The only part of Joseph Kennedy, Jr.'s life that was more carefully planned than the events that led to his death was his post-war life as US President envisioned by his father, the would-be kingmaker, Joseph Kennedy, Sr...The world as it would have been can now only be speculated upon in an alternate universe scenario as Joe Kennedy Jr. became the only one of his father's sons who would not announce his candidacy for President...
As history has left us few clues to the discussion that may have ensued as Lieutenant Kennedy was briefed on what was expected of him during Operation Aphrodite for which he had just volunteered, we can only guess his thoughts as the plan was unfolded...He was told that an older bomber which had already survived many earlier battles, but was now deemed unsafe to risk another mission with an expensively trained crew of men, would be stripped of all survival gear and other equipment necessary for its safe return...
This shell of an aircraft would even have its canopy, radios and all navigation equipment, guns and other crew facilities removed...In the place of all that was removed, the old bomber would be loaded with 30,000 pounds of Torpex, a British explosive compound having one and a half times the destructive power of TNT...
Lieutenant Kennedy's job would involve taking off from a runway in this fully fueled airborne bomb, then guiding it to a point near the coast at an altitude of 2,000 feet while a 200 mph wind was blowing in his face through the removed canopy...At this moment he was to relinquish directional and power control of the aircraft to a newly designed automatic pilot, guided by radio and a rudimentary television system to monitor gauges from a mothership trailing behind...
Kennedy and the volunteer flight engineer were then to remove the safety pins from the explosive devices and arm the detonators...Afterward they were to re-enter the cockpit, egress the aircraft through the canopy opening, deploy their parachutes and return to Earth where a team would be waiting to recover them...
When the time came for Kennedy's mission, twelve other aircraft had been sent aloft previously with none having completed the mission successfully, resulting in the loss of life for many of the crewmen...Whether Lt. Kennedy was briefed on this record of attempts is unknown...He and his flight engineer, Lt. Wilford J. Willy, launched on August 12, 1944, and never got past the English coast as their drone exploded in a fireball of Torpex and aviation gasoline near the town of Blyth...
Had their mission been successful, one of Germany's superweapons, the so-called V3 Supergun, would have been destroyed at Mimoyecques, France...As it was, the two naval aviators both lost their lives and became casualties in an operation that claimed the lives of many airmen, 26 aging aircraft, and no successful missions...
Had the Operation Aphrodite been successful, many obsolete bombing platforms might have been converted to the Consolidated BQ-8...The fate of the aircraft listed by its S/N designation, 32271, is also listed here, along with an alternate spelling of the last name of the flight engineer...
As in most other Kennedy family related stories, an aura of mystery and controversy surrounds this one...In 1986, a 65 year old former Wehrmacht AAA officer said that in July 1944 his artillery unit shot down a B-17 returning from a bombing raid, and his men captured two crewmen who parachuted to safety...
He claimed that he personally interviewed both, one of whom identified himself as Joe Kennedy, a 1st Lieutenant in the US Air Force from Hyannisport...He further claimed the captured Americans were shot while escaping the same day, and buried in a local cemetery...
This tale immediately holds no water in my view as all US servicemembers are told if they are captured by an enemy, they must abide by the Code of Conduct giving no further information to their captors than name, rank, service number and date of birth...In Kennedy's case he would have known that being the son of a former US Ambassador would make him a high value prisoner subject to a higher level of security, reducing further his chances of escape...
For that reason alone he would not have revealed his hometown of Hyannisport, Massachusetts...Neither would he have falsely given his rank as 1st Lt., a paygrade used by the Army which is one rank lower than his true rank of Lieutenant in the Navy, and he would not have identified his branch of service as US Air Force which did not exist at the time...Air units not assigned to the Navy were under the command of the US Army at that time...Neither Kennedy, nor any other prisoner would have identified any branch of service at all as their captors would make that determination based on their uniforms...
Adding to the mystery, and also adding another Presidential connection to this story, another witness came forward to refute the German officer's claim...Elliot Roosevelt, then a USAAF Colonel and commander of the 325th Photographic Wing in England and the son of then President Franklin Roosevelt, said at the time of the German publication that he personally witnessed the deaths of Lieutenants Kennedy and Willy in the air over England a month after the German claims, as he was flying in a reconnaissance aircraft trailing the doomed B-24 and its mothership...
Roosevelt's own veracity is clouded in doubt since Army records cannot confirm his whereabouts on the day in question, and his own claims of flying 89 combat missions in WWII have been in dispute since that time...Records do indicate that a Mosquito recon/bomber assigned to Roosevelt's 325th Wing was trailing the two aircraft at the time of the explosion closely enough to witness the event, but no record exists of Roosevelt's presence...
What is known for certain is that the modified bomber carrying Joe Kennedy Jr. blew up in midair over the English coast; his body was never recovered and he was never heard from again...My own question in this mystery concerns why a second officer, Lt. Willy, was assigned to the flight as an engineer since on fully crewed bombers this position was filled by an enlisted man, normally an NCO who also acted as top turret gunner...
Regardless, both men were subsequently listed on the Tablets of the Missing at Cambridge American Cemetery...Kennedy's sacrifice and devotion to duty earned for him the posthumous awards of the Navy Cross, Air Medal and Purple Heart...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It is not known what lay in a father's heart when Joe Kennedy Sr. was told of the death of his eldest son...It can be believed that, being human, he mourned the loss of his flesh and blood...It can also be thought that, having unfulfilled ambitions of his own, he also grieved over the loss of his investment of time and money spent grooming his son to gain political power...
Fortunately for him he was a good enough businessman and gambler to hedge his bets by preparing another son for the sacrificial altar just for these unforeseen difficulties..."PT 109," written by William Doyle, delves further into the intriguing sidebars, backstories and afterstories than any other account of JFK's wartime service I have examined...
Joe Jr.'s other brothers were too young to have seen action in WWII, although Robert served briefly in the Naval Reserve as an enlisted man, and was able, through his father's political connections, to add sea duty on the destroyer named for his oldest brother to his resume by arranging to be present on its sea trials...Edward, the youngest brother, served later as an enlisted man also in the US Army at SHAPE HQ, then located in Paris, in the role of a military policeman...
Because of his father's influence, Edward was able to avoid duty in the ongoing Korean War which may not have been deemed "heroic" enough to risk injury which might have delayed his career plans...It may also be noted here that Joe Sr. did not serve in the nation's military at all being too young for service in the Spanish-American War, and too burdened with a family for WWI, although these considerations did not deter other Americans who heeded their country's call...
Great admiration can be credited to JFK for his endurance for pain as a youth bedeviled by abusive roughhousing from his older brother plus many illnesses and injuries suffered during his formative years...As war approached, John Kennedy put aside his accumulation of notches on his bedpost, and his collection of credits from the schools that looked best on a resume, for thoughts of gaining glory on the battlefield...
Knowing that military service always garners approval from the American voting public, the senior Kennedy was anxious to add an impressive wartime record to the accolades being gathered for his second son...He found his path in the person of Lt. Commander John Bulkeley, recently returned from the Pacific War as the key figure in one of America's few successes so far, the rescue of General Douglas MacArthur from Corregidor, an action for which he earned the Medal of Honor...
The elder Kennedy instinctively knew that the motor torpedo boats Bulkeley used in the dash to Australia could bring fame and honor to his second son if he could get him assigned to them...He also knew that his son, being on the bottom rung of the officer's ladder at the rank of Ensign, would get no sooner chances to command a larger ship than he would the smaller PT boats...
Kennedy arranged a meeting with Bulkeley, and bluntly asked whether the MoH recipient had the influence to get his son appointed to PT boat duty, upon which he was told he could, but only if his son met the Navy's requirements...The younger Kennedy bounded at the chance especially when he found the Navy would not require the Ensign to undergo another physical, allowing him to conceal his ever-increasing back pain for which he was now sleeping on plywood planking to relieve the agony...
After training, the newly promoted Lt.(jg) Kennedy asked for and received assignment to an active PT boat squadron in the South Pacific, something his father specifically fought against...Having learned well of political skullduggery at his father's knee, Lt. Kennedy had pulled his own backstage strings gaining senatorial leverage to assure his battle assignment...
Most of what happened afterward is a well-known matter of historical record, but Doyle has strengthened his telling by weaving in much backstory stitching to the story's fabric...Much has been written of Kennedy's efforts to save as many of his crew as possible, but I have seen nothing in print of his nightly walks into the shark-infested waters, not knowing he and his crew had been given up as dead...
The survivors had swum to a small spit of land, where they hid from the enemy by day...One critically injured man had been towed with his life jacket strap in Kennedy's teeth...Knowing his men would soon die from starvation, Kennedy, carrying only a handgun and a red lantern, walked nightly out on a submerged coral reef standing most of the night ready to signal a US boat knowing the waters were regularly frequented by Navy patrols...
Eventually found by native islanders who carried a message scratched inside a coconut shell to an allied coastwatcher, Kennedy and those of his men who were able resumed duty, Kennedy being assigned to another PT boat converted to a gunship...The extent of Kennedy's injuries were revealed at a later date, whereupon he was ordered back to the US for extensive medical treatment...
His return to civilian life, and entry into the political world was marked by a "fact-finding" trip before his race for the Senate against Henry Lodge, Jr...A key mission in this trip was to locate and meet the commander of the Japanese destroyer which sunk his PT boat, in an effort to show the war was over, and peace could be made between former enemies...This part was orchestrated by the master of the machiavellian, Kennedy, Sr...
The meeting was foiled by Kennedy being stricken with a sudden illness brought on by his well hidden Addison's Disease, which had plagued him since childhood...Fate prevented there ever being a face-to-face meeting between the two warriors, yet the many letters, telegrams and gift exchanges between the two helped Kennedy's image as a diplomat and man of peace, just as the elder Kennedy wished...
Thus are the stories of war, politics and human relations woven...Further revelations from Doyle's retelling of what was once a familiar story, and now unfolds with a fresh look at an old war, would spoil the reader's pleasure...Suffice it to say, "PT 109" is on the Truckman Highly Recommended list, and two Kennedy brothers stand a little taller in my estimation for their service and sacrifice to country...
More articles concerning Warriors and Militaria...
More articles with Book Reviews...
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments and critiques are always welcome, and will be reviewed before publication...They will not be seen immediately...Keep it clean please...