Since the gun keeps getting mentioned, often when another cut-down ex-British Service Revolver is asked about by a new member, here are the basic facts:

Victory BSR # V 510210. Therefore likely shipped in Feb./March 1944 to Hartford Ordnance Depot for Lend-lease shipment to Britain.

Barrel shortened, converted to .38 Special, lanyard missing, but still original phosphate finish and with correct smooth stocks. It's rather unusual these days to find shortened BSR's that have not been refinished in nickel or less often blue.

It is sometimes erroneously stated that Oswald ordered this from Klein's in Chicago together with the Carcano rifle. Klein's was indeed a major purveyor of these surplus revolvers, but Oswald's came from Seaport in L.A.

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Reading the original Warren Commission report regarding the LHO Victory is interesting. The recovered bullets didn't match the recovered fired cases, and that was never explained. Also, the bullets could not be definitively matched to that revolver. There's little doubt that Oswald indeed shot Officer Tippitt, but if it had come to a court trial, it's doubtful that the evidence would have been adequate to convict Oswald for the shooting. But of course, that trial never occurred.

Accounting for the Tippit shooting has indeed been a bit of a headache for the conspiracy hunters, since the relatively direct eyewitness chain from the death of the officer to the Texas Theater and Oswald's arrest has proven difficult to perforate, to the point that inconsistencies in the physical evidence don't seem to matter much.

Attempts to make Tippit a participant in the conspiracy have been less than convincing. And it gets positively bizarre when some seriously suggest that the sinister forces behind the JFK assassination arranged for Tippit's murder by an Oswald look-alike near the movie theater where they knew Oswald would be, and made sure witnesses led the police there, in hopes that responding Dallas officers would be so enraged that they would shoot Oswald during the arrest, neatly disposing of the patsy; that didn't happen, so Jack Ruby had to be Plan B. Umm.... yeah, right.

How would they have matched the fired ctg. cases to the bullets fired? Never heard of that. I can see how the bullets or the cases could be traced to Oswald's gun.

"How would they have matched the fired ctg. cases to the bullets fired? Never heard of that. I can see how the bullets or the cases could be traced to Oswald's gun."

I'd have to go back to the Warren Report for details, as it's been awhile, but something like Winchester bullets and Remington cases, or maybe vice-versa. Maybe LHO was a reloader.

Or he bought reloads.

__________________
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The revolver section of the Warren Commission report as published by the National Archives on their website is attached below. It's a bit confusing to read since what I assume to be superscript numbers in the original are intermingled with the text. There is also a typo.

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Thank you. Those are all reasonable explanations, although they would never satisfy the conspiracy theorists.

__________________
I need ammo, not a ride.

Interesting thread so far. I believe Oswald was what he said he was...a patsy.

Just back from the National Archives in Boston. While my wife was searching for family history stuff, I was busy searching for anything "Smith & Wesson". Found these three declassified documents relating to Lee Harvey Oswald's revolver. Hope they are readable and haven't already been posted on this forum.

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Thanks for posting these! They make interesting reading.

And particularly the first one contains details I wasn't aware of. I didn't know that the grips were not matching, and had never been able to find a view of the butt to see whether the lanyard hole was plugged or not. I have never noticed the CAL .38 SPECIAL side frame stamping on any of the photos either; it has been observed on other guns, but not a lot of ex-BSR's that were converted have that stamp, so it might narrow down who converted it. I don't think Seaport did it.