(5 of 9)
Since the speed at which Zapruder's film was moving could be checked (18.3 frames a second), it served as a stopwatch on events. The presidential limousine was found to be traveling at only 11.2 m.p.h. In the film, Kennedy is seen to be waving to a sparse crowd when, unfortunately for later investigators, a large Stemmons Freeway sign blocks the view from Zapruder's camera (at frame 205). When the President emerges 1.09 seconds later (at frame 225), he is reaching for his throat and clearly has been hit. His head, all too graphically, is struck another 4.8 seconds later (at frame 313). Thus the two wounds had to be inflicted no more than six seconds apart and in no less than five seconds. It is also clear that Connally was hit neither before nor after Kennedy's successive blows; he is noticeably reacting to his own wounds before Kennedy is struck the second time.
Oswald's 6.5 mm. Mannlicher-Carcano Italian rifle required at least 2.3 seconds between each firing to work the bolt, aim and pull the trigger. Thus it was possible for Oswald to have fired both shots at Kennedy within five seconds—but not to have got off a third shot that wounded Connally within the same time span. Since the bullet that went through Kennedy's neck obviously was traveling on a downward course but left no hole anywhere in the car, the Warren Commission staff concluded that it must have hit Connally.
To Wecht and other skeptics, that was an impossibility. Oswald's alleged perch gave him a line of fire toward Kennedy of slightly left to right. Connally was seated in front of Kennedy. Yet the bullet exited from Kennedy's neck, grazing the left side of his tie knot. How then could it strike the right side of Connally? Only, scoffs Wecht, by "making an acute right turn in mid-air." That might be true if both Kennedy and Connally were seated stiffly upright and facing straight ahead at the time Kennedy was first hit. But there are no photos of this precise moment. Before the sign obscured him, Kennedy was last seen in the film to have been waving; Connally is shown turning to his right as he emerges from behind the sign.
Dr. John K. Lattimer, chairman of the department of urology at Columbia University medical school, has examined the autopsy material, analyzed the Zapruder film and, with his two sons, has fired some 600 rounds of ammunition with rifles identical to Oswald's. He notes that as a seated person turns to the right to look directly behind, he invariably first shifts his upper body slightly to the left. Such a movement could have aligned the two men to account for the single-bullet wounds. Moreover, the wound in Connally's back is not neatly circular; its vertical dimension is longer. Only a bullet that has struck something else and is tumbling would leave such a mark. The shape of Connally's thigh wound indicates that this turning bullet entered his leg backward. Lattimer's test firings of the powerful bullets into human-cadaver wrists also convince him that Connally's wrist would have been totally shattered if struck by a bullet that had not been drastically slowed up by other objects.