On Aug. 12, 1944, airplane mechanics, pilots and cooks gathered near the runway of an air base in England to watch the takeoff of a top-secret Navy aircraft that was painted white and had a huge “T-11” emblazoned on its side.
The plane was jammed with tons of a potent explosive called Torpex, which was used in torpedoes. And it had special electronic equipment that, once airborne, would transform it into a crude but powerful drone.
At the controls was Navy Lt. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., 29, the oldest son of a former U.S. ambassador to Britain, and a man who carried the promise of one of the great political families in American history.
But on this day, 80 years ago Monday, he was also about to become the first to perish in a string of public tragedies that would afflict his family for the next half-century.
“The best ones seem to go first,” his younger brother, John — himself destined for assassination — would say a few months later.
Shortly before 6 p.m., according to author Hank Searls’s biography of Joseph Kennedy Jr., the converted B-24 bomber took off, bound for a suspected Nazi missile site in France.
Once aloft, Kennedy and co-pilot Lt. Wilford J. Willy, 35, were to turn over electronic control of their aircraft to another plane and parachute out. The pilotless bomber would then be remotely guided to crash into its target.
About 18 minutes into the flight, Kennedy radioed “spade flush,” the signal for the other plane to take control. A few minutes later, over the English village of Blythburgh, T-11 blew up with two shattering explosions.
Wreckage, including several of the airplane’s engines, fell across the local countryside. A bomb bay door was found. Some buildings were damaged. But no remains of Kennedy or Willy were ever recovered. The exact cause of the blasts was never determined.
The disaster devastated their relatives and altered the path of the Kennedys, the famous Irish American family that would leave its mark on the country as no other.