The US president appears to mischaracterise the circumstances of his uncle’s death during the Second World War – as he attempts to draw a contrast between his family’s record of sacrifice to remarks allegedly made by Donald Trump about fallen service members
Joe Biden has suggested his uncle may have been eaten by cannibals after his plane was shot down during the Second World War – as he said Donald Trump was unworthy of serving as commander in chief again.
The US president visited a war memorial near his Pennsylvania hometown to honour his late uncle Ambrose J Finnegan’s service in the conflict.
“He flew single-engine planes, reconnaissance flights over New Guinea. He had volunteered because someone couldn’t make it. He got shot down in an area where there were a lot of cannibals in New Guinea at the time,” Mr Biden told reporters afterwards.
“They never recovered his body.”
But there appears to be no record of his uncle’s death being the result of hostile action or any indication that cannibals played any role in the inability to recover his remains, according to the US defence department.
Military records show he was killed when the reconnaissance plane he was in crashed in the Pacific Ocean off the northern coast of New Guinea in May 1944 after engine failure.
