TOD
I arose well before dawn to make landfall and find the Chesapeake Bay Lightship (we were returning to our home port of Washington DC from an oceanographic expedition in the Bahamas). The safe navigation of the ship (which was my responsibility) required me to be on the bridge supervising a 12 hour sea detail that took our deep-draft vessel from the Atlantic, up the Chesapeake Bay, into the Potomac River, under the Woodrow Wilson Bridge to our dock at the Naval Research Center on the east shore of the river. This was in the days before fancy electronic navigation systems, and the safe navigation through the many twists and turns of our perilous (because of our deep draft sonar gear) journey depended on me and my team plotting a continual series of bearing lines for virtually all of the trip (You couldn't trust the buoys as occasionally one would go adrift.) When the radioman came to the bridge with news of the assassination, my immediate reply was "I wonder what this will do to Goldwater's chances for the nomination!" Now, as politically incorrect and insensitive as this might sound, it doesn't hold a candle to my wise cracks after MLK got shot.
As to who shot JFK, I think Oswald did it. I do not think he was part of any conspiracy. Could there have been a second shooter, yes. Using the principle of Occam's razor it is more likely that there were two independent shooters than there was a convoluted and still unproven conspiracy involving multiple players. There were lots of folks with a multitude of reasons to wish Kennedy dead; his itinerary was well published, and the opportunities for assassination limited. Is the theory of two independent shooters unlikely, yes. But the theory of a grand conspiracy kept well guarded all these years is even less likely.
der Brucer
