Would he have survived if he didn’t get that last shot to the head? Have experts discussed this? I think it’s an interesting question because there were doubts about his reelection possibilities. He figured he’d whip Goldwater, Rockerfeller wouldn’t run. He was scared of Romney. If he survived that, it might have cinched the reelection out of sympathy and I think, changed history. But that’s a different discussion.
I just want to know if he could have survived if he didn’t get the head shot.
But from what I read, the first “score” went very neatly in and out of his neck without damaging the spinal cord or any major blood vessel. With that shot alone, he probably would have survived.
That’s a great question! Using the Warren commission’s findings, it is possible that he could have survived the first shot. If so, what would the rest of history have been like. Barring any unforeseen gaffs, he probably would have been reelected in 1964. I believe the war in Vietnam may have had a substantially different outcome. Johnson against Nixon in '68? Hmm… Interesting possibilities!
I don’t have my copy of Case Closed with me, but I seem to remember that the so-called magic bullet nicked his spine, which started it tumbling before it exited the throat. The description made it seem like a fairly clean wound. It was the nick on the spine that caused the reaction of raising his elbows. There’s a name for that reflex, but I can’t remember right now. Anyway, I don’t think the damage to the spine was severe. Everyone always calls the head shot the “fatal” one, which I don’t think they would if it was redundant.
Nothing like a little near-martyrdom to help with re-election.
So we assume that if Kennedy had survived and had not been paralyzed he would have been re-election (probably by an even bigger margin than Johnson beat Goldwater.)
I for one do NOT think the Vietnam War would have been conducted much differently. Kennedy and Johnson, despite their differences in style, had pretty similar views of the Cold War, the Communist threat, etc. Let’s also remember that Johnson wasn’t the first to send American troops to Vietnam and the Diem coup happened before Kennedy was killed.
Let’s also not forget that Kennedy authorized the Bay of Pigs. While he would have matured since then, it also suggests that he was as at least as willing as LBJ to take the advice of his military advisers.
We may have set a record for going off-topic here (as I recall, the original question was "would he have survived the first shot if it hadn’t been for the last shot?) So with all due respect for the topic, I say, “yes.”
I think the answer is no. JFK was in poor health much of his life with a chronic disease whose name I forget. One of the symptoms was his bad back which at the time was explained away as a football injury. IIRC his condition would have made very unlikely he could have survived the first gunshot.
Having done a little research I have come back to clarify my earlier post. JFK had Addison’s disease which makes his survival of such a trauma as the first bullet wound and subsequent surgery highly unlikely. The Addison’s did not cause his back problems but made treatment very difficult.
I just finished reading Profile in Power by Richard Reeves so this is fresh in my head and prompted me to ask the question in the first place. He was in pretty bad shape physically speaking. There were times where he was in bed all day because of his back.
I thought the bad back was ostensibly a war injury.
Addison’s disease is an autoimmune disorder affecting the adrenal glands. It is treatable, with steroids. How would this condition affect survivability from a gunshot wound?
The bad back came from a birth defect. If someone with Addison’s disease has a trauma such as getting shot or surgery they can go into adrenal crisis. This was particularly true in the early sixties when less was known about treating the disease.