- Biden hints his war hero uncle may have met a grisly end among flesh-eating savages
- President’s says his uncle Ambrose J. Finnegan was ‘shot down’ by the enemy – but Pentagon says his plane suffered ‘engine failure’
- There were ‘for real’ cannibals where the plane went down, Biden says
Joe Biden suggested his war hero uncle may have met a grisly end among flesh-eating savages after his plane went down over Papua New Guinea in World War II.
The president said there were ‘a lot of cannibals at the time’ in the area where his uncle Ambrose J. Finnegan’s plane crashed in the 1940s – and his remains were never located.
However, Biden’s account was inconsistent with Pentagon records which showed the plane was not ‘shot down’ as he said.
According to his own Defense Department it was a ‘courier’ flight that suffered engine failure and ditched in the ocean off Papua New Guinea on May 14, 1944. His uncle was a passenger rather than the pilot.
Biden made the ‘cannibal’ comments on a trip to Scranton, Pennsylvania where he visited a war memorial bearing the name of his relative, who was known by the family as ‘Uncle Bosie’.
The president said: ‘(He) got shot down in an area where there were a lot of cannibals at the time. They never recovered his body.
‘But the government went back when I was down there and they checked and found parts of the plane and the like.’
Biden went on to tell how ‘Uncle Bosie’ – who he called a ‘hell of a guy’ – had ended up in a jungle populated by cannibalistic tribes.
He said: ‘When D-Day occurred, the next day, all four of my mother’s brothers volunteered to join the military. Three of them made it, one of them couldn’t go.
‘Ambrose Finnegan – we called him Uncle Bosie – he was shot down. He was in the Army Air Corps, before there was an Air Force, flew those single engine airplanes, reconnaissance flights over New Guinea.
‘He volunteered because someone couldn’t make it.’
That led to him being shot down.
In a speech later on Wednesday Biden added: ‘My Uncle Bosie, he was a hell of an athlete, they tell me, when he was a kid.
‘And he became an Army Air Corps before the Air Force came along. He flew those single engine planes as reconnaissance over war zones.
‘And he got shot down near Guinea and they never found the body because there used to be, there were a lot of cannibals for real, in that part of New Guinea.’
The loss of Ambrose Finnegan is detailed in a ‘missing aircraft’ report made on March 17, 1944 and kept at the National Archives.
Marked ‘Secret’ the War Department report shows he was not flying the plane and was a passenger.
There were three ‘crew’ and one ‘passenger’ on board.
Finnegan was listed as a 2nd Lieutenant who was a ‘courier’.
The three-strong crew consisted of a pilot, gunner and engineer.
The pilot was 1st Lieutenant Harold R. Prince.
According to the report the weather was ‘good’ when the plane went down and there was ‘nil’ evidence to suggest whether or not those on board had survived.
There were also reports in the National Archives submitted by pilots who went looking for the missing plane.
They reported ‘searching the water all the way with nil obeservations’ and that ‘no sightings were made.’
Pilots reported back that ‘no trace was found of Lieutenant Prince’s plane or the crew.’
While Biden said the plane was shot down a separate Pentagon report suggested it ditched in the ocean after engine failure.
According to the report Finnegan was not flying the plane and was a ‘passenger’.
The report by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said there was a crew of three and one passenger, and the plane departed Momote Airfield, Los Negros Island, for a courier flight to Nadzab Airfield, New Guinea on May 14, 1944.
‘For unknown reasons, this plane was forced to ditch in the ocean off the north coast of New Guinea, the report said.
‘Both engines failed at low altitude, and the aircraft’s nose hit the water hard.
‘Three men failed to emerge from the sinking wreck and were lost in the crash.
‘One crew member survived and was rescued by a passing barge. An aerial search the next day found no trace of the missing aircraft or the lost crew members.’
It said Second Lieutenant Ambrose J. Finnegan was ‘the passenger on this Havoc when it was lost.’
The report went on: ‘He has not been associated with any remains recovered from the area after the war and is still unaccounted for.’
Speaking in Scranton, Biden went on: ‘We had a tradition in my family my grandfather taught us.
‘When you visit the graveside of a family member you say three Hail Marys. That was what I was doing (at the memorial).
‘My Uncle Ambrose Finnegan – Uncle Bosie was a hell of a guy. I never met him.’
Biden said as he looked at the memorial he thought about his Republican rival for the presidency Donald Trump.
‘What I was thinking about when I was standing there, when Trump refused to go up the memorial in Paris and he said they were bunch of suckers and losers,’ he said.
‘To me that is a such a disqualifying assertion made by a president. The guys who saved civilization in the 1940s suckers and losers.’
Trump has strongly denied making such comments about American soldiers who died in World War II.
Emily Foster is a globe-trotting journalist based in the UK. Her articles offer readers a global perspective on international events, exploring complex geopolitical issues and providing a nuanced view of the world’s most pressing challenges.
