owned. The en bloc clip worked great, and the bolt was very smooth. In fact, the carcano I owned was was slicker to operate than just about any other military bolt gun, with the exception of the Swiss K31 straight pull.
Plus, the 6.5 round had a low recoil impulse
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This!!!

In the hands of a good rifleman the Carcano can be fired very quickly. The action is smoother than any other bolt action rifle i've ever owned except, perhaps, the US Krag.

i've owned a few dozen Carcano carbines and rifles. In the early to late 50s like new Carcanos often sold for $15 or less. They were cheap because military surplus ammunition for them was scarce. My brother and i got our ammo from Philip J. Medicus.

Presently own five Carcanos. One model 91/41 makes consistent 1.5" groups at 100 yards using handloads loaded with the Hornady 160 grain .268 bullet. It is nearly as accurate as my 1903 Springfield match rifle.

Firing three well aimed rounds in eight seconds from a Carcano rifle equipped with a cheap scope is no great feat.

Yep, Oswald was capable of firing three well aimed rounds in 8.5 seconds.
 
I was 15 when Kennedy was shot and always believed that it would have taken a better marksman with a better weapon to make those shots. That is, until a couple decades later when I happened to be in Dallas on business and took a bit of time to walk around Dealy Plaza. I was amazed to find how much more compact the entire area is than I had envisioned from the TV images and how much smaller the distance actually was from the School Book Depository window to where Kennedy was hit. I came away thinking that the shots were easily make-able by anyone with even the most rudimentary rifle skills.
 
80m is certainly not that far, especially if he had optics on the rifle. 3 shots in 9 seconds is completely plausible from that range.

I remember discussing this in my history class in high school and we watched a video that claimed that the top FBI marksmen couldn't achieve the shots made with the rifle. I didn't know the range at the time, but if I did I probably would've thought differently. The fact that the vehicle JFK was in was moving, isn't that significant if it was moving at a constant speed. It wouldn't be that difficult to make the shots by tracking the moving target, especially since the vehicle was moving at very slow speed.

I say plausible. In fact, I think most any average shooter could probably make comparable shots, with minimal training.
 
In an article for the "Tom Clancy Companion", Tom Clancy opined that Mr. Oswald could have made the shots with iron sights, which is what I sort of tend to believe.
 
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