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Can we GURPS the Kennedy assassination?
Let's try!
The range was between 175 to 265 feet (58 to 88 yards), -9 to -10 for range.
There's a, give or take, 50' (16 yards) difference in elevation. This takes 8 yards off the effective range.
So 50 to 80 yards for range penalties of -8 to -10.
The car is going 12-15 miles per hour for worst case penalties of -3 to -4 as it crosses the window.
-11 for the first shot. The speed of the car matters less as the angle changes, but the range increases, so -12 for the second and subsequent shots.
80 yards is well within the 650 yard half damage range, so he gets the full 5d pi.
-12 is a heck of a penalty, and note he missed his first shot at the "easier" -11.
But he's aiming for the skull, another -7.
So a -18 to -19!
He gets a +1 for All-Out-Attack (Determined). The situation and timing preclude getting braced or accuracy bonuses.
-17 on the first shot (that missed) and -18 on the two that hit.
Except... The neck hit is just -5.
I think he was aiming for the skull and missed the first two shots. First completely, second by just one making the skull hit a body hit and the third round hits. Since the body and neck are identical in damage performance for piercing, let's just call it body.
Oswald's Guns/TL7 (Rifle) has to be at least 21 to have a chance of hitting at all. A chance below 3 is always a miss.
A roll of 3 or 4 is always a critical hit and I think we see that reflected in the damage.
The shot is nigh impossible, but I've seen players roll more than one crit hit in a row before...
Considering that the USMC scores for expert require hitting head sized groups at 500 yards (-21 penalty) he probably had enough skill. Perhaps even Guns/TL7 (Rifle) of 25 meaning he'd need to roll a 7 or less for a skull shot on the fateful day.
Now that we've got the bullets on target.
First round misses.
Second round misses skull and does 5d pi to the neck/body. Let's stick to average damage and roll a 17.
We'll also give the reasonably fit Kennedy 11 hit points.
17 against the body is a major wound and he rolls to stay conscious; and succeeds as we can tell by his grabbing his throat.
Governor Connolly takes 6 points to a random location (body) after the bullet passes through Kennedy.
Third round hits skull, again doing 17 points of damage. 2 are absorbed by the DR of the skull allowing 15 to penetrate. This is multiplied by 4 for 60 points of damage, bringing Mr Kennedy to -66 hit points and exactly auto-death.
Ta da!
The Kennedy Assassination GURPS. What else do I have to say?
Maybe the Carcano M38s I have fired were all terrible, and while I am a decent shot overall I'd not classify myself as an "expert"... Well, let's just say that would not have been the rifle I chose for a shot like that...
ReplyDeleteI've fondled some Carcanos that were sweet as anything, smooth action, clean crisp trigger. Remember, the Carcano was designed as a 300-500yd range rifle made to be easily handled in congested areas. Many a deer have been taken in woods and cramped areas with Carcanos since WWII.
DeleteToday it's harder to find a good one than it was back when.
DeleteOswald may have gotten lucky.
I've got a couple Carcanos. albeit not the "correct" M38. The one I have in 7.35 is a nice, smooth rifle. I haven't shot it past 100 yards, but at that, its accuracy is comparable to most other WWII era surplus rifles I have, Mosins, Mausers, Arisakas, etc. Maybe not quite as good as my Lee Enfield No 4 Mk1*, but that one is exceptional. The one I have in 6.5 is the longer model and to be honest I haven't had time since I got it to assemble ammo and get it to the range to try it out. Despite being imported from Ethiopia which is suspect, it is actually in very decent condition and the bore looks pretty good. Funny thing about it, is when it was delivered (pre-1989 antique so directly to my door, just like LHO) my dog freaked out. Something about that rifle offends her greatly. Must be some smell or something I can't detect (just smells musty and oily to me).
DeleteAnyway, just what I've seen in the past 20-25 years as far as qualiy of milsurp rifles on the market, I agree with Angus that it's far more likely that LHO would get a pristine example over 60 years ago than anything on the market in the past 20+ years. Might not have been "lucky" as much as just there were a lot of really high qualiy surplus rifles on the market back then. Anything that was garbage would have been put aside until supplies started to run out.
As Beans notes, back in the 1960s Carcanos, despite some awkwardness of their design, primarily the Mannlicher style magazine setup and the odd progressive rifling, were actually fairly popular with hunters and sportsmen. It still isn't uncommon to come across "sporterized" Carcanos that were probably chopped and drilled and tapped 50+ years ago when you are looking through racks of old rifles at gun shows or some gun stores.
-swj
Try with a shooter on the infamous grassy knoll. How else can you get blood and brain matter on the motorcops slightly trailing the limo. He'll be just as dead no matter.
ReplyDeletemaxx
The distance is much shorter. Just 30 yards, -7 range penalty for the third shot, -3 for vehicle movement and directly to the side of the vehicle. Considering the shot has to come from the front to rear, we can rule out the grassy knoll.
DeleteSecond shot is -6 for range and has the same aspect for the shot. Just impossible to get the angle to hit Connolly too.
People should really hit Google Maps and plot some of this out.
There's a third, claimed, shooting position for the shots to have come from the front but they fail to hit the windshield and the Secret Service agent in the front passenger seat.
Blood splatter analysis in 1962 was still in its infancy. By the 1980's, BSA was advanced enough to show, yeah, at that range, moving targets, head shots/neck shots, and such, blood and brain splatter was possible and consistent with what happened from the window.
DeleteYou know, what a lot of people fail to think about is that Oswald just didn't receive his gun in the mail the day of the shooting. He got it in time to do lots of practice and lots of maintenance, so he most likely knew how his gun worked and felt.
ReplyDeleteSo, how does practice with and knowledge of THAT particular weapon (not weapon like randomly picking up a Carcano) factor in GURPS? Because, yeah, takes a good shot, but familiarization should add something, right?
Side note: When my brother went to Parris Island in 1981, they were firing on 1000yd targets with the recruit-over maintained and over-used M16 variant that the Marines had on the island, and head shots were not uncommon (young motivated people with good eyesight can achieve miracles.) So to me the 'impossible from the window' shots are quite possible.
Weapon Bond
DeleteYou own a weapon that’s uniquely suited to you. Add +1
to effective skill when using it. This has nothing to do with
quality – you’re just used to your weapon. If you lose the
weapon, you lose this perk! You may start play with a bond to
any weapon bought with cash or as Signature Gear.
This perk is almost universal among gun fu practitioners.
Note that many gunmen use sets of weapons – especially
paired handguns. To get the above benefits with all of those
weapons, buy one perk per weapon.
I neither ask nor expect you to post this, just passing the info along for your eyes assuming you read it, because I know you go for accuracy whenever possible:
ReplyDeleteUSMC Table 1 rifle standards are a bullseye (Able 12" diameter) target for slow fire at 200Y (15 rds/15 min, 5 sitting, 5 kneeling, and 5 standing offhand) and 300Y (5 rds/5min sitting), and the upper torso (Dog target, 19" tall, 26" wide) for 10-shot/60-second strings of rapid fire at 200Y and 300Y, standing-to-sitting and standing-to-prone, respectively.
At 500Y, they're shooting at the full torso (B Modified target, 20" wide, 40" tall - 10 rds/10 min all prone).
And most raw recruits manage 70% or better bullseyes at all ranges. Experts tend to shoot 80-95% bullseyes, esp. in slow fire. Most misses are in rapid fire. The slow fire, esp. the bullseye shooting, is generally considered easy pickings.
That part of the course of fire hasn't materially changed, AFAIK, from 1940ish-present, so Oswald would have received the same training/practice, annually, albeit with the M-1 Garand.
Just for info.
https://www.trngcmd.marines.mil/Portals/207/Docs/wtbn/MPMS/Target%20Dimension%20and%20Scoring%20with%20threat%20target%20[Compatibility%20Mode].pdf?ver=2016-11-15-150559-377
FWIW, for anyone who's been to Dealey Plaza, and shot either Army or USMC rifle qual courses, the question isn't if Oswald could have hit his target.
It's how, at such ridiculously close range, with a slowly moving target, he would have managed to miss once.
The magic comes into play when anyone tries to explain how Oswald was supposed to put a bullet into the necktie knot and out the spine of a man from 5 stories above and behind him.
Best wishes.
How did he miss one? Buck fever. Jerked it. Any of a number of reasons why guys in deer blinds miss a deer from 50 yards away. It happens to the best of shooters if they get excited.
DeletePeople knock the Italians for 'making' crappy guns during WWII. Because they lost. Yeah, their medium and heavy machine guns sucked, but so did the Japanese and the British and Russians were still using versions of Maxim guns from WWI.
ReplyDeleteHow good were the Italians? Gee, they took surplus Garands and managed to make a better version of the M14 (the BM59) than the US did.
A good Carcano was not unknown. Especially ones built before the country went into war production and the quality started slipping. And, thanks to the marvels of modern manufacturing, you could take 2-3 semi-good rifles and assemble one decent to very good one from all the pieces parts.
Cleaning the rifle you purchased, checking the action, maybe hitting places with a little emery paper, working the action back and forth with proper lubrication, will smooth the action. It's something we lazy Americans have forgotten with decent rifles purchasable from Walmart back in the day for $300, or from Sears or JC Pennys or the corner hardware store.
Yes. There were and are bad examples of the Carcano in either caliber. Lack of maintenance with pre-modern metals, poor storage, cheap manufacturing during war periods, people pawning junk guns off as good, and, of course, the view that the Italians were pretty worthless at everything ("Just look at their tanks, AmIright?") have tainted people's views of the guns.
Still, good enough to kill Ethiopians, British, Greek and Americans when used by good troops. Which the Italians had (not enough, but that's Mussolini's fault.)
I remember the days when people made fun of the Krag-Jorgensen. For a lot of the same reasons. Poor maintenance, poor storage, poor handling. But you talk to a fan of the gun and they'll often say it's a better, smoother action than an equivalent Mauser of the time.