Hello, it’s Thursday, August 13, 2020. On this date of 1898, the American flag was hoisted over Manila, ending the Philippine theater of the Spanish-American War. The day before, a ceasefire in Santiago had brought independence to Cuba. The struggle between the United States and Spain, which began in April of the same year, ended Spain’s reign as a colonial force in that hemisphere, while marking the rise of America’s foreign influence.
In a letter to Theodore Roosevelt, Secretary of State John Hay described the 1898 confrontation as “a splendid little war.” He was, Hay added, “started for reason, persecuted with magnificent intelligence and wit, favored through this Fortune that loves the brave.
In fact, neither fate nor fortune favors the brave. This is true both in times of peace and in times of war and during disease pandemics. This week in 1944, this sad truth was visited at the Boston Kennedys, and not for the last time.
I’ll have more information about the death of Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. in a moment. First, I refer you to the RealClearPolitics homepage, which features averages of our surveys, videos, breaking news and aggregate opinion articles covering the entire political spectrum. We also offer originals from our own reporters and collaborators, including:
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U.S. Navy airmen Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. and Wilford John Willy were undeniably brave. In fact, rarely, even if the last project they volunteered for was so damaging and thoughtless, one wonders why the scientists and officials who designed it were not collected or court-martialed.
It was called Operation Aphrodite, which, in risk-free military jargon, meant it had not been tested. One of a short series of useless tests would happen when the military loaded an old B-24 Liberator with approximately 22,000 pounds of volatile explosives and sent it to eliminate German V-2 rocket launch sites in France. Completing this project was a noble target: V-2 rockets would kill some 2,750 civilians in London, London. But without the blank rockets, the only features of the Allies were desperate measures like Operation Aphrodite. It consisted of deploying the B-24 as a drone. But because there was no generation to take off the gigantic drone, Lieutenant Kennedy and Lieutenant Willy had to take off their bomber and parachute from the cockpit to protect themselves on the English coast. Two subsequent aircraft would take control of the Liberator via a radio signal and charge it on the Target of Normandy. That was the plan, anyway. What happened on the night of August 12, 1944 was that the Kennedy-Willy plane exploded minutes after takeoff, focusing both pilots. The eldest of Kennedy’s descendants, as brave as he came here and ready for greatness, had died at 29.
John F. Kennedy, a war hero in the Pacific, assumed the role of Kennedy’s eldest son. I’d use it. With regard to his deceased brother, who posthumously awarded the Navy Cross, JFK later wrote that Joe had completed the designated number of missions in May 1944, had lost his former co-pilot and several close friends, and had been introduced to R and R through the Navy.
“Joe turned down the license presented and convinced his team to stay on D-Day,” Said John F. Kennedy. “They flew in June and July, as early as July they had another chance to move home. He discovered that it was unfair to ask his team to stay longer and return to the United States. He stayed. Because I had heard of a new special assignment for which volunteers had been asked and that would require one more month of the type of harmful maximum flight.
In words that the clinical sense of a naval officer’s duty and a brother’s immense sense of pride for his relative, JFK added:
“One might think, perhaps, that Joe has had no luck so far and has accepted his permission and gone home. But there are two facts in mind. First, at the time of his death, he had probably finished more fighter missions on heavy bombers than any other pilot in his rank in the army and was therefore highly qualified, and secondly, as he told a friend in early August, he thought the odds were at least fifty percent, and Joe never asked for higher ratings than that.
Carl M. Cannon Washington Office Chief, RealClearPolitics @CarlCannon (Twitter) [email protected]
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington office leader for RealClearPolitics. Contact it on Twitter @CarlCannon.