The Uncle Bosey shot down and cannibalized story
Details of the plane crash
New Guinea, the world’s second-largest island,
consists of two parts today: the independent nation of Papua New Guinea in the east, and the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua in the west.
According to the
Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, a plane carrying a three-man crew and Finnegan, a passenger, was "forced to ditch" in the ocean off the north coast of New Guinea "for unknown reasons" May 14, 1944. The engine in the plane, which had been on a courier mission, failed at low altitude; the account does not specify that it was "shot down," as Biden said.
"The aircraft's nose hit the water hard," the Pentagon agency documentation says. "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."
Finnegan was not linked to any remains recovered from the area after the war, and he is officially unaccounted for, the agency said. Finnegan is
memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines.
The White House did not answer our inquiry for this article. White House spokesman Andrew Bates
told CNN that "President Biden is proud of his uncle’s service in uniform" and that he "highlighted his uncle’s story as he made the case for honoring our sacred commitment … to equip those we send to war and take care of them and their families when they come home.’"