John F. Kennedy Assassination Rifle

John F. Kennedy Assassination Rifle

In March 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald, using the alias "A. Hidell," purchased a 6.5 mm Carcano Model 91/38 rifle (also improperly called Mannlicher-Carcano) by mail order. He also purchased a revolver from a different company, by the same method. It is officially accepted that this was the rifle that was used in the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, Texas to assassinate United States President John F. Kennedy as his motorcade drove by on November 22, 1963. Photographs of Oswald holding the rifle, a palmprint found upon examination of the rifle, and detective work tracing its sale, all eventually led to Oswald.

The Oswald rifle was an Italian Fucile di Fanteria (Eng: Infantry rifle) Modello 91/38 (Model 1891/1938) manufactured at the Royal Arms Factory in Terni, Italy, in 1940. Its serial number identified it as the single weapon of its type made with that number. The so-called Model 91 bolt action rifle had been introduced in 1891 by Salvatore Carcano for the Turin Army Arsenal. After 1895, the Modello 91 used an en bloc ammunition clip similar, but not identical, to the Austrian Mannlicher ammunition clips, and hence the names of Carcano and Mannlicher associated with the Oswald rifle (including associated with them by the Warren Commission). The ammunition used in the clip was the 6.5x52mm Cartuccia Modello 1895 rimless cartridge (designed in 1890), also sometimes called Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition, after the rifle designer and the general type of clip it used.

In 1938, the basic Model 91 long rifle design was discontinued in favor of a new short rifle design, the Model 38, with a new type of ammunition: a spire-pointed 7.35x51mm round. The 7.35mm M38 was manufactured from 1938-1940. In 1940, with the war well under way and unable to stockpile sufficient amounts of 7.35x51mm ammunition, the short rifles were re-designated Modello 91/38, and were again manufactured to fire the original round-nosed 6.5x52 mm ammunition. The serial-numbered C2766 rifle, sent to Oswald as a surplus "Italian carbine" in 1963, was a short rifle of this type, manufactured for the 6.5x52mm cartridge. Strangely, and in the middle of a war Italy was losing, the 6.5mm Carcano M91/38 was only manufactured for one year, 1940, and discontinued in favor of a new 6.5mm long rifle, the M91/41, which was made until the end of the war.