Tuesday, October 15, 2024: TWOfer Tuesday - The "Shims" Edition

 

Next month will mark the 61st anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States.

The official narrative states that he was fatally shot from the nearby Texas School Book Depository by Lee Harvey Oswald while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas.

The weapon Oswald supposedly used was a 20 year old Italian 6.5×52mm Carcano Model 38 long-barrelled rifle, with a telescopic sight, that he purchased via mail order.  

According to the Warren Report, (Testimony of William Waldman, Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits, vol. 7, p. 368.) The 4-power telescope was made by Ordnance Optics, and had been attached to the rifle by a gunsmith at Klein's Sporting Goods, an American retailer, shortly before being sold as a single unit with the surplus rifle, to Oswald.

Again, according the Warren Report itself (Warren Commission Hearings: 3 WCH 440-5), The rifle couldn't be perfectly sighted using the scope without installing two metal shims (small metal plates), which were not present when the rifle arrived for testing, and were never found at the scene.  FBI Special Agent Robert A. Frazier testified that there was "a rather severe scrape" on the scope tube, and that the sight could have been bent or damaged. He was unable to determine when the defect occurred before the FBI received the rifle and scope on November 27, 1963.

The defect of the rifle’s scope, before it was corrected with the use of shims, caused shots fired from the weapon to land a few inches high and to the right of the target. The scope could not be properly aligned with the target because the sight reached the limit of its adjustment before reaching accurate alignment.

The shooting tests arranged by the Warren Commission with the expectation that they would prove that Oswald could have assassinated JFK with that carbine, ended up proving, on the contrary, that it was nearly impossible for Oswald (or anyone else) to have used the weapon to shoot Kennedy.

Conclusion text attributed to Wilkes, Donald E. Jr., "Lee Harvey Oswald, the Patsy" (2013). Popular Media. 180.

 

Anyway, here's a couple of songs with shim in the title.