The Lost Is Found

Recently, while browsing through the small library where I live, I uncovered a story that I had been seeking for a long time. To wit: How was young Joe Kennedy (eldest son of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, and brother of Jack and Bobby and Ted Kennedy) lost during WWII?
Doris Kearn Goodwin's story - The Fitzgeralds And The Kennedys - an American Saga - published in Readers Digest Todays Best Nonfiction in 1987 told me what I wanted to know.
Joe was commissioned in the Army Air Forces as a B-24 pilot and had already accomplished 39 missions in the European theater and was due to come home in two weeks. But D-Day (Normandy) was coming up and Joe volunteered to stay another month to fly patrols in the PB4Y over the English Channel (Operation Cork). The operation was a success - not a single ship of the invasion fleet was lost to German U-boats.
After D-Day the Germans began propelling V-1 rockets into London from giant concrete bunkers on the French coast. Civilian casualties were high.
A plan was then conceived - PB4Y's would be gutted and loaded with explosives and flown to be targeted to the bunkers. Joe kennedy and copilot Wilford Willy volunteered for the dangerous mission - to fly the airplane across the channel toward the target, Calais, a giant concrete bunker, believed to be the launching site of the V-1 rockets.
The flight was scheduled for August 12 (D-day was June 4, 1944). At 5:52 Joe and Wilford lifted off from the channel in the PB4Y loaded with high explosives. At 6:10 pm, at an altitude of 2,000 ft, Joe engaged the autopilot and called the mother ship to take over. They were to then bailout. At 6:20 pm a huge explosion occurred. Joe and Wilford never made it, and were never found. Real heroes, by any count.
I thank Ms Goodwin and Readers Digest Books for my taking liberty with this account.
Thanks for listening. R.S.