Wingtip from downed fighter jet flown by ace pilot brought to US museum
Lockheed P-38 Lightning nicknamed ‘Marge’ and flown by Richard Bong crashed in 1944 over what is now Papua New Guinea
Source excerpt
A wingtip of a downed fighter jet once flown by second world war ace pilot Richard Bong has been taken to his home state of Wisconsin from Papua New Guinea, where it crashed more than 80 years earlier.
The piece of the plane named after the pilot’s girlfriend, Marge Vattendahl, underwent a remarkable journey by air, land and sea before its procurement by the Richard I Bong Veterans Historical Center in Superior, Wisconsin.
Bong is credited with shooting down 40 Japanese aircraft during the second world war, more than any other US military pilot.
The native of Poplar, Wisconsin, shot down three of those enemy aircraft while in a Lockheed P-38 Lightning plane that he nicknamed Marge – and which had a portrait of Vattendahl plastered on its nose.
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