XDA

On this day in 1963, Communist defector and loser Lee Harvey Oswald, despondent that his Russian wife Marina had refused his offer the night before to live with him again, took three shots at President Kennedy's motorcade as it passed slowly down the road at Dealey Plaza. Oswald was on the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository and was using an Italian rifle, a Carcano (sometimes called a Mannlicher Carcano) in 6.5 x 52mm, which he had purchased through the mail for $21.45 (ah, the good old days). It had a Ordnance Optics 4 x 18 telescopic sight. At the first shot, Kennedy was less than 200 feet away. Most shooters from height tend to overshoot and you have to lead a moving target, that is, aim ahead of it, but the distance was ideal and a target moving slowly away from you is very easy to deal with.

Oswald may have hurried and jerked his first shot and it completely missed the vehicle and hit the curb and slightly wounded someone in the crowd. A tree might have interfered with that shot. Oswald put the second round into Kennedy's high back and the bullet exited at his throat and then proceeded to wound Governor John Connolly sitting in the open car ahead of him. The bullet, 160 grains, round nosed, full metal jacket, only slightly flattened, actually fell from Connolly's thigh and was recovered from a gurney in the hospital later. Oswald again worked the bolt quickly and his last shot took out the right side of President Kennedy's head, killing him instantly. Here and here and here are film of the motorcade; the first two show the aftermath of the first shot through the head shot. Jackie Kennedy is seen picking up pieces of her husband's skull from the top of the trunk. People do strange things under stress. A huge industry has arisen to claim that Kennedy was not killed by a Communist loner, but by a weird, vast and so far undetected criminal, Cuban, CIA or right wing conspiracy. This is hooey. One guy, a lefty, as usual, Marine trained, with a scoped rifle at under a hundred yards did it. More and more people are slowly coming around to that fact.

Labels: John Kennedy; Lee Harvey Oswald.