Recently, while researching the killing of policeman J D Tippit* in relation to the assassination of JFK, I realized the fact that the handgun allegedly used by Oswald to allegedly shoot Tippit (and which was allegedly in Oswald's possession when arrested at the theatre) was a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson.

Here's the excerpt from Groden's THE SEARCH FOR LEE HARVEY OSWALD describing Oswald's handgun:

Oswald was arrested at the Texas Theatre with, we are told, a revolver tucked away in the waistband of his slacks.... It was a Smith & Wesson .38 special two-inch Commando model revolver and cost $29.95. Connecting the weapon supposedly taken from Lee to the shooting of Tippit is problematic. A radio broadcast by Sergeant Gerald Hill, one of the first policemen to arrive at the scene of the Tippit murder, was transmitted as follows:

"The shell at the scene indicates that the suspect is armed with an automatic .38 rather than a pistol." The handgun allegedly taken from Oswald at the time of his arrest was a .38 revolver, not an automatic. Sergant Hill made his statement after Officer J. M. Poe, another officer on the scene, showed him a Winston cigarette package containing three empty bullet shells, which Domingo Benavides [witness in nearby truck] had turned over to him after the shooting. Ammunition for a revolver is not interchangeable with ammunition for an automatic, and the shells on either type of ammunition are clearly marked -- ".38 spl" (special for revolvers) or ".38 auto" (automatic)....After he was arrested, and accused of shooting president Kennedy and policeman Tippit, Oswald denied owning a Smith & Wesson handgun or a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle -- which were traced to him through a phony name and post-office box.

When I read the word "Commando" describing Oswald's .38 caliber handgun I wondered if this was the same kind JFK had used when he was a "Commander" during WWII. I recalled, from my reading, that JFK had used a .38 handgun to fire warning shots into the air for rescue after PT-109 was rammed and sunk, but I wasn't sure what make it was so I looked it up and, coincidently, it was a Smith & Wesson. Below are passsages from the book PT 109: JOHN F KENNEDY IN WWII describing JFK's handgun. At pertinent places I've inserted scans of my JFK PT-109 GI-Joe action figure:

page 28: ...Kennedy's voyage had begun in San Francisco a month earlier, at 5:21 pm on March 6, 1943, when the USS Rochambeau, a Navy transport, sailed from Pier 34 bound for the New Hebrides a thousand miles northeast of Australia.... On this particular trip she set out, after some last minute generator trouble, with a group of transient Navy officers bound for combat assignments. She also carried orders to make a two-day stop at San Diego to take aboard fifteen hundred Navy enlisted personnel, after which she was to sail, mostly unescorted, out across the Equator to Espiritu Santo.... On board the Navy issued the transient officers complete combat gear, including sheaf knives and .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolvers.

Kennedy and his friends found the bowie knives useful. They put up a board in a stateroom, pasted pieces of paper on it and then, at ten feet, threw the knives at the paper, seeing who could score the most bull's eyes...."

page 157: ...Aboard PT 109 daylight had substituted the dread of exposure for the terror of darkness. While inflating hopes for rescue, the sunrise had also torn away the protection of night. Rendova Peak was a comforting sight, but it rose far beyond the confines of Blackett Strait. The eleven Americans were encircled by Japanese.... "What do you want to do, fight or surrender?" Kennedy asked his crew. "Fight with what?" someone asked. They took stock of their weapons. The 37-millimeter gun, still lashed to the deck, had fallen overboard and was hanging uselessly in the water.... Macguire fetched a Thompson sub-machine gun from the charthouse. Among them the men had six .45s and Kennedy still had the .38 that had been issued to him aboard the Rochambeau. In addition to the guns there was one large knife, one light knife, and one pocket knife left...."

page 165: ...It took the eleven survivors fully four hours to swim the three and a half miles across Blackett Strait from the overturned hull of PT 109 to Plum Pudding Island.... The men ducked under the trees.... There was little conversation. Pulling off their kapoks they all sat breathing heavily and staring across Blackett Strait at Kolombangara.... Harris, the gunner's mate, collected the sidearms, laid them on a damp shirt and took them apart and dried them as best he could...

page 170: ...The three officers, Kennedy, Thom and Ross, drew aside and conferred among themselves. The question was simply put by Kennedy. "How are we going to get out of here?" As they hashed over the problem, their theory of rescue boiled down almost exclusively to the idea of intercepting the PT boats in Ferguson Passage, difficult though it would be for a swimmer to attract their attention in the dark. Quietly, Kennedy said that he would swim out into the passage that night and see what he could do with his revolver and the battle lantern... "If I find a boat", he said, "I'll flash the lantern twice. The password will be 'Roger'; the answer will be 'Willco'". He stripped down to his skivvies and strapped the rubber life belt around his waist. He wore shoes to protect his feet on the reefs. He hung the .38 from a lanyard around his neck.

The revolver swung at his waist, the muzzle pointing down. He wrapped the battle lantern in the kapok to float it....Dusk had settled over Blackett Strait when he stepped into the water. He knew that the PT boats would be leaving Rendova Harbor at just about this time.... Through the trees the men watched Kennedy make his way from the shore to the reef. His departure depressed them and made them feel lonelier than ever.... After nightfall Blackett Strait was lonelier than a desert. As landmarks disappeared, Kennedy's sense of direction blurred.... Stumbling, slipping, swimming along, he finally reached Ferguson Passage after having traveled a distance of between two and three miles. Pausing to rest, he took off his shoes and tied them to his life belt. Then he floated off the reef and struck out for the center of Ferguson Passage, towing the battle lantern along in the kapok. With the .38 trailing below him in the water, the lanyard tugged at his neck as he swam. Out in the Ferguson Passage he treaded water, looking toward the Solomon Sea and listening. It was his intention, when the PTs came through, to fire a recognition signal of three shots into the air, and flash his light at the nearest boat. The skipper would be the most surprised sailor in the South Pacific to find Jack Kennedy paddling around by himself in the middle of the Passage. This comforting dream never came true. Instead of PT boats, Kennedy saw only aerial flares beyond Gizo. Did this mean, he wondered, that the boats had gone up west of Gizo and were operating in Gizo Strait? As hours passed and none appeared he concluded that this must be the case. Foggy and tired from his long hours in the water, he faced back toward the reefs and started swimming again....

page 177: ...As the men were lying in the bushes late in the morning idly watching the gulls fish in Blackett Strait...they saw Kennedy swimming in from the reef. Thom ordered the men to stay under cover while he and Ross went to meet him. Ross threw his arms around Kennedy, but Kennedy fell to the beach, retching. He looked skinny, bedraggled and exhausted. He had a beard. His hair was matted on his forehead. His circled eyes were bloodshot. His sun tan had taken on a yellowish hue. Thom and Ross dragged him across the sand into the bushes. When Maquire asked him how he felt, he grunted. After awhile someone inquired whether he had seen any boats. "No", he said.... He became very sick and then fell asleep. The others could think of nothing to do. They sat there as the afternoon wore on. Once Kennedy woke, looked up at Ross and said, "Barney, you try it tonight", then he went back to sleep...

Ross was convinced of the futility of swimming into Ferguson Passage, but he obeyed. Warned by Kennedy's ordeal, he set out at four o'clock in order to reach the passage while it was still daylight.... He took Kennedy's Smith & Wesson on the lanyard. Also, to reduce the risk of attracting sharks by the white shade of his legs he donned khaki pants. As he slithered and swam along the reef, he was appalled to see some sand sharks three to four feet long.... Soon it was not only lonely and silent but pitch-dark.... He dreaded the thought of swimming by himself into Ferguson Passage. He might not have done so had Kennedy not done it the night before. "If he can do it I can do it", kept running through Ross's mind.... He treaded water and waited. He did not know, of course, though he began to suspect it, that the PT boats had again gone up to Vella Lavella. He hauled the .38 out of the water and pulled the trigger. The revolver fired, but the shot sounded flat against the broad surface of the water. At intervals he fired twice more. After a long wait he swam back to the reefs....

page 210: ... Shortly after eight o'clock the scouts were ready to paddle Kennedy to Patpartan for the rendezvous. It was cool, and he borrowed a pair of cover-alls from Evans to wear until he was picked up. Then, just as he was about to leave, he discovered that he had only three bullets left in his .38, Ross having fired the others the night he swam into Ferguson Passage. The plan submitted to Lumberi had specified four shots for recognition, and it was too late to change it because the boats would already have left. Kennedy solved the problem by borrowing Evan's Japanese rifle, promising to leave it in the canoe with the cover-alls.... It was well after ten when Kennedy finally heard the rumble of engines and then four shots in the dark northwest of Patparan Island.

He stood up in the canoe and fired three shots with his revolver, after which he pulled the trigger of the rifle. The kick nearly knocked him into the water...

The fact that Oswald, the alleged killer of JFK, was in possession of the same .38 Smith & Wesson revolver as JFK had used to save his life could be a sick joke among the powers-that-be who killed JFK -- they always leave a calling card and symbolism is part of their modus operandi.

In a famous photo of Oswald (later proven to be fake) he's posing with the Italian Mannlicher-Carcano rifle he allegedly used to shoot Kennedy and the .38 Smith & Wesson handgun he allegedly used to shoot Tippit.

For fun, and comparative purposes, I scanned my JFK PT-109 GI-Joe in the same pose as Oswald -- both with their .38s in the holster -- but with JFK holding the American Thompson sub-machine gun (Tommy Gun) he used in WWII as substitute for the Italian Mannlicher-Carcano Oswald allegedly used to kill him.

The barrel of Oswald's .38 revolver was cut down to 2 1/4 inches from the original 5-inches as seen in the scan below of his and JFK's handguns together (keeping in mind that JFK's .38 Smith & Wesson is a GI-Joe toy).

Actually, the barrel of Oswald's handgun -- the same model as Kennedy's -- was about the same length as the barrel of the handgun used by Booth to kill Lincoln:

Put side by side the guns are somewhat similar in appearance taking into account the time span of 100 years between presidential assassinations.

The Warren Commission, in building their case against Oswald as the assassin of JFK, used fabricated evidence connecting Oswald to the handgun and the rifle. Groden explains the sequence in the following pages from THE SEARCH FOR LEE HARVEY OSWALD:

On January 27, 1963, someone, possibly Lee, mail-ordered a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver (Commando model number 1905, serial number V510210) from Seaport Traders, Inc, located at 1221 South Grand in Los Angeles, California. The purchaser used the name of A. J. Hiddel, to whom it was shipped. The price of the handgun was $29.95. Originally, it had a standard five-inch barrel, but L M Johnson, of Van Nuys, California, modified the gun by cutting down the barrel to two and a quarter inches and rechambering it to accept .38 special ammunition as opposed to .38 standard ammunition.

On March 12, 1963, someone ordered a Mannlicher-Carcano bolt-action rifle from Klein's Sporting Goods in Chicago under the name A. Hidell. Both firearms where shipped to a post office box, number, 2915, in Dallas, which, we have been told, had been rented by Lee Harvey Oswald. Even though the order dates for the revolver and the rifle were a month and a half apart, both weapons arrived in Dallas at the post office box on March 20. Had the weapons been bought in Dallas they could not have been traced; however, mail delivery insured that they could be and the orders could be linked to Oswald. After the assassination, when Lee was arrested, he repeatedly denied that he had ever owned a rifle...

Among the evidence used to indict Oswald and portray his "violent nature" were two photographs (Warren Commission Exhibits 133A and 133B) supposedly showing him with a rifle, a pistol and two socialist newspapers. They are the only evidence linking Oswald to the weapons said to have been used in the Kennedy assassination and the killing of J D Tippit. The photographs, reportedly "found" soon after the assassination in Ruth Paine's garage, where Marina Oswald was living with daughters June and Rachel, are obviously fraudulent. (Someone else stood in Oswald's Neely Street backyard and Oswald's face was superimposed onto the other man's body). There are better than a dozen ways to prove that the photographs do not depict an actual occasion, that Oswald could not have posed for them, and that they were manufactured prior to the assassination. In proving that these photos are fake, one proves that Lee Oswald was set up well in advance of the assassination as "the patsy". The most alarming aspect of the backyard photos is that they were created to frame Oswald before the crime was committed and planted among Oswald's possessions before the murder took place....

Top photo shows the three shells found on the sixth floor of the depository and the live bullet found in the rifle. One shell's dent shows that the rifle jammed during the shooting. This would have severely slowed down the firing time -- if the shell was even fired from the rifle. The same shell has no chambering mark, meaning it may never have been in the rifle. The other three have chambering marks.

Middle photo shows a 7.65-millimeter Mauser, like the one found and reported by deputy sheriffs Seymour Weitzman, Eugene Boone, and Roger Craig. Bottom photo shows the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, 6.5-millimeter, serial No C2766....The magic bullet that, according to the Warren Report, caused seven separate wounds and broke two dense bones, yet remained intact.

The scope of the rifle that was found was so misaligned, the FBI had to add three shims, just to test-fire it. The misalignment would certainly have impaired the sniper's success. Another rifle, described as a British Enfield, was found in the depository. It's not a Carcano....

The fact that JFK's alleged killer's handgun (provenly planted by the perpetrators) was the same make and model as JFK's handgun, and was similar in size to the gun that shot Lincoln is, in my opinion, another LINCOLN-KENNEDY COINCIDENCE and will be added to the list. ~ Jackie Jura

*JEFFERSON DAVIS IN LINCOLN-KENNEDY KILLINGS

SUPERMAN OSWALD FASTER THAN MAGIC BULLET (..."This man had to be stopped. He was the most dangerous criminal in the history of the world. Here was a man who was able to go from one location to another with the swiftness of Superman, to change his physical characteristics at will and who pumped four automatic slugs into a police officer with a revolver -- indeed a master criminal!")

JFK GI-JOE ROCKING MEMORIAL

JFK PT-109 GI-JOE SOLD

JFK PT-109 GI JOE FOR SALE

JFK SOLOMON SWIMS SAVED SURVIVORS

President Abraham Lincoln assassinated 147 years ago
April 14, 1865 - 2012

(Lincoln assassination books owned by Jackie Jura)

LINCOLN ASSASSINATION THEORIES & JFK ASSASSINATION PUZZLE PIECES