Richard Bong's P-38 Recovered!

[Shrike]

Apparently, Richard Bong's P-38 was recovered recently.  Another pilot was flying his plane when it encountered mechanical problems and crashed in a jungle over Papua New Guinea.  I read the pilot survived.

https://www.stripes.com/theaters/asia_pacific/2024-05-23/p-38-marge-richard-bong-wwii-new-guinea-13957144.html

I never realized he died on a P-80 test flight just a few days before the end of WWII.

[Maverick]

I read there that they recovered a small piece with a serial number on it, The crash site was described as a more or less vertical impact hard enough to bury the engines below ground. Article also says there are no plans to dig the plane up, so not really a recovery. A discovery of the wreck certainly but no recovery of it. be nice to have a few fragments for museum purposes.

[Shrike]

My journalism career is over .  I saw another article which looked like part of the nose art was recovered but they must have been showing an image of the plane.