_The man who would be President

Joseph P Kennedy was being primed to become the first Irish Catholic President of the USA. His life was cut short when he was killed during a top secret mission in the skies above Suffolk, East of England. 17 years later his brother, JFK, became the 35th US President.

Joe Kennedy Jr., son of a former US Ambassador to Britain, had volunteered for the mission, to take drone aircraft packed with explosives over the North Sea and fly them into Nazi rocket installations hidden under tonnes of concrete on the Pas de Calais.

At the time London was enduring a second Blitz, of V-1 Doodlebug rockets that killed more than 6000 civilians. There were fears the Nazis were developing guided missiles, the V-2, and a supersonic rocket, the V-3, capable of reaching New York and possibly carrying deadly nerve gas.

The early evening of 12th August 1944 by the coast of north Suffolk was typical of late summer, calm and warm after a hot day. The air was filled with pleasant smells of harvest, and fields swaying with golden corn or with regimented rows of already cut sheaves. The sky was hazy blue but cloudless. Into the stillness entered the sound of a loose formation of aircraft led by a Consolidated PB4Y–1 Liberator of the United States Navy.

The plane, Zootsuit Black, had taken off at 1752 hours from RAF Fersfield in south Norfolk, close to Diss, with just two crew, rather than the usual ten: Lieutenant Wilford J Willy, a 35-year-old electronics expert and father of three, and pilot Lieutenant Joseph P Kennedy Jr., aged 29, the eldest son of the influential Kennedy dynasty.

Born in Massachusetts in 1915 and groomed by his family for a career in politics, he had been a delegate to the Democratic National Convention as early as 1940. He had expected to run for the Massachusetts 11th congressional district in 1946 – but the war intervened.

By 1944 Kennedy was a Navy pilot. He flew land-based PB4Y Liberator patrol bombers and took part in anti-submarine missions in the Bay of Biscay, more than fifty of them. He did enough to qualify to go home, but volunteered for another 10.

In the summer of that year he joined Operation Aphrodite, an experiment to use radio-controlled, bomb-laden aircraft to attack enemy targets. It required volunteer pilots to take off, then parachute out safely before the bombers were taken radio-controlled as drones directed at their targets.

The aircraft had been stripped of all armament to save weight, but broom handles were put in the turrets to fool the enemy. 21,170 lbs of Torpex plus six demolition charges each containing 100 lbs of TNT had been packed into the aircraft, contained in 374 boxes.

The target was the giant 150mm German V-3 ‘Super-Gun’ site at Mimoyecques between Calais and Boulogne. The hope was that the concentrated mass of explosives would be successful in cracking bunkers and other defences that survived standard bombing runs.

The RAF and US Air Force had already been trying without success to take out the mobile V-1 launch bases, called ‘ski sites’ because of their elevated launching ramps, on what was called the ‘Rocket Gun Coast’.

Escorting aircraft included two Lockheed PV–1 Venturas, one of which was the control aircraft, one De–Havilland Mosquito photographic aircraft which was flown by Colonel Roosevelt, the son of the US President at that time, two Lockheed P–38 Lightnings and two Boeing B–17 Flying Fortresses.

Sixteen North American P–51 Mustangs were also detailed as top cover for the North Sea crossing.

Kennedy piloted the aircraft towards the coast. Just before heading out to sea, the radio-controller in the Ventura decided to feed a test alteration of course to the bomber to prove the system. As soon as this signal was executed, at exactly 1820 hours, the Liberator was torn apart by an enormous explosion.

In the words of one survivor, ‘the Baby just exploded in mid-air’, with the aircraft only about 2,000 feet over New Delight Woods, near Blythburgh. The wreckage came down near the village, causing damage to houses but no casualties. It’s said the explosion was the loudest heard in Britain during the war and blew out the stained glass windows in Blythburgh church.

The remains of Kennedy and Willy were never recovered but their names are inscribed on the Tablets of the Missing at the Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial.

Kennedy was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal. His Navy Cross citation stated: “For extraordinary heroism and courage in aerial flight as pilot of a United States Liberator bomber on August 12, 1944. Well knowing the extreme dangers involved and totally unconcerned for his own safety, Kennedy unhesitatingly volunteered to conduct an exceptionally hazardous and special operational mission.

Intrepid and daring in his tactics and with unwavering confidence in the vital importance of his task, he willingly risked his life in the supreme measure of service and, by his great personal valour and fortitude in carrying out a perilous undertaking, sustained and enhanced the finest traditions of the United States Naval Service.”

The following year the US Navy named a destroyer the USS Joseph P Kennedy. His younger brother Robert ‘Bobby’ briefly served aboard the vessel. Family ambitions now transferred to another brother – John F Kennedy – who was destined to become President himself.

When the liberating Allies arrived at Mimoyecques and other targets of the Aphrodite mission they found they contained nothing but rats and rubble.

Just two days before the accident, on August 10, Joe Kennedy Jr had assured John that he had no intention of risking his ‘fine neck… in any crazy venture.’