burial vs cremation for the Kennedys

[Jeff Duvall]

I'm pleased to hear that Teddy Kennedy will be buried with his brothers in Arlington.  The Kennedys have always buried their dead.  This is not surprising as they are Catholic.

 

The exception was JFK Jr.  He was cremated and the ashes were spread at sea.  It seems that with what their family has already suffered, they decided there was no reason for further and unnecessary anguish.

 

Joe Jr. died having volunteered for a most the most dangerous WWII mission of flying a radio detonated bomber, and with what seems to have been the British blunder of not turning off their radar stations and detonating it.

 

JFK and RFK were gunned down.  People expected Teddy to run right then, in 1968.  He was not assassinated, but his political career was at Chappaquiddick.  There are witnesses who saw two men driving in the car with Mary Jo Kopechine, neither of them being Teddy.  While likely not a faithful husband, and the Kennedys generally not being very nice people to deal with, he had nothing to do with her death.  He was slow to report it because he knew he had been set up, and he needed advice on what to do.  Finally he did decided to accept the responsibility that was pinned on him.  Likely its because of this that he lived.

 

JFK Jr. was flying his Piper Saratoga over water at night.  Sometimes it does happen that pilots do get disoriented, especially over water and especially at night.  But it is rare.  The news media tried to spin this him being reckless and not being being qualified to fly under those conditions.  This is untrue.  Though he may not have had his full Instrument flight papers, he was still qualified for this as it was not instrument conditions.  That is, there was still good visibility.

 

To avoid disorientation all he had to do was watch his Attitude Indicator and keep the sunny side up.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attitude_indicator

 

This he would have been trained to do long before.  He would have had to go through exercises of flying with a hood that prevents him from seeing out the windshield, but lets him see these instruments.

 

This is not what is meant by instrument fight either, that referring to conditions where visibility is so poor that you have to file a flight plan and fly by radio navigation.

 

Becoming so disoriented so as to crash into the water is rare.  What is much more strange is that fact that the Piper Saratoga's nose landing gear wheel was found separated, and on a nearby beach.

 

That this could be broken off simply by hard impact with the water is almost impossible.  As with most light aircraft, the nose landing gear attached to the engine mount.  So the engine, landing gear, and engine mount make for one very hard piece.  This is protected by a cowling.

 

The Saratoga has both forward and aft baggage compartments.  The forward one is just in front of the kick board, where the pedals are, and just behind the engine compartment.  At most General Aviation airports, especially before 911, there is zero security for the tied down planes.  There are contours in the forward baggage compartment to allow space for the landing gear.  A bomb could be well have been hidden there.

 

Or, it could have been placed in the engine compartment in front of that baggage compartment.  Routine inspection involves opening some upper parts of the cowling, but not the more complex removal of the lower portions.

 

The bomb could be set off by an altimeter.  When it detonated, likely it would break the engine, nose landing gear, and engine mount off of the main airframe.  This would move the center of gravity rearward, making the plane completely unstable and uncontrollable.  It would tumble through the air, as it went into free fall.

 

Very little was shown to us of what they recovered of the wreckage.  Of the three on board, they only recovered JFK Jr's body.  It could well have shown the deep fragmentation wounds consistent with proximity to high explosive detonation.

 

Seems that with all they've already been through, they opted against unnecessarily prolonging this.  So JFK Jr., to every one's surprise, was cremated.