Excellent post Charles. I never could understand how it could have been five seconds after he stopped filming on Houston that the first shot occurred. You have persuaded me that he wasn't sure about anything. So what you are saying is that Hughes was filming during the shots. So let's see how that fits with others.
It is odd that the official account of Hughes says he stopped filming the motorcade on Houston before the first shot. This is what is stated in the Sixth Floor Museum:
- "Original 8mm color home movie filmed by Robert Hughes, showing the presidential motorcade in Dealey Plaza before shots were fired and the aftermath immediately following the shooting. Hughes filmed the presidential motorcade until just a few seconds before the first shot, then captured some of the aftermath of the assassination, including police searching for suspects in a railroad yard and outside the Book Depository building. "
If you are right, we should be seeing in Hughes' some reaction of people along Houston and in the motorcade to a shot. But we don't. None. In fact, we can see Robert Jackson sitting on the back of the blue press convertible directly in front of the last car in Hughes film (white and red convertible):
Jackson said that as they rounded the corner he threw a film canister to a reporter waiting at the corner to and they were turned toward the fellow fetching the film off the road when the first shot sounded. We can see Jackson in that last frame and he shows no signs of reacting to a shot.
This frame from the Hughes film shows the VP Security car turning toward the TSBD:
I suggest that it shows the position of the car at this position:
which has the front of the VP Security Car even with the rounded curb to the left of the car. Looking at the Zapruder film the frame showing the VP security car in that position just even with the round curb is z145:
Now in Hughes' film, this frame is exactly two seconds after the frame showing the turning VP Security car at frame z145:
Two seconds after z145 is z182. (It is maybe as much as half a second before the last frame of Hughes on Houston). According to Jackson that is still before the first shot. So all of that puts the first shot after z191. Oddly enough, that fits with what Betzner said (after his z186 photo) and what Phil Willis said (just before his z202 photo).
According to Jackson that is still before the first shot.What!!!??? Did you perhaps mean according to your interpretation of the image as showing Jackson’s apparent lack of an obvious reaction?
I believe that that segment of Hughes’ film includes the first shot but ends before the second shot. The extremely unusual six-frame (~1/3-second) stoppage of the camera in that segment is an indicator of a first shot startle reaction by Hughes (in my opinion). There are numerous other events that seem to me to confirm my belief.
The images of the cameramen in camera car 3 as seen on Hughes’ film seem to me to confirm this belief. James Featherston was the person that Bob Jackson threw his roll of exposed film to. He was right at the corner of Main & Houston. He appears in Altgens’ third photo according to Trask page 311-312.
Here’s an account of what happened (Trask, pages 418-419):
Testified Couch several months later, “Everyone gave a sigh a [sic] relief that - uh - it was over; and one of the cameramen, I remember, his camera broke and another one was out of film. Everyone was relaxed.” At the Houston Street corner Bob Jackson had thrown out a roll of exposed film to a colleague [James Featherson] waiting at the corner, and as the film rolled into the gutter, those aboard the camera car watched the comical scene of a reporter scrambling for the film. Couch continued in his testimony, “… I remember I was talking and we were laughing and I was looking back to a fellow on my right - I don’t know who it was - we were joking. We had just made the turn. And I heard the first shot.”
Up ahead the President’s vehicle had already turned onto Elm and Camera Car 3 was on Houston in front of the Dallas County Criminal Courts Building some 40 feet northerly of the Main Street corner. Underwood thought the noise to be a giant firecracker, while Couch’s first reaction was that it sounded like a motorcycle backfire. Darnell described the noise as a backfire from an automobile. In those next seemingly long and uncontrollable seconds, Camera Car 3 continued its forward motion some 160 feet along Houston Street towards the direction of the Texas School Book Depository Building looming to its front left.
When later asked to describe what transpired following the first noise, Couch responded,
As I recall nothing —
there was no particular reaction; uh - nothing unusual. Maybe everybody sort of look around a little, but didn’t think much of it. And - uh - then, in a few seconds, I gues from four-five seconds later, or even less, we heard the second shot. And then we began to look in front of us - in the motorcade in front of us. And, as I said, the shots or the noises were fairly close together. They were fairly even in sound - and - uh, by then, one could recognize, or if he had heard a high-powered rifle, he would feel that it was a high-powered rifle. You would get that impression… Uh - as I say, the first shot, I had no particular impressions; but the second shot, I remember turning - several of us turning - and looking together, it seemed like. And after the third shot, Bob Jackson, who was as I recall on my right, yelled something like, ‘Look up in the window! There’s a rifle!’ And I remember glancing up to a window on the far right which at the time impressed me as the sixth or seventh floor and seeing about a foot of rifle being - the barrel brought into the window. I saw no one in that window, - just a quick one-second glance at the barrel.
By then end of the third shot Camera Car 3, some 80-feet from the Book Depository Building was in the process of making its sharp left turn. As the car arcked left, the vehicle in front seemed to hesitate and then stop. The pandemonium of people in the street and sidewalk reacting to the shots was enough for some of the car’s occupants to take advantage of their halted vehicle and vault over the side to see what was happening.
This is a good example of how the same evidence can be interpreted two different ways. We are all guilty of confirmation bias at times. But, I believe that Couch’s description supports my interpretation very well. The cameramen in that car apparently did not have a visual reaction to the first noise. This agrees with probably most accounts of witnesses that were in Dealey Plaza during the assassination who say similar things about reactions to the first noise.
