Joe Biden believes that his uncle may have been eaten by cannibals after his plane crashed over Papua New Guinea during the Second World War.
The US president told the story of 2nd Lieut Ambrose J Finnegan on a visit to a war memorial in his childhood city of Scranton, Pennsylvania on Wednesday, claiming he was shot down in an area inhabited by cannibal tribes.
“He flew single-engine planes, reconnaissance flights over New Guinea,” said Mr Biden.
“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.
“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 and the like.”
Mr Biden’s theory is, however, contradicted by official war records of Lt Finnegan’s death, which suggest that his aircraft, an A-20 Havoc, suffered engine failure over the Pacific in 1944 and that he did not survive the crash.
‘Uncle Bosie’
Mr Biden, 81, had earlier put his hand on the engraved name of Lt Finnegan, who he calls “Uncle Bosie”, at the missing-in-action memorial.
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