LONG BEACH, Calif. — A B-17 bomber that lay in a New Guinea swamp for decades after being forced down during a World War II combat mission has been returned to the United States after years of salvage efforts.
The forward fuselage of the so-called “Swamp Ghost” was displayed Friday at the Port of Long Beach in an emotional, patriotic ceremony attended by kin of some of the now-deceased aircrew.
“I know this a happy day for Dick,” said Linda Oliver, the 89-year-old widow of bombardier Richard Oliver, the last living crewman who died in August. She regretted he did not see the warbird’s return.
“He longed for this to happen, but this wasn’t to be,” said Oliver, of Tiburon, Calif.
The frail widow watched a flag presentation by an Air Force honor guard and a flyover by vintage World War II fighters before her three children helped her climb steps to peer inside the fuselage sitting atop a truck trailer in the parking lot of the harborside restaurant The Reef.
The four-engine B-17E Flying Fortress was built by Boeing in November 1941, flew from California to Hawaii days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and then island-hopped to Australia.
It went down on Feb. 23, 1942, on its only combat mission after being damaged by enemy fire during a raid on Japanese forces at Rabaul in New Britain and losing fuel.
Army Air Corps Capt. Fred Eaton piloted the aircraft to a belly landing in what turned out to be a swamp and the nine crewmen survived a six-week ordeal escaping the swamp and making their way to safety.
“Often in my life the courage and the perseverance that Dad and his fellow crew members demonstrated gave me courage to face some of the challenges we’ve all met in life,” said the bombardier’s son, Mike Oliver of Richmond, Va., who was born while his father was missing in action.
An Australian air force crew came upon the B-17 in 1972. Sustaining little damage in the landing and virtually undisturbed for years, the intact craft became coveted by salvagers of historic warplanes.
John Tallichet, president and chief executive of Specialty Restaurants Corp., recounted how his father, company founder and World War II B-17 pilot David Tallichet, started efforts to recover the plane in the 1980s but didn’t live to see its return. “One of his purposes in life was to bring this plane to the United States,” he said.
The B-17’s remote location and difficulties in gaining governmental permission to remove it from New Guinea would leave it in its watery resting place for many more years, gaining the nickname “Swamp Ghost” along the way. Westerners trekking to the site removed many items as souvenirs during that time.
The effort to bring home the plane was carried on by Pennsylvania businessman Fred Hagen, a friend of David Tallichet who has located a series of aircraft lost during World War II, leading to repatriation of missing airmen’s remains.
In 2006 Hagen organized a salvage operation in which the B-17 was cut into sections that were flown by helicopter to a port. However, a dispute over authority to remove the plane held it up in New Guinea, and then its status as a warplane delayed its shipment through New Zealand, Hagen said.
The B-17 finally arrived in Long Beach last month.
Hagen said the cost of recovering the bomber was approximately $1.5 million.
It may be restored to flying condition and housed in a museum, or perhaps reassembled at less expense for display in a setting recreating the jungle swamp where it landed 68 years ago, Hagen said.
In a poignant scene, Linda Oliver, stood in front of the plane with a photo of her late husband in uniform, assisted by daughters Kathy Oliver Cataldo of Richmond, Va., and Karen Braughton of Sebastopol, Calif.
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