Lost Destiny

February 15, 2015
A probing, technical exploration of the competition between the two eldest Kennedy brothers that probably drove Joe Jr. to volunteer for his last fatal flying mission.Author of a range of histories, biographies and management books, Axelrod (Mercenaries: A Guide to Private Armies and Private Military Companies, 2014, etc.) offers both a thorough chronicle of this celebrated family during the years of Joseph Sr.'s stint as ambassador to London as well as a highly specialized look inside the technology that produced the pilotless V weapons ("vengeance weapons") that terrorized London toward the end of the war. As ambassador from 1938 to 1940-a plum assignment for the former chair of the Maritime Commission that kept him out of President Roosevelt's hair and far from running for office-Kennedy was known for his pro-appeasement, defeatist stance regarding Britain's ability to withstand a German onslaught. While his shining eldest son, Joe. Jr., largely held his same isolationist views, his sickly second son, Jack, showed more backbone, according to Axelrod's assessment of JFK's 1940 Harvard thesis-turned-first book, Why England Slept. Nonetheless, when war broke out, the two sons vied to volunteer for the more dangerous mission: Jack became a PT boat jockey and made a spectacularly heroic mission in the Solomon Islands when his PT-109 was rammed by a Japanese destroyer. Joe Jr., on the other hand, jealous, bitter and itching to distinguish himself, went from training to fly the Martin PBM Mariner "flying boat" to joining the top-secret Project Anvil/Operation Aphrodite strategic flying mission, which targeted the launching fortresses of the V weapons at Pas-de-Calais, France. Using recycled, war-weary B-17s equipped with bombs, the mission employed highly experimental remote-control technology that frequently backfired-in Joe Jr.'s case, on Aug. 12, 1944, his PB4Y-1 blew up over Suffolk. Throughout the book, Axelrod chronicles both the Kennedy family dynamics and the technology of the aircraft. Within the frame of this sad family drama, the author delivers deeply technical details of aviation and bomb-making.

March 15, 2015

During 1944, a desperate Adolph Hitler unleashed V-1 and V-2 "vengeance weapons" of mass terror that killed thousands of Londoners, while Nazi scientists were developing a V-3 with a 6,000 mile range that would have targeted New York and Washington, DC. Here Axelrod (A Savage War) tells the story of Lieut. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr.'s fatal flight and top secret Project Anvil that sought to destroy the nearly impenetrable V-1 and V-2 launching pads. The author also shares much more, including the complicated relationship between Joseph Kennedy Sr.--the much-despised ambassador to the Court of King James--and his wartime hero sons, Joe Jr. and Jack. Axelrod's account further details the sometimes tedious histories of the navy's Project Anvil and its flawed predecessor, the Army Air Corps Project Aphrodite, as well as the emergence of drone warfare. The author is at his best when describing Project Anvil's four failed flights and how each two-member crew, with the exception of one death, was fortunate to survive. VERDICT Despite some minutiae, readers will be rewarded by absorbing accounts of the actual flights and the pilots who took on Hitler's challenge to the free world. For differing, fascinating works about the Kennedys during World War II, see Will Swift's The Kennedys Amidst the Gathering Storm and Edward Renahan Jr.'s The Kennedys at War.--Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA

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