For Joe Kennedy, Memorial Wall Had to Substitute For Burial Site, Answer Man Explains

Where is Joe Kennedy buried? If at Arlington National Cemetery, are there any plans to move him closer to his three brothers?

-- Marlene Olexa, La Plata

Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. -- the firstborn of the four Kennedy brothers -- isn't buried anywhere. To understand why, we have to travel back to the summer of 1944.

The Nazis were terrorizing London with crude rockets dubbed the V-1 and V-2. Launched from the French coast, they sowed terror in England. What's more, Allied aerial reconnaissance showed that the Germans were building a third monster weapon, a set of gigantic cannons designed to propel 300-pound projectiles 95 miles to the British capital.

Previous bombing runs to destroy the guns had failed. At the same time, the U.S. Army Air Forces found itself with an abundance of "war weary" bombers: B-17s and B-24s that, while flyable, were unsuited for long-range missions. An idea was hatched: Pack these surplus airplanes with explosives and steer them by remote radio control toward the target. The Army dubbed it Project Aphrodite.

While it was considered possible to fly and crash an airplane by remote control, taking off was another story. For that a pilot was needed, a pilot who would parachute from the plane over England once it had achieved a straight and level flight.

Joe Kennedy -- oldest son and namesake of the former U.S. ambassador to England -- was a Navy pilot who had been flying anti-submarine patrols off the coast of England. Eligible to return stateside after his requisite 35 missions, Kennedy volunteered for a second tour. His brother John had recently achieved fame for rescuing the crew of PT-109 in the South Pacific.

The Army's Aphrodite attempts were unsuccessful. One pilot was killed when his B-17 stalled. Although other crews had bailed out successfully, no planes had hit their targets. The Navy decided to give it a try.

Project Anvil used the Navy equivalent of the B-24, the PB4Y-1. On the evening of Aug. 12, 1944, Lt. Kennedy and a crewmate, Lt. Wilford J. Willy, took off from a Royal Air Force base in the east of England in a plane loaded with 24,000 pounds of explosives. The target was the V-3 supergun site at Mimoyecques, near Calais.

"It was a big deal," said author Stewart Halsey Ross, who recounts the project in his 2003 book, "Strategic Bombing by the United States in World War II." "They [the military brass] knew Kennedy was a guy of above-average importance, so they very closely monitored this."