Joe Biden says hero uncle's plane was shot down in area with a 'lot of CANNIBALS' in Papua New Guinea in World War II...and his body was never found

Joe Biden suggested his war hero uncle may have met a grisly end among cannibals after being shot down over Papua New Guinea in World War II.

The president said there were 'a lot of cannibals at the time' in the area where his uncle Ambrose J. Finnegan's plane was downed in the 1940s.

Biden made the comment on a trip to Scranton, Pennsylvania where he visited a war memorial bearing the name of his heroic relative, who was known by the family as 'Uncle Bosie'.

The president said: '(He) got shot down in an area where there were a lot of cannibals at the time. They never recovered his body.

'But the government went back when I was down there and they checked and found parts of the plane and the like.'

Biden went on to tell how 'Uncle Bosie' - who he called a 'hell of a guy' - had ended up in the jungle populated by cannibalistic savages.

He said: 'When D-Day occurred, the next day, all four of my mother's brothers volunteered to join the military. Three of them made it, one of them couldn't go.

'Ambrose Finnegan - we called him Uncle Bosie - he was shot down. He was in the Army Air Corps, before there was an Air Force, flew those single engine airplanes, reconnaissance flights over New Guinea.

'He volunteered because someone couldn't make it.'

That led to him being shot down among the cannibals.

Biden went on: 'We had a tradition in my family my grandfather taught us.

'When you visit the graveside of a family member you say three Hail Marys. That was what I was doing (at the memorial).

'My Uncle Ambrose Finnegan - Uncle Bosie was a hell of a guy. I never met him.'

Biden said as he looked at the memorial he thought about his Republican rival for the presidency Donald Trump.

'What I was thinking about when I was standing there, when Trump refused to go up the memorial in Paris and he said they were bunch of suckers and losers,' he said.

'To me that is a such a disqualifying assertion made by a president. The guys who saved civilization in the 1940s suckers and losers.'

Trump has strongly denied making such comments about American soldiers who died in World War II.