A famous B-17 bomber re- turned to Oahu Wednesday — 70 years after it barely missed the Japanese attack that launched the United States into World War II.
The “Swamp Ghost” didn’t fly in; it arrived in four truck- loads at the Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor. The forward fuselage is expected to be delivered next week.
“We are absolutely thrilled that this national treasure will call Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor home,” said Ken DeHoff, the museum’s executive director.
The B-17E will be “one of the crown jewels in our aircraft collection,” DeHoff said, adding that restoration is ex- pected to cost $5 million.
“Swamp Ghost” wasn’t the plane’s original nickname. The Flying Fortress got the moniker years after getting shot up over Rabaul in 1942 and ditching in Papua New Guinea in several feet of marsh water.
The crew survived, but there the big plane sat — for the next 64 years.
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A 2007 Smithsonian Magazine story about the bomber said the belly landing was perfect; only the propellers were bent.
When Australian troops checked out the plane in 1972, they found it “eerily untouched,” with machine guns in place and fully loaded, and a thermos with what used to be coffee inside, the Smith- sonian article said.
B-17E 41-2446 was sup- posed to fly to Hickam Field onDec.7,1941—thedayof the Japanese attack — but engine trouble kept it on the mainland for another week or so, said Burl Burlingame, the Pacific Aviation Museum’s curator. After the bomber made it to Hawaii and then Australia in February 1942, it took part in the first long-range bomb- ing mission against the Japanese, a raid on Rabaul in New Britain, according to the Smithsonian account.
After circling twice over Japanese ships on the bombing run, the B-17 had its wing pierced by an anti- aircraft round.
With fuel running low, the decision was made to belly- land the plane on the north coast of Papua New Guinea.
Over several days, the nine-member crew battled heat exhaustion and mosquitoes as they hacked their way through the overgrowth before running into some Papuans who helped them make it back to civilization.
The wreck was sometimes visible and used by mission- ary pilots as a navigational aid, but would be swallowed up by tall grass in the wet season. The airplane ap- peared in the pages of National Geographic in 1992.
Several recovery attempts were made, including an ef- fort by the Swamp Ghost Sal- vage Team, before the B-17 finally arrived in California in 2010. In April and May 2006, a salvage team cut off the bomber’s wings, engines and tail stabilizers and flew the parts by helicopter to a barge, which carried it to the port of Lae for eventual shipment to the United States, according to PacificWrecks.com.
In 2011, the Pacific Avia- tion Museum began negotia- tions to obtain the aircraft, and purchased it for an undisclosed amount. “The B-17 is one of those planes that is such an icon of World War II that symbolizes, basically, American air power up to this present day,” Burlingame said.
The museum said it may construct an outdoor ex- hibit resembling the swamp in which the B-17 was found, or make it part of a memo- rial garden-type setting.
In any case, progress on the plane will be very visible outside Hangar 79 on Ford Island because the bomber is too big to work on inside, Burlingame said.
“The plane is years away from being completely restored,” he said. “The trick now is just to get it back to- gether again and stabilized, and that’s a long, hard road.”
