Joseph P. Kennedy Jr.
Joseph Patrick "Joe" Kennedy Jr. (born July 25, 1915 in Hull , Massachusetts , † August 12, 1944 via Blythburgh, Suffolk ) was the eldest son of the nine children of Joseph and Rose Kennedy .
Life
The eldest son of the Kennedy family, grandson of the Mayor of Boston, was raised as the future first Roman Catholic US president. In 1934 he was sent on a trip to Germany, where he is said to have praised Hitler's policy in letters. He then studied at Harvard, from 1938 in London, and then at Harvard Law School . In 1940 he was the Democratic delegate to the National Convention, where Roosevelt was re-nominated for the presidency, with Wallace as vice president.
Kennedy joined the US Navy in the summer of 1941 at the age of 26 . From September 1943 he was involved in operations against submarines in England with Bomber Squadron 110. After 25 enemy flights, he did not return to the United States, but volunteered as a pilot for a special mission as part of Operation Aphrodite to destroy the submarine bunker on Heligoland on August 12, 1944. His remote-controlled aircraft loaded with 9 tons of explosives, a Boeing B-17 or BQ-8, should fly to the destination by remote control after the parachute jump of the two-man crew necessary for the take-off. Kennedy was able to confirm over the radio that the explosive charge had now been armed, but the machine exploded over the town of Blythburgh not far from the North Sea coast . A subsequent machine was also damaged. The bodies of the crew were never found.
Kennedy was posthumously celebrated as a war hero, so that on June 27, 1945, at a close family ceremony, Rear Admiral Felix Gygax awarded him the Navy Cross . In 1946 the destroyer USS Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. (DD-850) was named after him, on which his brother Robert F. Kennedy later served. His name is listed among the missing in the Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial . His younger brother John , who later became US President , published the book As We Remember Joe in 1945 in his memory .
Joseph was never married, but was in a relationship twice: with Edith Bouvier Beale , a cousin of Jacqueline Lee Bouvier , who later became his brother's wife, and with Katharine Mortimer, who later reported that the Kennedys were too loud and too lively for her to enter them Family to marry.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Biography at "The Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Foundation" ( Memento of the original from April 8, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ John Galluzzo: Crime, Corruption & Politics in Hull: The Rise and Fall of Boss Smith's Old Ring Page 86
- ↑ Lt. Kennedy honored . New York Times, June 28, 1945, p. 2.
- ^ Arthur M. Schlesinger : Robert Kennedy and his times. Ballantine Books, Boston 1978, ISBN 0-345-32547-8 , pp. 60, 61
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Kennedy, Joseph P. Jr. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Kennedy, Joseph Patrick junior; Kennedy, Joe (nickname) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American pilot, brother of John F. Kennedy |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 25, 1915 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hull , Massachusetts |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 12, 1944 |
| Place of death | over the English Channel |