Lt.. Joseph P. Kennedy
United States Navy VPB-110
Lt Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr (older brother of the future president JFK) and Lt Wilford J. Willy each served in VPB-110 at Dunkeswell; their names are listed among the fallen of Fleet Air Wing Seven. They volunteered to serve in Special Attack Unit One (SAU-1) piloting PB4Y-1 drones loaded with high explosives for attacks against German V-weapons sites in France. They were lost during a mission in August 1944. Intending to bail out when their aircraft was under radio control, they were killed when their aircraft exploded prematurely. Each was awarded the Navy Cross posthumously.
I am a combat veteran of the Vietnam War, not WWII, but I am very familiar with the airfield at Dunkeswell, UK, dating to the three years I served at the U.S. Navy's European headquarters in London during the 1980s. I thought visitors to your site and those who have listed information would want to know that the citizens of Dunkeswell remember those who served at the airfield with Fleet Air Wing Seven.
In the nearby village church in Dunkeswell, a large brass plaque is mounted on an interior wall of listing the names of the 182 men of the Air Wing who lost their lives flying ASW and other missions from the Dunkeswell Airfield. A U.S. flag is displayed next to the memorial. The inscription above their names reads, "In Memory of These Officers and Men of the United States Navy Who Died for Their Country September 1943 to July 1945." Each summer, the pastor of the church invited a naval aviator assigned to the U.S. Navy staff in London to attend a memorial service for the fallen aviators. It was my honor to attend over three successive years. My wife and I became good friends with the pastor and his wife at the time, the Rev. Nick Walls. He has since retired, and the U.S. Navy relocated its European headquarters from London to the Mediterranean. I don't know if the memorial service continues.
Years later, while serving as the senior editor of the Navy League's Seapower magazine, I interviewed U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy. I told him about the memorial to the men of Fleet Air Wing Seven and the annual observance in the church. He showed me two framed shadow boxes hanging on the wall in his Senate office. One contained Joe Kennedy's Navy Wings of Gold and the gold buttons from his service dress blue uniform; the other shadow box contained JFK's dog tags dating to his wartime service in the Pacific theater as the skipper of PT-109. I would be pleased to share several photos of the chapel in Dunkeswell, the memorial, and scenes of the airfield as they appeared in the 1980s. A flying club was using the field at that time.
