(NewsInsights.org) – President Joe Biden has a long and storied history of gaffes. Yet, he has displayed another habit that reporters and political rivals alike have questioned: rewriting his personal history and sometimes adding colorful details. On April 17, he did it again, twice telling a tale about losing his uncle and suggesting the involvement of cannibals.
Biden spoke to reporters during a campaign stop in Avoca, Pennsylvania, to explain why he visited the Scranton War Memorial. The president said the site memorialized his uncle, Ambrose Finnegan, and others from Scranton, who died in WWII.
Biden told the press corps his maternal uncles joined the military the day after “D-day,” on Monday, and his uncle Ambrose attached to the Army Air Corps, the predecessor of the modern Air Force.
The POTUS claimed his uncle flew single-engine planes on reconnaissance flights over New Guinea. He told reporters that enemy fire downed the craft “in an area where there were a lot of cannibals… at the time.” Biden said the military never recovered his uncle’s body, although he claimed the government found some plane parts after he made a trip to the area.
Later Wednesday afternoon, Biden repeated the story during a speech to the United Steelworkers at their headquarters in Pittsburgh. Yet, an account published by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) differs significantly.
According to DPAA records, Second Lieutenant Ambrose J. Finnegan was a passenger in a dual-engine A-20 Havoc. The pilot ditched the plane in the ocean north of New Guinea after both engines failed at a low altitude for unknown reasons. Only one crew member survived, rescued by a passing barge. Finnegan and two other service members never surfaced from the sinking wreckage.
D-Day referred to the day Allied forces invaded Normandy to retake France from Axis forces during WWII. It occurred on Tuesday, June 6, 1944, near the war’s end. Likely, Biden was referring to the Sunday, December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor as the motivation for his maternal uncles’ enlistments.
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