Biden Suggests Cannibals Ate His Uncle After WW2 Plane Crash
President Joe Biden suggested this week during a visit to Scranton, Pennsylvania, that his uncle had been eaten by “cannibals” after his plane got “shot down” in Papua New Guinea during World War II.
President Biden exaggerated details about his uncle's disappearance in WWII, implying he was eaten by cannibals in Papua New Guinea. Official records point to mechanical failure. New Guinea was a key battleground with a history of cannibalism. https://t.co/z8YmpZkgtr
— The America One News (@am1_news) April 18, 2024
Biden, in his Wednesday comments, was talking about his uncle Ambrose Finnegan, a second lieutenant who served in the Fifth Air Force during the war and went missing on May 14, 1944, while he was on a flight headed to Nadzab Airfield in New Guinea from Los Negros Island.
Speaking to steelworkers, Biden said, “He got shot down in New Guinea and they never found the body because there used to be — there were a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea.”
The president made the same suggestion that cannibals ate up his uncle earlier in the day during an earlier visit to a World War II memorial in Scranton.
“He got shot down in an area where there were a lot of cannibals at the time. They never recovered his body, but the government went back when I went down there and they checked and found some parts of the plane,” he said.
Biden’s comments on his uncle’s disappearance imply exaggerated detailing, as they tell a different tale from what official government records say about the crash. It was officially stated that the plane had gone down due to mechanical failure and that three of the men aboard it drowned.
A U.S. military report on the incident says, “For unknown reasons, this plane was forced to ditch in the ocean off the north coast of New Guinea. Both engines failed at low altitude, and the aircraft’s nose hit the water hard. Three men failed to emerge from the sinking wreck and were lost in the crash. One crew member survived and was rescued by a passing barge. An aerial search the next day found no trace of the missing aircraft or the lost crew members.”
Biden’s remarks on Wednesday would not be the first time he would shell made-up details related to military services of his relatives. In December 2022, he said during a speech that he got his uncle, Frank Biden, the Purple Heart for his service during World War II’s Battle of the Bulge.
According to the president, he awarded Frank the Purple Heart when he was vice president with his father and uncle present at the award ceremony. The story is, however, impossible given that Biden’s father and uncle had been dead years before he got sworn in as vice president in 2009. His father died in 2002 and his uncle died in 1999; almost a decade before he was elected vice president in the 2008 election.