(CNN) — A piece of a World War II fighter plane that crashed 80 years ago and belonged to the country’s top ace has been found and returned to his home state of Wisconsin.
The P-38 Lockheed Lighting was flown by United States Army Air Corps Maj. Richard Bong, who holds the record for the most shoot-downs with 40 confirmed combat victories in the air. The plane was named after his future wife, Marjorie “Marge” Vattendahl, according to the Wisconsin National Guard.
He used the plane for dozens of missions, but another pilot flying it was forced to bail out in March 1944, sending it crashing into the rainforest.
Eighty years later, the search for the plane, dubbed “Mission Marge,” began.
The Richard I. Bong Veterans Historical Center worked with the organization, Pacific Wrecks, to find what was left of the plane scattered on a remote hill.
“It is such an important piece of World War II history, and Richard Bong is such a notable figure that we thought it was important to preserve at least a piece of the airplane,” said Briana Fiandt, curator of collections and exhibits at the Richard I. Bong Veterans Historical Center.
As the nation’s top ace, Bong has a unique history.
Who was Maj. Richard Bong?
Bong, originally from Poplar, Wisconsin, was a “typical farm kid,” Fiandt described, with an interest in flying.
He joined the Army Air Forces before the war and learned how to fly. He was eventually sent to the Pacific Theater with the Fifth Air Force, she said.
He shot down 40 planes during World War II, setting the record for the most confirmed victories in the air, not just for the conflict, but in all of US history. The record still holds today.
Prior to receiving his own plane, Bong would fly whatever aircraft was available.
He joked in a letter home that he never had “one aircraft long enough to paint anything on it. Too many bullet holes,” according to the organization Pacific Wrecks, a nonprofit which documents World War II aircraft.
He once told his wife the “Marge” plane was “the most shot at girl in the Pacific.”
Bong was awarded the medal of honor for “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action above and beyond the call of duty,” according to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. He was assigned as a gunnery instructor and not expected to perform combat duty, but would volunteer for repeated combat missions, including in hazardous deployments over Balikpapan, Borneo, and in the Leyte area of the Philippines.
Bong was later ordered back to the United States for his own safety.
When he returned home, Bong “quickly married” Marge at the cathedral in Superior, Wisconsin, the Historical Center said.
But his stateside duty proved to be more dangerous than his time in combat.
Six months after he married, Bong was killed at the age of 24 while test piloting the first Lockheed jet fighter, the P-80 Shooting Star, in California. According to the Historical Center, he bailed out after steering the crashing aircraft away from civilian homes, but it was too late.
Marge later remarried and died in Wisconsin in 2003 at 79 years old.
Bringing ‘Marge’ home
In 2020, Wisconsin’s National Guard and Papua New Guinea entered into a military agreement though the State Partnership Program, which promotes cooperation through military exchanges.
One thing they both had in common was Bong.
“People were really interested in the shared history,” said Leslie Westmont, public affairs officer for the Wisconsin National Guard.
A team from Pacific Wrecks located the crash site and conducted a non-invasive site survey and investigation, according to the group’s website.
“The plane crashed into a jungle covered hillside with both engines embedded into the soil. Over the past eighty years, parts have eroded down the slope. Part numbers observed on wreckage associated with the P-38. Radiator data plates were for P-38J. The wing tips are painted red,” it read.
The Historical Center worked with the government of Papua New Guinea to secure all the permissions to legally recover parts of the plane, Fiandt said. Bong’s nephews went with the search team to bring the wreckage home.
The Wisconsin Air National Guard helped fly the wingtip to the US. The relic was loaded into a KC-135 Stratotanker that happened to be in the area on an unrelated mission and on July 15 it arrived back in Bong’s home state.
The wingtip is now part of the collection at the Richard I. Bong Veterans Historical Center in Superior, Wisconsin. A second piece went to the national museum in Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea.
“Everybody knows who he is, and they didn’t forget him, and they wanted to honor him,” Fiandt said.
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