Lost Destiny Audiobook By Alan Axelrod cover art

Lost Destiny

Joe Kennedy Jr. and the Doomed WWII Mission to Save London

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Lost Destiny

By: Alan Axelrod
Narrated by: Tom Perkins
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About this listen

On August 12, 1944, Lieutenant Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., heir to one of America's most glamorous fortunes, son of the disgraced former ambassador to Great Britain, and big brother to freshly minted PT-109 hero JFK, hoisted himself up into a highly modified B-24 Liberator bomber. The munitions he was carrying that day were 50 percent more powerful than TNT. Kennedy's mission was part of Operation Aphrodite/Project Anvil, a desperate American effort to rescue London from a rain of German V-1 and V-2 missiles. The decision to use these bold but crude precursors to modern-day drones against German V-weapon launch sites came from Air Corps high command.

Lieutenant General Jimmy Doolittle, daring leader of the spectacular 1942 Tokyo Raid, and others concocted a plan to install radio control equipment in "war-weary" bombers, pack them with a dozen tons of high explosives, and fly them by remote control directly into the concrete German launch sites - targets too hard to be destroyed by conventional bombs. The catch was that live pilots were needed to get these flying bombs off the ground and headed toward their targets. Joe Jr., was the first naval aviator to fly such a mission. And - in the biggest man-made explosion before Hiroshima - it killed him.

Alan Axelrod's Lost Destiny is a rare exploration of the origin of today's controversial military drones as well as a searing and unforgettable story of heroism, WWII, and the Kennedy dynasty that might have been.

©2015 Alan Axelrod (P)2015 Tantor
Air Forces World War II Military War US Air Force Aviation
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Critic reviews

"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." ( Kirkus)

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Very Good Read

Very good background for JPK, Jr. and Sr. that led to the events of Augist 1944. This includes a detailed exposition of the V1 and V2 rocket program out of Germany and how it led to the Aphrodite an Anvil missions of the US Army and Navy, and the eventual flight of Joseph Jr. Also describes the stated cause of the accident, and how it could have been avoided. sad to say but the missions didn't hasten the end of the war, and it seems the men who flew them should have had a more thoroughly thought out and tested program before taking flight. They were brave men and, in my opinion, deserved better.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Remarkable

This exhaustive dossier is sure to please history and airplane buffs. But if you are looking for biographical information on Joe Kennedy, you will be disappointed. I've never read a biography that contained so little information on its subject. Still, as general WWII flying history there's a great deal of deeply researched information. Absolutely, the reading is top-notch work from Tom Perkins.

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1 person found this helpful