advance of Hitlerism is forcibly checked now, the Western Hemisphere will be within range of the Nazi weapons of destruction.”
In May 1942, Joe Jr. is awarded his wings.
In September 1943, he travels with his squadron to England, where they serve alongside the British Naval Command.
“Kennedy was such a good pilot that we would have flown with him anywhere,” states Alvin T. Jones, an aviation machinist’s mate who performed many of Joe Jr.’s preflight inspections.
By that summer of 1944, Joe Jr. has successfully completed well over the twenty-five bombing missions required to complete his tour. He pushes on through D-Day, then seeks out a special assignment requiring what his brother Jack would later describe as “the most dangerous type of flying.”
Joe Jr. has been preparing for this daring flight all his life.
In the last week of July 1944, Joe pens a cryptic letter to his father. “I am going to do something different for the next three weeks,” he writes. “It is a secret and I am not allowed to say what it is, but it isn’t dangerous so don’t worry.”
“Joe, don’t tempt the fates,” his father replies. “Just come home.”
Chapter 8
Ensign John Demlein, pilot of the PV-1 mother ship, tries for a light moment on the tarmac, asking Joe if he’s all caught up with his life insurance payments.
Joe flashes a toothy Kennedy grin. “I’ve got twice as much as I need,” he says.
The day before, the lieutenant had a completely different conversation with electronics officer Lieutenant Earl Olsen. Olsen warns that faulty detonator wiring may spark an airborne explosion—and pleads with Joe to abort the mission.
“There was never an occasion for a mission that meant extra hazard that Joe did not volunteer [for],” recalls Joe Jr.’s squadron roommate, Louis Papas. “He had everyone’s unlimited admiration and respect for his courage, zeal and willingness to undertake the most dangerous missions.”
By his brother Jack’s calculations, Joe Jr. has flown “probably more combat missions in heavy bombers than any other pilot of his rank in the Navy.” Yet he’s fighting an internal war on two fronts.
Jack, who joined the navy himself in September 1941, proudly declares, “Any man who may be asked in this century what he did to make his life worthwhile, I think can respond with a good deal of pride and satisfaction, ‘I served in the United States Navy.’”
Though his first duty is deskside in a Washington, DC, intelligence post arranged by his sister Kathleen, by August 1943 Jack Kennedy is a naval war hero.
In a sibling rivalry marked by one-upmanship, by Joe’s calculations, he has fallen behind. “My congrats on the [navy and marine] medal,” he writes his younger brother after Jack is honored for facing down enemy combatants. Joe can’t resist taking a dig at the same time, adding, “To get anything out of the Navy is deserving of a campaign medal in itself.”
“It was involuntary. They sank my boat,” Jack says self-deprecatingly of his heroics in saving the surviving crew after his gunship PT-109 was rammed by Japanese destroyer Amagiri in the South Pacific.
Yet despite all of Joe Jr.’s heroic airborne missions, not once has he ever directly engaged the German foe. He’ll have little to show for his risk-taking, Joe concludes. “It looks like I shall return home with the European campaign medal if I’m lucky.”
* * *
The August 12, 1944, mission proceeds according to plan. Eighteen minutes in, the autopilot is set and the plane makes its first remote-controlled turn. Willy removes the safety, and the explosive goes live. Joe radios the code phrase “Spade Flush,” signaling that the final task before bailout is complete. The aircraft formation passes over New Delight Wood, near the town of Blythburgh, a hundred miles north of London and four miles from the North Sea.
Two loud booms shatter the airspace. The sky erupts in flames and swirling black smoke. Aircraft debris plunges toward earth, scattering for more than a mile and a half in each direction.
“Spade Flush” prove to be Joe’s last words. He and Bud are killed instantly. “Nothing larger than a basketball could have survived the blast,” Commander James Smith observes, based on his vantage point in an observation aircraft.
Lieutenant David McCarthy of the Eighth Combat Camera Unit witnesses the horror through his airborne camera.
“[The plane] just exploded in mid-air as we neared it and I was knocked halfway back to the cockpit. A few pieces of the Baby [drone] came through the plexiglass nose and I got hit in the head and caught a lot