He left Harvard Law School in June 1941 to join the Naval Air Corps as an aviator flying 25 bombing missions from Suffolk field in Britain. Just before his discharge, he volunteered for a top-secret and high-risk mission intended to destroy the Nazi’s North Sea U-Boat pens near Heligoland by striking them with a radio-controlled B-24 bomb plane loaded with high explosives.
Lt Kennedy’s assignment was to pilot the plane to 2,500 feet, arm the detonators and parachute out after switching to remote control and turning the steering over to radio pilots in a pursuit plane. His bomber exploded in midair moments after Joe switched to remote.
My grandfather, Joseph Kennedy never recovered from his son’s death. Thirty years later, Grandpa would weep at the mention of Joe’s name. Let’s all spend some moments today remembering those who serve our country.
I take this day to celebrate the “Best of Us”. I honor those that have given their lives, especially so, for those who didn’t really capture anything more than what they were told. That WAS the military back then. They didn’t have the INCREDIBLE OPTION (Thank you!) of being a “conspiracy theorist” due to the speed of traveling communications…no internet, no “chonies”.
I don’t believe that a single one that came before us would stand against us honoring the “Best of Us” because that is the need we face today, for the “Best of Us” to stand, in their honor, with their wisdom and “something new” that lends itself to a marriage that will last the test of time…always something new. It’s a quiet agenda, but profoundly significant and incredibly useful in the forward motion that supports all that is ONEderful in this world and depletes itself of all that isn’t.
We Are the Home of the Free, Because of the Brave and must do EVERYTHING to keep our Country Free in their memory!