I get angry when I read misinformation regarding Bloody Sunday. Bloody Sunday happened for one reason and one reason only. It was to put the fear of God into the people and to make Paddy lie down but Paddy didn't lie down and the rest is history.

Keith said that, "One young soldier seems to have lost it and a couple more joined in.
Most maintained their discipline. How many shots were fired?

But you see it didn't happen like that. At least three of the people murdered were systematically targeted from sniper positions high up on the Derry city walls. When Robert J. Breglio (an American ballistics expert) examined the autopsies and medical reports of William Nash, Michael McDaid and John Young he noted the similarities of the angle of trajectories of the fatal wounds. I quote, "I will further conclude that in my professional opinion the projectiles that struck William Nash, John Young and Michael McDaid originated from an area up in the vicinity of Derry's walls and were fired by a high powered weapon using telescopic sights."

Another ballistics expert, Dr. Hugh Thomas a consultant surgeon at Prince Charles hospital, Merthyr Tydfil in an interview with channel 4 claimed that these three victims could not possibly have been hit at street level as was the official statement. He said, "It would be almost impossible for those three men in the few seconds that were available to them to bend to exactly the same angle and face exactly the same way and be shot in exactly the same fashion. When speaking of the shooter he said, "Its likely to be a marksman, an exceptionally good marksman, firing towards, obviously and in actual fact, firing quite fast at the three suspects (his words) who were clumped in the same area. You would only need a fraction of a second to align the next individual and complete the job."

The trajectory of the bullets which killed all three of these men was strikingly similar. The bullets entered their heads from the front to the back and from above to below at an angle of 45 degrees. Doesn't sound like the shooter was panicking or at street level.

According to the British Army report if you want to believe it (from the Cain website) there were 108 rounds fired by 21 soldiers. That would dispell the myth of the panicky rookie and the discipline of the others. I'm not sure but aren't the Paras one of Britains most professional, highly trained and aggresive units? Probably not the best choice to police a civil rights rally.