On November 22, 1963, US President John F. Kennedy was killed riding in an open-topped car, with the first lady, during a presidential motorcade in Dallas. This dark day and the likely culprit has been the subject of much heated discussion and controversy.

We present the case that he could not have been killed by the Supermarine Seafang naval fighter.

Here are 10 reasons that prove conclusively that it was not a Seafang that killed President Kennedy.

10. Despite thousands of onlookers, including a planespotter club meeting in a nearby Chicken Cottage restaurant, there are no reports of a suspicious aircraft matching the Seafang’s description.

9. One of the reasons the Fleet Air Arm favoured the rival Sea Fury over the Seafang, was due to the latter’s inferior low-speed handling characteristics. Hitting the President’s car with accuracy while avoiding high-rise buildings and evading detection would have involved manoeuvring capabilities well beyond that of the Seafang.

8. The Seafang was armed with four 20-mm cannons, yet the round used in the Kennedy killing was a far smaller 6.5-mm rifle round. The greater destructive effect of the Seafang’s armament would have caused a greater deal of collateral damage.

7. Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth would be the nearest likely airfield. As a 80-mile flight from the book depository, it would have been well within the Seafang’s range, BUT at the time it was not in naval service. It was Carswell Air Force Base under air force command and therefore it would not have supported operations by a British naval fighter.

6. Kennedy’s wartime experience aboard a Motor Torpedo Boat would have made him aware of what an attacking naval fighter sounds like and how best to avoid it: the absence of evasive tactics points to the fact that the President never heard a diving Seafang.

5. The received sound level for a single 20mm cannon is 105 dBA at 50 ft – the sound of four such weapons firing would certainly have been audible. With a likely attack altitude of well below 250 metres the noise would have been as loud as 15 grand pianos falling on Stonehenge.

4. The main proponent of the Seafang Assassination Theory was William Pummel, our research reveals he was an active member of the Cult of the Westland Wyvern (a Yeovil-based religious sect who follow the teachings of a later carrier strike fighter) and thus had a vested interest in discrediting the Seafang.

3. The Seafang’s last flight was in 1946, 17 years before the assassination and 4,664 miles away from the book depository.

2. The Post-JFK Assassination Air Force One Flight Deck Recording contain no sound reminiscent of the glorious throaty roar of the Seafang’s Griffon engine

1. Most damning, of the eight Seafang airframes made, all were scrapped. This means that for a Seafang to have been used for the assassination it would have involved a team of specialists with access to the original blueprints and factory machining parts to scratch-build a new airframe. This is beyond the realm of possibility. Though it remains possible one Seafang was hidden in a volcano by a disgruntled Supermarine employee who was later coerced by the Mafia or Communist Cuba to use in the assassination, this is unlikely.

VERDICT: MYTH