JFK's Head Snap and the Implausible Jet-Effect and Neurospasm Theories

[Joe Elliott]

The way I'see it at the moment is that the argument for an impact earlier than z224 is the preceding frame in which Connally is sat looking completely untroubled.

The Croft photo can be fairly accurately synchronised with z160, give or take a few frames. In it we see Connally looking towards his wife, Nellie. If we roll the Zfilm forward from this point and focus on Connally we can just about make out him looking towards his left then turning his head to the right. He stays in this position as he passes behind the Stemmons sign. As he emerges from behind the sign the first good look at him is z223 in which he looks totally calm and composed and his jacket hasn't started to bulge. It seems clear to me he has not been shot. In z224 we see the right-hand side of his jacket beginning to bulge, this is the shot which passed through both men. z225 the beginning of JFK's 'hand snap' reflex, z226 both men begin to react to being shot.

An impact at z222 should not cause Connally to show pain in his face by z223. That would be too fast a reaction. So, his face showing no pain at z223 is no reason to reject an impact at z222.

Reaction times are hard to estimate. You can’t just shoot someone to find out. People can claim the reaction should start in 100 milliseconds or 150 milliseconds or 200 milliseconds. There is never going to be a way to test these claims.

How long it takes a coat to move is something that can be tested, as many times as one likes. This is clearly the rational method to estimate when the bullet impact took place. And these tests have been done and show the coat moves 100 milliseconds after the bullet passes through it. I’m not going to overrule these real-world tests just because someone claims, with no real-world supporting evidence, that the face would register pain in 55 milliseconds.

Question:

Should our estimates on when the bullet impact took place be based on reactions we cannot test or on reactions we can test?

[Bill Chapman]

Thanks Bill that's really cleared things up 

Oswald Ass Kisser
Oswald Ass Kicker
Conspiracy Theorist(er)
LNer ??

Actually that doesn't make sense to me. Isn't a CTer a OAKicker?

ass arse

LN = Lone nutter = Oswald did it alone
CT = Conspiracy Theorists = AnyBodyButOswald = A gazillion conspiracy theories

[John Iacoletti]

and will only listen to arguments that I find compelling

 

[Dan O'meara]

An impact at z222 should not cause Connally to show pain in his face by z223. That would be too fast a reaction. So, his face showing no pain at z223 is no reason to reject an impact at z222.

Reaction times are hard to estimate. You can’t just shoot someone to find out. People can claim the reaction should start in 100 milliseconds or 150 milliseconds or 200 milliseconds. There is never going to be a way to test these claims.

How long it takes a coat to move is something that can be tested, as many times as one likes. This is clearly the rational method to estimate when the bullet impact took place. And these tests have been done and show the coat moves 100 milliseconds after the bullet passes through it. I’m not going to overrule these real-world tests just because someone claims, with no real-world supporting evidence, that the face would register pain in 55 milliseconds.

Question:

Should our estimates on when the bullet impact took place be based on reactions we cannot test or on reactions we can test?

Hi Joe,

You are quite right, after looking at my post again I've put too much emphasis on Connally's appearance and obviously he wouldn't be reacting to the shot that quickly. Even in z224 where we can see his jacket beginning to move his face looks unconcerned (by the way, you previously stated that z224 showed the maximum bulge of the jacket which is wrong. In z225 the jacket has clearly bulged out further, it seems fairly obvious):

Question: Should we trust our own eyes or some dodgy, assumption-led test?

The part of my reply that you edited out in such an heroic fashion referred to the jacket bulging and it was this part of my response I should have emphasised, it is this that demonstrates when the bullet has passed through both men:

Question: Should you critique the complete response or edit it to suit your own needs?

The jacket bulging is an instantaneous mechanical response to an impact. You talk about tests where the bullet passes straight through the jacket which then moves 100 milliseconds later. It is all based on the assumption that the bullet passed cleanly through the jacket. In your earlier post you claim the jacket is moved by the 'debris' that exits Connally's chest. So you are claiming the bullet passes through Connally and the jacket after which the 'debris' waits for 100 milliseconds before exiting:

Question: Do you see the corner you've painted yourself into?

I'm not saying you do, but if anyone believes CE 399 shattered Connally's wrist bone, the thick end of the radius, and came out looking like it did is suffering from 'Magical Thinking'. I accept that some kind of miraculous event may have possibly occurred but I wouldn't put my eggs in that basket. At the moment my intuition is telling me the bullet that passed through JFK and then shattered Connally's rib had lost enough momentum to have difficulty getting through Connally's jacket, causing it to bulge on contact - z224. I need to go to dodgytesting.com to find something that corroborates my hunch.

[Duncan MacRae]

A CTer is an OAKisser
An LNer is an OAKicker

A heads up for all.

Calling a fellow member either of the above acronyms may be construed by some as a personal insult, and if reported as such by the allegedly insulted member, would result, after consideration by admin, in a posting ban which would require a readmission fee of ($20) in order to allow posting privileges to be restored.

[Michael T. Griffith]

Look, Governor Connally himself said he was positive he was not hit before Z234, and he's the guy who took the hit, who felt it, and who knows his body better than anyone else. The autopsy doctors established at the autopsy that the back wound had no exit point. They had to destroy the first draft of the autopsy report and rewrite it when they realized this would not work for the lone-gunman theory. When Dr. Mantik examined the autopsy x-rays, he found there is no path from the back wound to the throat wound without smashing through the spine. Dr. Nichols, a professor of pathology, deduced the same fact without the benefit of seeing the x-rays.

The holes in the back of Kennedy's coat and shirt prove the back wound was too low for the single-bullet theory--and no, the coat and shirt did not magically bunch up in nearly perfect correspondence to create two overlapping holes that were at least 2 inches lower than the wound. We have numerous witnesses--federal agents, medical technicians, and doctors--who said the back wound was about 5 inches down from the top of the collar, that it was visibly below the top of the shoulder blade. And we have known for years, from a document that was never supposed to be seen--the transcript of the 27 January 1964 WC executive session--that chief counsel J. Lee Rankin said the bullet entered Kennedy's back below the shoulder blade. Rankin even referred to a picture (obviously one of the autopsy photos) which he said showed that "the bullet entered below the shoulder blade." But none of this matters to lone-gunman theorists, because they must cling to the absurd single-bullet theory since there can be no lone-gunman theory without it.

Anyway, back to the subject of the thread:

I think objective readers will notice that the WC apologists who are replying in this thread have no good answers for the powerful evidence against the neurospasm theory and the jet-effect theory. They can't even admit that the damage that the HSCA FPP said was done at T1 would have prevented the lightening-quick neuromuscular reaction that they say occurred. Nor will they acknowledge the readily observable fact that Kennedy's reaction to the headshot is nothing like the goat's reaction in the goat films, which makes the neurospasm theory downright silly from the get-go. And the specious nature of their position can be seen in the fact that in one breath they say that a bullet from behind pushed Kennedy's head forward by 0.6 to 2.3 inches in 40 milliseconds but that a bullet from the front could not have caused Kennedy's head to move backward to any degree.

[Ross Lidell]

Look, Governor Connally himself said he was positive he was not hit before Z234, and he's the guy who took the hit, who felt it, and who knows his body better than anyone else. The autopsy doctors established at the autopsy that the back wound had no exit point. They had to destroy the first draft of the autopsy report and rewrite it when they realized this would not work for the lone-gunman theory. When Dr. Mantik examined the autopsy x-rays, he found there is no path from the back wound to the throat wound without smashing through the spine. Dr. Nichols, a professor of pathology, deduced the same fact without the benefit of seeing the x-rays.

The holes in the back of Kennedy's coat and shirt prove the back wound was too low for the single-bullet theory--and no, the coat and shirt did not magically bunch up in nearly perfect correspondence to create two overlapping holes that were at least 2 inches lower than the wound. We have numerous witnesses--federal agents, medical technicians, and doctors--who said the back wound was about 5 inches down from the top of the collar, that it was visibly below the top of the shoulder blade. And we have known for years, from a document that was never supposed to be seen--the transcript of the 27 January 1964 WC executive session--that chief counsel J. Lee Rankin said the bullet entered Kennedy's back below the shoulder blade. Rankin even referred to a picture (obviously one of the autopsy photos) which he said showed that "the bullet entered below the shoulder blade." But none of this matters to lone-gunman theorists, because they must cling to the absurd single-bullet theory since there can be no lone-gunman theory without it.

Anyway, back to the subject of the thread:

I think objective readers will notice that the WC apologists who are replying in this thread have no good answers for the powerful evidence against the neurospasm theory and the jet-effect theory. They can't even admit that the damage that the HSCA FPP said was done at T1 would have prevented the lightening-quick neuromuscular reaction that they say occurred. Nor will they acknowledge the readily observable fact that Kennedy's reaction to the headshot is nothing like the goat's reaction in the goat films, which makes the neurospasm theory downright silly from the get-go. And the specious nature of their position can be seen in the fact that in one breath they say that a bullet from behind pushed Kennedy's head forward by 0.6 to 2.3 inches in 40 milliseconds but that a bullet from the front could not have caused Kennedy's head to move backward to any degree.

So you believe that a bullet fired from the grassy knoll caused the "back and to the left" movement of President Kennedy?

[Brian Roselle]

Just a couple of comments I have on the jacket movement/shot timing.
 
Effectively what I think may have happened in such a scenario is any exiting chest debris as well as the jacket itself was immediately imparted with velocity as the bullet penetrated, but at a much slower velocity than the bullet (it doesn’t pick up near the full velocity of the bullet that just  transversed).  I don’t think it would wait for a while and then move.  The displacement as seen on film could be a function of the impacted material velocity, and how far it moved in one frame at its resultant velocity, and then the ability of the film/camera angle to show incremental position at resultant speed in one frame.

The right jacket area looked fully extended at z224, so if that is the result of the bullet’s imparted velocity on mass movement (chest debris or the jacket itself), the bullet transiting was a bit earlier.

The jacket may have been in its initial stages of motion as early as z223, but the displacement not quite great enough yet to readily pick out.

Of course this dynamic has been argued as speculative, but there is one other piece I observed that appears to be relevant or possibly supportive.

2 frames before the full jacket displacement at z224, at z222, I see the cuff of Connally’s white shirt of his right arm just a bit out from his suit jacket sleeve, visible just above the edge of the limo as his hand holds his hat.

In less than or equal to 55 ms, at z223, it appears to have been be driven down, totally out of view.

In the next frame at z224 the jacket flip becomes maximally visible. If his right wrist was struck violently in a downward manner by a bullet, might one expect the wrist to disappear from view in a manner like this very quickly?  If a bullet hit the wrist and drove it out of view between 222 and 223, the shot may actually have been triggered around z219 with the bullet approaching the limo ~z221?