Biden suggests his uncle was eaten by cannibals after being shot down during WWII

Joe Biden made the surprising suggestion that his uncle may have been eaten by cannibals after being shot down during World War II during a visit toPennsylvania.

While speaking to reporters on Wednesday, the president referenced his uncle 2nd Lt Ambrose J Finnegan Jr, who he said had flown reconnaissance flights over New Guinea during the war.

Mr Biden used the anecdote in an attempt to draw a contrast with reports that Donald Trump, while president, had called fallen service members “suckers” and “losers.” However he seemed to get several details of his family history wrong.

“Ambrose Finnegan, we called him Uncle Bosie, he was shot down, he was in the air corps before there was an air force. He flew single engine planes in reconnaissance flights over New Guinea, he volunteered because someone couldn’t make it,” he said, speaking following a visit to a war memorial in his hometown of Scranton.

“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 checked and found parts of the plane.”

The US government’s record of missing service members does not attribute Finnegan’s death to hostile action or indicate cannibals were a factor.

According to the records Finnegan died on 14 May 1944, while riding as a passenger on an Army Air Forces plane that, “for unknown reasons,” was forced to ditch in the Pacific Ocean off the northern coast of New Guinea.

“Both engines failed at low altitude, and the aircraft’s nose hit the water hard,” the agency states in its listing of Finnegan. “Three men failed to emerge from the sinking wreck and were lost in the crash.

“[Finnegan] has not been associated with any remains