General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: CNN Tonight: The Assassination of JFK [View all]Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)a) Kennedy and Connally react at the same time. Connally's jacket lapel flips outward at Z224, just after the limo emerges from behind the Stemmons Freeway sign:
That's because of a bullet passing through him.
Also: the wound of entry in Connally's back? is slightly oblate (ovoid). This means it was caused by a bullet that was tumbling. A full metal jacketed bullet tumbles after striking something (in this case after passing through the soft tissues of Kennedy's torso without striking bone). The actual relative positions of Kennedy and Connally were such that a bullet entering Kennedy's back where it did and exiting near his throat would have HAD to strike Connally because it had nowhere else to go. Which is exactly what happened.
And the "pristine bullet"? Not pristine, at all. Flattened, slightly bent, lead extruding from the base. A Dr John K Lattimer reconstructed the wounds, using the relative positions of Kennedy and Connally, and found that a bullet causing similar wounds would experience similar deformations to those observed in CE399. The path of the bullet? it was slowed by transit of Kennedy's body; struck Connally, was deflected along a rib, exited below the right nipple, struck the wrist and was embedded partly in the thigh. The reason it didn't deform more on striking Connally's wrist? Simple physics, it had already spent much of its energy (the "test bullets" fired point-blank through the wrists of cadavers in the tests at Edgewood Arsenal are not a valid comparison).
And the autopsy, the forensic review of the Ramsey Clark panel, and the forensic review of the HSCA panel are all in 100% agreement that the wound in JFK's back is a wound of entry, not exit.