B-17 Recovered, Home At LGB

After years of salvage efforts in the steamy New Guinea swamps, a group of Americans has recovered a B-17 Flying fortress that went down during the war and returned her to the United States.

The forward fuselage of the plane they’re calling “the Swamp Ghost” was unveiled at a Long Beach ceremony on June 11, attended by local politicians, the salvagers, a flyover and relatives of the new deceased crew.

“I know this is a happy day for Dick,” sand Linda Oliver, the 89-year-ole widow of bombardier Richard Oliver, the last living crewman, who died last August. She said he always wanted to see the plane returned.

“He longed for this to happen, but this wasn’t to be,” said Oliver, a resident of  Tiburon in the San Francisco Bay Area. She 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 on a truck trailer in the parking lot of The Reed, a harbor-side restaurant.

The plane 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 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

The pilot, Army Air Forces Capt. Fred Eaton, guided the aircraft to a belly landing in what turned out to be a swamp, and the nine crewmen survived a six-week ordeal in 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.

For the next 64 years, the bomber was entombed beneath water and tall grass until it was salvaged in 2006 through a treacherous recovery effort. One of only four B-17E models ever recovered, Swamp Ghost will be restored, a spokesman for the recovery team said, possibly to flying condition.

Or, it may be put on display at an aviation history museum in honor of America’s veterans, a spokesman said.

DISCOVERED

An Australian air force crew came upon the B-17 in 1972. It had sustained  little damage in the landing and lay virtually undisturbed.

John Tallichet, president and CEO 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. He didn’t live to see its return.

“One of his purposes in life was to bring this plane to the United States,” his son said.

Because of its remote location and difficulties in getting the government of New Guinea to grant permission for it to be removed, the antique bomber remained in its resting place for many more years, gaining the nickname “Swamp Ghost” along the way.

Unfortunately, westerners trekking to the well-known site removed many items as souvenirs after its discovery and it’s little more than a shell now.

The effort to bring home the plane was conducted by Pennsylvania businessman Fred Hagen, a friend of David Tallichet’s 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. Then came a dispute over whether they had the authority to remove the plane and it was held up in New Guinea. Following that, its status as a warplane also delayed its shipment through New Zealand, Hagen said.

The B-17 finally arrived in Long Beach in May but wasn’t officially unveiled until the June event. Hagen said the cost of recovering the bomber was about $1.5 million.  According to the Aero Vintage Books website there are 48 intact, recovered B-17 airframes in the world.

Of these, eleven are currently operational and flown at least occasionally. Another 23 are on static display and available for public viewing, the website said. Nine B-17s are under some form of restoration and five B-17s are in storage.

The partial remains of at least six B-17s are also held. For the most part, these examples are in storage and may form the basis for future restorations, the website said. (See www.aerovintage.com/b17loc.htm for more details.)

The salvagers did not say who would do the restoration, where or how long they expected it to take.