JFK's brother was destined for the presidency. Then a tragedy struck that changed American history
In the early 20th century, the Kennedy family’s political ambitions were built around their eldest son, Joe Jr – until his death in 1944 reshaped both the family and the subsequent course of American politics
On a cold January day in 1961, John F Kennedy stood on the steps of the US Capitol and took the presidential oath, becoming the youngest elected president in American history. To an onlooker, it might have seemed almost pre-determined: here was the natural heir to a politically influential father, forging the next steps in an extraordinary dynasty. With his youth, charisma, and eloquence, the latest president was perfectly suited to a new age of television politics.
But there’s long been a suggestion that JFK wasn’t the man his family had originally intended for the White House. For years, the dynasty’s hopes had rested not on ‘Jack’ – as John was known to his family – but on his older brother, Joseph P Kennedy Jr.
Self-confident and fiercely ambitious, the eldest child Joe Jr (b.1915) was long marked out as the family standard-bearer: the son who would fulfil his father’s frustrated political dreams and, perhaps, one day become president himself.
Instead, Joe Jr was killed in active service in Europe during the Second World War. His death in 1944 cut short a life, and shattered the Kennedy family’s carefully laid plans.
A family built for power
The Kennedy family of the early 20th century was stunningly wealthy and influential, and orientated towards power and social advancement.
At its centre stood the patriarch Joseph P Kennedy Sr, a formidable financier who had built a vast fortune through banking, stock market speculation and the film industry. In 1938 he was appointed by President Franklin D Roosevelt to the position of US ambassador to Britain, a role that gave the family international prominence as well as access to powerful political networks on both sides of the Atlantic.
Kennedy Sr had presidential ambitions of his own, but they never came to fruition. His political prospects were damaged in part by his controversial views, particularly his opposition to US involvement in the Second World War, and his appeasement of Nazi policy.
Following his fall from grace and an exit from diplomacy due to his views, Kennedy Sr’s ambition to the highest office didn’t disappear, but rather was transferred to the next generation.
“There was the understanding that most certainly Joe Jr was the father’s favourite,” explains historian Leigh Straw, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. “Once Joe Sr realises he won’t have his own political career, he then looks to Joe Jr to take the family ambitions much further than he can. He was the one that was being propelled for political success.”
For Joe’s younger brother, Jack (b.1917), this created a clear hierarchy from the outset. JFK was, explains Straw, “a little bit in the shadow of his brother for many of those earlier years.”
Kennedy rivalries
The relationship between Joe Jr and Jack was shaped by the lopsided affection and hopes that trickled down from their father.
The Kennedy household was large and intensely competitive, Straw explains. Joseph and Rose Kennedy raised their nine children in an environment where success was a necessity, and comparison between siblings was constant. “In such a large family, there will be competitiveness; there will be rivalry,” Straw says.
Joe Jr and Jack, born only two years apart, were natural competitors. At times, that rivalry could be productive. “It propels them on to make something of themselves,” Straw says.
But it could also be cruel. “There are certainly aspects of bullying that go on,” she notes, including brotherly fights. Adding to this, the young Jack was prone to bouts of serious illness – which would remain a feature of his life – and he was often overshadowed by his elder brother’s more forceful personality.
But US involvement in the Second World War transformed that dynamic.
War and opportunity
Following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the United States formally entered the conflict. Like many young American men of their generation, both Joe Jr and Jack joined the armed forces.
“They both enlist into the Navy,” Straw explains.
Their decision carried a certain irony. “They are engaging in war service, in a war that their father didn’t actually want America being involved in,” Straw says.
For both brothers, military service offered an invaluable opportunity to demonstrate courage, leadership and patriotism on a public stage – independently of their family. In wartime America, there was an awareness that such qualities would become potent political capital.
For Jack Kennedy, his moment of heroism came in the Pacific in 1943.
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He was commanding PT-109, a patrol torpedo boat: one of the small, fast naval craft used to attack larger enemy vessels, often under cover of darkness in hazardous waters. During a night operation in the Solomon Islands, PT-109 was rammed by a Japanese destroyer and cut in two.
Despite injuries of his own, Jack helped gather the survivors and led them through open water to nearby islands. “He loses two men on that ship, but the act of heroism that comes out of it is that he’s able to save the other men on PT-109, and they skip between different islands until they are rescued by a couple of local guys from the Solomon Islands, who then alert the Navy command to their having been survivors on PT-109,” Straw explains.
“Now he’s heralded as a war hero, with some help from his father, who has friends in the press and the media who can run very favourable stories about this young Jack Kennedy.”
For the first time, Jack emerged as a public figure in his own right.
Joe Jr’s war
While Jack’s reputation rose, Joe Jr was pursuing a different and – at least, statistically – more dangerous form of service.
A naval aviator serving in Europe, he flew bombing missions against German targets. These operations were already perilous, but he later volunteered for an especially secret and experimental programme.
These secret missions formed part of Operation Aphrodite, an early attempt at remote-controlled aerial warfare. The plan was to load ageing aircraft with enormous quantities of explosives, have a crew guide them through take-off and the early stages of flight, and then bail out before the aircraft was directed by remote control towards heavily defended enemy targets.
“The idea is that you’re able to eject from the plane, and then nobody running the mission [is] harmed,” Straw says.
But the technology was crude, unpredictable and extraordinarily dangerous. “They weren’t always successful,” she adds.
Joe Jr nevertheless continued to volunteer. “He continued to do these missions because he wants to be the war hero. He wants to beat out his younger brother and have the stories about him.”
By the summer of 1944, Joe Jr had already completed numerous missions. He was eligible for leave and could have returned home. But he chose to fly again.
“He volunteers for another mission rather than actually take his leave,” Straw says, having considered this vital summer in her book The Kennedys at Cape Cod, 1944: The Summer That Changed Everything (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025).
The decision reflected both Joe Jr’s personal drive and the weight of expectation he had carried for years. Letters from the period reveal a family increasingly anxious for his safe return. But he never came home.
In August 1944, while flying an Aphrodite mission over Europe, the explosives aboard his aircraft detonated prematurely. “The bomb goes off, the plane explodes,” Straw says. “No remains are found.”
Joe Jr was 29 years old at the time of his death.
The Kennedy family’s grief, and a new opportunity
The blow to the Kennedy family was devastating.
As well as being a beloved eldest son, Joe Jr had been the focus of Joseph Kennedy Sr’s political hopes. With hindsight, Joe Jr’s death is sometimes regarded as the event that cleared the way for John F Kennedy’s rise to the presidency.
In fact, that’s perhaps not entirely true, says Straw. “We know that there's mythology around particular public figures,” she says. “We know that there's a myth making.”
And it’s the historian’s job to go back to the primary sources from that summer, she explains, and look at the human truth behind the regularly told story that Joe Snr’s political ambitions immediately pivoted towards his second son in 1944.
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“What was very interesting in relation to [being Joe Jr’s successor] is the fact that Jack is more preoccupied, really preoccupied, with trying to get through his grief – as his siblings are, his parents are. They're not immediately turning to Jack, because they're in mourning. They're trying to understand, getting through their grief as best they can in the summer of 1944.”
Jack had always been interested in politics, explains Straw, and wasn’t necessarily picking up some unwanted family mantle. “He was interested as a student at Harvard University,” she says. “But at the time he's kind of grappling with: does he become a journalist? Does he become a professor of history? Does he become a writer?
“He is very creative and so that background, I think, fuels his political career, and is with him for the rest of his life.”
The family remains Jack’s focus, says Straw, at least that summer and in the months that follow, and it’s “maybe about 1945 that we see Jack seriously thinking about a political career, and also something that his father thinks, well, you know, maybe Jack could do this.” Joe Snr also has to come around, explains Straw, because he “didn't think that Jack was going to be a politician in the family.”
While Joe Jr’s death was inevitably a defining moment in the family history and what Jack and his siblings went on to do, Straw doesn’t believe that Joe’s death is the single factor that gave the US a president in JFK. “I think there was a genuineness that Jack was interested in politics, and he didn't just enter into it because his father wanted him to, or because there were family ambitions. He did it because he wanted to do that, and I think that's quite important.”
Over time, the family’s ambitions and belief did indeed transfer, gradually, to the younger brother. But Jack still faced formidable obstacles: chronic ill health and limited political experience.
He entered politics after the war, winning election to Congress in 1946 in a campaign significantly financially backed by his father, then to the Senate, and finally to the presidency in 1960.
Leigh Straw was speaking to Elinor Evans on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Authors
James Osborne is a senior content producer at HistoryExtra