As a way of introducing this seemingly incongruous black plaque award , it is necessary to explain the selection process for the scheme. As the English Heretic project has unfolded, it has become clear that we are progressing by the three strands of the “wyrd”: 'that which has become'; 'that which is in the process of becoming' and 'that which should necessarily be'. Though we are indebted to the proposals communicated by members of the public, it is now increasingly difficult to be prescriptive about the criteria for a Black Plaque recipient. Indeed, as is well illustrated by the case of Joseph Kennedy it would seem that the recipients are choosing us through the irrational ethers of their individual tragedies, rather than us nominating them with a commercial eye or by academic committee. And, so to the genesis of the black plaque we are unveiling

Our journey to Fersfield, Norfolk, began with a pathworking at Polridmouth Cove, near Menabilly Barton in Cornwall. The aim of the pathworking was to apprehend occult meanings in Daphne Du Maurier's short story, The Birds which was set in the vicinity of Menabilly. These researches were documented in the paper “The D-Daimons Of Menabilly” (Wyrd Tales I – The Heretical Reader).

In brief summary, a gifted medium in the English Heretic Field Group obtained rapport with the spectre of a dead airman. The revenant’s message was cryptic, informing our diviner to perform a series of seances at disused Norfolk air bases, using the speeches of Winston Churchill as a bibliomantic device.

Our initial aim was to map the 32 paths of the Tunnel of Set, to 32 of the remaining air fields in Norfolk. In planning the 'lightning fork' route across the county and in order to reduce the financial overheads we decided to perform a trajectory from south to north. Using the Ghost Fields of Norfolk guidebook by Roderick McKenzie, we began looking at the histories for the most southerly of the abandoned air fields, to find a suitable glamour, within which to perform our first operation.

The two most appropriately appointed airfields were Thorpe Abbots and Fersfield. Thorpe Abbots appeared on the surface to hold interest, being the home of the tragic unit known as the 'Bloody Hundredth'. The 100th Bomb Group suffered a catastrophic number of fatalities during the WWII. However, the tower of the air base had already been converted into a memorial and so it was felt that too obvious a target for our research. We then turned to Fersfield, an airfield in an especially quiet corner of South Norfolk. The site had been used as a base for the deployment of an American variant of the infamous German V1 'Doodlebug' – the pilot-less flying bomb concept. The operation had two monikers: Operation Aphrodite and Operation Anvil

First launched in August 1944, it was a crude and reckless campaign. Decommissioned war weary bombers were loaded with a highly volatile explosive, Torpex, and then guided to their target via radio control from a 'mother' aircraft following behind. The final dangerous ingredient of the project was that the drone aircraft ('the babies'), needed to be initially piloted by a two man crew until control could be established by the 'mother' aircraft. The volunteers for this role were a special breed - fuelled by a kamikaze like credo or the death-drive

Joseph Kennedy Jr.

The oldest son of Joseph Kennedy Snr, prominent businessmen and fiercely ambitious political machinator, Joe Kennedy Jr had been primed for one role by his father: nothing less than the president of the United States. His younger brother, John F Kennedy was very much in the shadow of his older higher achieving sibling. When World War II broke out, Joseph Kennedy successfully enlisted as an aviator in the US Navy. His less physically able younger brother John failed his medical for the army due to a delicacy in his spine. He joined the navy too, though in the less heroic position of an intelligence officer.

Already the sibling rivalry had the making of a Greek tragedy..

A reversal of heroic fortune occurred in 1943, when John Kennedy's boat was rammed by a Japanese destroyer. Despite his frailty Kennedy swam to the rescue of two of his crew. For this feat of unexpected bravery he was fated with the Navy And Corps medal. Ironically, later during his presidency, he admitted that he was ill deserved of the honour, as the boat's sinking had resulted from what was really a botched military operation. The dynamic of his relationship with brother Joe also changed irrevocably. For the first time in their lives it was the younger sibling who was receiving the plaudits and attention

Desperate to match the accidental heroism of JKF, Joe was that “special breed” of airman required to pilot the volatile drone bombers of Operation Aphrodite. Driven now by a volatile mythic mix Herculean fantasy and prodigal son, Joseph volunteered as a pilot on one of the 'babies'; an attempt to steal back the mantle from his feeble brother and regain his position with their father

Operation Aphrodite

The first mission of Aphrodite was carried out on August 4th 1944. The target was Mimoyecques, a hillside German munitions site in northern France, housing their V3 supergun. It was an unmitigated disaster. One of the B17 drones crashed near Orford Ness, on the Suffolk coast, taking one of the pilots with it: Colonel Fisher. It left a huge crater in an area of Sudbourne Woods, that would become known as “Fisher's Crater”

Undeterred by the logistic and technical insanity of the project - the drones were controlled by a remote control system viewed through a primitive close circuit TV unit called Azon - Aphrodite pressed ahead. As a measure of the cavalier nature of the project: one of operators, admitted to have never seen a television before, let alone steered a tired bomber packed full of high explosives towards a well hidden target across the channel, via a TV unit.

A week later on 12th August, at 6pm, the three drones took off from Fersfield, one piloted by Joseph Kennedy Jr. The plane had been codenamed Zootsuit Black. Commanding Officer Edward Olsen wondered why it had been given the colour of death; the other two drones in this operation were given the moniker's Zootsuit Red and Zootsuit Pink.

In his book Operation Aprhodite: Desperate Mission, Jack Olsen (no relation to Edward Olsen), gives a poignant and haunting evocation of the eve of the mission and the atmosphere at Fersfield.

“That night, Joe Kennedy stalked around the Nissen hut; plainly, he was in a petulant mood that was totally unlike his previous behaviour... every now and then Kennedy, in the manner of a typically disturbed person, would stomp to his end of the hut and blurt out a few words of annoyance...”

Part of Kennedy's perturbation had been caused by the delay of the mission by a day. He had originally intended to spend the weekend with his girlfriend at a nearby estate. He hopped on his bicycle and called his sister's home from the payphone at the crossroads to relay the information about the change of plans. But there was more to the anxiety than the merely a missed date. He had also told one of his commanding officers that he was beginning to regret volunteering for the mission..

The first leg of the flight plan took the armada from Fersfield to an airfield 25 miles away at Saxmundham, where they successfully registered their first checkpoint. From there they flew to the second checkpoint at Beccles. At this point the radio controlled unit in the mothership was switched on and to the satisfaction of the crew they saw that its instructions were successfully registered in Kennedy's drone.

Olsen in Operation Aphrodite, describes the following moments:

“The robot with the two motherships in train followed a navigational B-17 over the little villages of Therbeton and Middleton. Close to reaching Blythburgh, one of the operators in the mothership grasped the metal rod on the control box and eased the robot into a shallow left turn. Suddenly the television picture in front of him flickered and died, and in the same instant he heard a loud gasp over the intercom...”

Eyewitnesses in the another of the mothership's viewed the scene from another angle,

“They saw the drone begin a slow left turn to the left, but just as the left wing dipped a few degrees below the horizontal, there was a blinding flash of light, and the bright afternoon sky became incandescent. Where the drone had been there was now a yellow nucleus edged in smoke, with fire and flame going straight up and down from it, like a pair of giant Roman candles. In a split second the nucleus had turned into a greenish-white cylinder of fire, slightly compressed in the middle like an hourglass and flattened out on top.”

Kennedy's drone had ignited in a single refulgent moment..

The ordnance officer reported the exact site of the explosion to be 2.5 miles northwest of Dunwich at Hinton lodge. At least 60 houses in Blythburgh and an unknown number of houses in Walberswick, Thonington and Hinton received considerable damage. One engine fell in Blythburgh Lodge, three engines fell near Hinton Lodge. Another report told of severe damage to an estate between Blythburgh and Walberswick, and still another listed the farm animals supposedly killed by the shock of the blast. Though the engines were found, they were beyond repair. There were no traces of human beings

But what is sure is that the remains of the man who would have been president were scattered over the Suffolk countryside

The exact cause of the explosion was never determined but it was suspected that an electrical fault in the beleaguered bomber had ignited its Torpex packed hulk

That night back at Fersfield, the air group vented their shock in various ways. Some got blind drunk and in one of the Nissen huts, played a strange grief stricken shooting game, firing their pistols at the ceiling of their dormitory. Meanwhile, command were in panic, attempting to keep quiet about their knowledge of the many technical shortcomings that had impaired and rendered the project dangerous... Olsen in Project Aphrodite recounts the conversation that night between two commanding officers, Captain Loyd Humphries and Colonel Roy Forrest.

"What's the matter, Roy?" Humphries said, "You look like you were in the explosion, too."

"Sorry, Humpy," Forrest said sarcastically. "I'm not allowed to talk anymore. But if you want to know a military secret, I'll tell you a beaut. Somebody at headquarters is scared shitless."

"Of What?"

"Of a family named Kennedy."