Was the "pristine" bullet really pristine?
There is hardly a topic about the JFK assassination that is more distorted
than the nature of CE 399, the nearly whole bullet found on a stretcher in
Parkland Hospital. It is often called the "magic bullet" or the
"pristine bullet." This essay shows that both these terms are false
and highly misleading. The bullet was neither magic nor pristine. In fact, it
was significantly distorted.
CE 399 usually shown from the side, like this:
This view makes it seem undistorted. However, when viewed from the bottom end, it is seen to be distinctly distorted:
(Image from Kennedy and Lincoln, by Dr. John K. Lattimer)
As Dr. John K. Lattimer has stated, to distort a full-metal jacketed bullet
like this requires viselike forces. This bullet is anything but pristine! These
forces acted on the bullet as it sliced into the two men's bodies at initial
speeds of about 1800 feet per second.
But aren't such deformations far less than would be expected for a bullet
smashing into a body? In other words, isn't CE 399 deformed too little to have
passed through one or two human bodies? Contemporary ballistic data give the lie
to this claim as well. The photos below show the progressive deformation of
full-metal jacketed bullets as the are shot into gelatin (similar to human
flesh) at speeds from 474 meters per second to 977 meters per second. Note how
they remain intact up to 652 meters per second. At speeds of 769 meters per
second, they break apart at the seam in the middle, and eventually disintegrate
into many pieces large and small.
(Image from page 176 of Wound Ballistics and the Scientific Background, by Karl G. Sellier and Beat P. Kneubuehl, Elsevier 1994)
The picture below shows a better view of the ends of this same kind of bullet, with speeds of impact (left to right) of 600 m/s, 630 m/s, 670 m/s, 690 m/s, and 710 m/s. Note how similar the second and third cases look to CE 399. This is not surprising, since the impact velocity of the second case, 630 m/s, is 2070 feet per, second, which is very similar to CE 399's 1800 feet per second. Thus, in spite of all the strong claims made about CE 399, it does not seem unusual at all.
(Image from page 177 of Sellier and Kneubuehl)
To be fair, we must note that CE 399 seems more somewhat deformed for its
speed than the test bullets shown above. This is because CE 399 entered JFK's
back at something of an angle, not perpendicular the way these test bullets were
fired. The more of an angle, the more the bullet will be distorted.
But can a Mannlicher-Carcano bullet penetrate two men? Easily, for that's
what it was designed to do. According to the Geneva Convention of 1925, military
bullets are to pass through soldiers and wound, not to disintegrate inside them and kill. If you
have any doubts about the penetrating power of a Mannlicher-Carcano bullet,
consider the photo below, which shows experiments run by Dr. Lattimer and Dr.
John Nichols.
(Image from Lattimer's book)
Note the the bullets penetrated two feet of tough elm and four feet (!) of Ponderosa pine. And
they still weren't deformed significantly. As the Garrison character in JFK said,
"That's some bullet!"
Another argument centering on the "pristine" character of CE 399 is
that it had lost too many fragments to have passed through both men. A strange
argument, indeed, for it is now invoking the LACK of pristine character (like
having pristinity both ways). Again, Lattimer's experiments give the lie. The
pictures below show one of their test bullets fired through a close
approximation to a human cadaver. As with 399, some lead was squeezed out the
base. As opposed to Dr. Finck, who claimed that CE 399 could not have passed
through the men because it had shed four fragments, Lattimer's test bullet
yielded 41 (!) fragments from the same two grains of lead that CE 399 had lost.
(Image from Lattimer's book)
In summary, we have here a case where truth is stranger than fiction. CE 399, far from being the unbelievable bullet that the JFK critical movement claims, actually behaved totally normally as it passed with ease through two bodies and did exactly what it was designed to do. There is NO MYSTERY associated with CE 399. The term "magic bullet" is false and highly misleading. Students of JFK should never again utter these words.