In 2024, Richard Bong’s famous P-38 Lightning, known as “Marge,” was discovered in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, 80 years after it crashed during World War II.
Richard Bong was America’s highest-scoring fighter ace of WWII, credited with shooting down 40 Japanese aircraft. He named his P-38 after his girlfriend, Marjorie “Marge” Vattendahl, and had her portrait displayed on its nose.
But Bong wasn’t flying the aircraft when it crashed on March 24, 1944. Lieutenant Thomas Malone was at the controls when mechanical failures forced him to parachute to safety, leaving the fighter buried in the jungle.
Eight decades later, researchers from Pacific Wrecks located the wreckage. Traces of its distinctive red paint and the number “993” on a wingtip confirmed the aircraft’s identity.
Bong himself had died at just 24 years old, on August 6, 1945, while testing a P-80 jet in California. It was the same day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
In 2026, Marge’s recovered wingtip was finally brought back to Wisconsin, while most of the wreckage remained in Papua New Guinea.
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He is real hero.