One of my personal highlights of our weekend in Dallas was a visit to Dealey Plaza. As plazas go, Dealey would be rather unremarkable had it not been the location of John F. Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963.
Growing up I always found it interesting how most people old enough to remember the assassination taking place, were able to tell you exactly what they were doing the moment they heard about the assassination. I now understand why. In my lifetime, I have now experienced two such events. The first was space shuttle Challenger disaster and the second was 911.
This is a photo of the plaza with the School Book Depository in the background. The fatal shots were fired from the sixth floor window, furthest right.
There is a plaque at the site which provides a birds eye view of the plaza, the motorcade route and key locations around the plaza.
Conspiracy theorists believe that there was a second shooter on the "grassy knoll". This is the view towards the grassy knoll. The second shooter is believed to have taken his shot from behind the wooden fence.
The next photo is the view from the grassy knoll. There is a clear line of site to the white X in the centre of the road, middle lane, that marks JFK's exact location where he was killed.
This is the view from street level looking back to the execution spot from the direction of the School Book Depository. The grassy knoll is on the right.
The one thing that surprised me was how small in the plaza really is. I'm not a marksman, but I think that I could have made the same shot from the School Book Depository more often that not. Now shooting a few shots in rapid succession would definitely increase the level of difficulty. The grassy knoll is definitely closer and maybe the easier of the two possible locations but would have been a very challenging hand gun shot.
However, after being there and looking at all of the angles, I am content to believe that there was only one shooter. Maybe after all of the documents are released, we'll learn something different.