Bong, born in Superior, Wisconsin, shot down 40 Japanese aircraft during WWII.

The aircraft, christened Marge after Majorie “Marge” Ann Vattendahl, Bong’s girlfriend and later wife, is adorned with an image of her drawn from a yearbook portrait. At the time, most nose art featured scantily clad women or two-fisted aggressive cartoon characters, but Bong wanted something different.

The wreckage was found in a forest in what is now Papua New Guinea. It crashed there in March 1944 when another pilot, Second Lieutenant Thomas Malone, was flying a reconnaissance mission at night in challenging weather and experienced engine failure. Malone bailed out, evaded capture, and lived to fly another day.

• READ MORE: Downed WWII Lancaster Bomber Raised from Sea Floor

According to Pacific Wrecks Director Justin Taylan, the search team found the wreckage May 15 in Papua New Guinea’s Madang Province. Eighty years is a long time, especially when an aircraft goes down in a dynamic environment like the jungle. It takes a great deal of time to do the research, sifting through battle reports and old weather reports to find the approximate location of a crash, then traveling to the remote areas, which often can only be reached on foot because of the thick vegetation. Nothing is done quickly.

According to Taylan, the narrative of the aircraft’s loss suggested it had crashed on the grounds of a plantation.

“We have been planning this mission since October 2023 and every year conduct expeditions to locate historical sites or document crash sites,” Taylan told FLYING. “Our work is supported by donations from the public. The P-38 Marge project is in partnership with the Richard I. Bong Veterans Historical Center, that funded half of the costs. Pacific Wrecks is a charity, and our team members are volunteers.”

When the team arrived on site, locals took them to a crash site, and it turned out to be a Japanese aircraft. The team was then told about another wreck located deeper in the jungle. The team set out again, and eventually found the wreckage in a ravine. Pieces of metal were found scattered on and in the ground and at the top of the ridge they found two aircraft engines embedded in the soil, indicating the aircraft went nose-first.

In a media conference, Taylan stated that when they found the wingtips with red paint on them, they were encouraged, as Bong’s aircraft was marked in this fashion, but added that they would have to find something imprinted with the aircraft’s serial number of 42-103993 to positively identify the aircraft.

Taylan supplied photos of  a wing tip that is embossed with what appears to be “993″. Another image shows a piece of metal stamped with “Model P-38 JK.”

During a video news conference from Papua New Guinea, Taylan said that the serial number and model identification prove the plane is the one they’ve been looking for. 

“I think it’s safe to say mission accomplished,” Taylan said. “Marge has been identified. It’s a great day for the center, a great day for Pacific Wrecks, a great day for history.”

During WWII, Bong was America’s top ace, shooting down 40 Japanese aircraft, three of them from the cockpit of Marge. In 1944 Gen. Douglas MacArthur awarded Bong the Medal of Honor.

Bong and Vattendahl married in 1945. Having completed three combat tours in the South Pacific, Bong was brought back to the U.S. and promoted the sale of war bonds when he was reassigned to test pilot duty in Burbank, California.

On August 6, 1945 while flying the new P-80A Shooting Star, one of America’s first jet airplanes, he ran into trouble. The aircraft took off around 2:30 p.m. and according to the accident investigation there was a problem with the aircraft’s fuel pump. Bong attempted to eject but his parachute did not deploy, and both the pilot and airplane went down in a field north of Hollywood. Bong was killed on the same day that America dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The next day in some newspapers the story about his death was given higher placement than the dropping of the bomb.

According to Pacific Wrecks, the Bong family was excited to hear about the discovery of the aircraft. Bong is still celebrated in Wisconsin. There is a bridge, an airport and a state recreation area named for him.

Tribute P-38s

There are two replicas of Marge in Wisconsin. One is at the EAA Museum in Oshkosh, the other in the Richard I. Bong Veterans Historical Center in Superior.

According to Briana Fiandt, curator of collections and exhibits at the center, the P-38 they have on display was used stateside during World War II.

“In 1949 it was given to the town of Poplar, where Bong grew up, and put up on a pedestal in front of a school in 1955. In the early 1990s, it was taken down and sent to the 148th airbase in Duluth for restoration,” she said.

While all that was happening, funds were being raised to build a museum to honor Bong and others who served in WWII, as well as house the aircraft. The museum is located on the Bay of Lake Superior.

“The museum was built around the airplane,” says Fiandt. “We had it installed and the museum opened, then we built the other half of the museum.”

• READ MORE: Inside the ‘Spruce Goose’

Today the multi-story facility also honors the homefront during WWII, as well as the Korean  and Vietnam conflicts. There are more than 17,000 artifacts in the museum collection.

Fiandt said that the team in Papua New Guinea has sent photographs and videos of the Marge recovery site which are being added to the collection. Fiandt is not sure what will happen to the actual aircraft, but said she has reached out to the national museum in New Guinea which may take ownership of the wreckage.

Marge is also one of the most famous mass produced P-38 aircraft model kits. If you have ever built a model of a P-38, it is very likely you built Major Bong’s aircraft, which includes red spinners, wingtips and tail stubs and what looks like a photograph on the nose.

The post U.S. WWII Ace Richard Bong’s P-38 Believed Found appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Following the race, Dowd was riding a wave of gratification, knowing he had at least set a record for aircraft powered by the Pratt & Whitney R1830 Twin Wasp engine, sourced from a Douglas DC-3. “That was the fastest that engine has ever gone,” he says. And while he is not the type to mention it, his Yak—named Lilya, for Russian wartime fighter pilot hero Lilya Litvyak—made the rest of the field, all North American P-51 Mustangs with legendary Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, look slow.

Racing Costs Money and Time

After returning to Syracuse, Kansas, Dowd began working on improvements that he believed would push the airplane past 400 mph, which would almost certainly be fast enough to crack the Gold race, though probably not enough to win it. You can expect only so much improvement in performance year to year, especially when you are on a budget. Besides, Dowd, who has racing experience at Reno dating back to the 1970s, had difficulty finding time to work on his race airplanes.

“You wind up with a list of ‘wanna dos’ and ‘gotta dos,’ and in my case my spraying planes always were the priority,” he says of the aerial application business he owned for decades. “My farmers had to come first.”

Dowd did not return to Reno until last year, but after problems getting Lilya ready, he brought a P-51A called Shanty Irish, with which he won Silver again, flying very smoothly and very low, even by Reno standards. Though fans loved the P-51A, Dowd felt the Yak had more winning potential. Besides, he has never really enjoyed flying P-51s. While they might appear smooth and graceful rounding the pylons, the experience in the cockpit feels like drudgery. “It’s like driving a truck around the course—a lot of work.” The Yak, he says, is simply easier to fly.

Sometimes, Less Is More

There were several additional reasons Dowd chose the Yak over the P-51. First, it is smaller than the P-51s, Grumman Bearcats, and Hawker Sea Furies that make up most of the competitive air racing field. This basic trait tends to equate to a smaller budget required.

Probably the most significant advantage related to the Yak’s size is that it does not need an enormous engine in order to go fast. Dowd’s airplane won the Silver in 2016 at 376 mph using the Pratt & Whitney R1830 Twin Wasp—and it was tiny among the air-cooled radials typically found at Reno, including Pratt & Whitney R2800s and R4360s, and Wright R3350s.

There are engine people and airframe people among those who race at Reno. While the groups overlap, some tend to turn to more powerful engines when they need more speed. Others look for ways to make airframes lighter and more aerodynamic. “A race-prepared Merlin is going to cost you $300,000, overhauling a 3350 is about $250,000, and an R2000 overhaul is closer to $125,000,” Dowd says. A smaller engine is more economical, though not exactly cheap. “You quickly find that it can be cheaper to focus on airframe modifications.”

Dowd also has the advantage of being an aeronautical engineer by training. For decades he has spent winters performing intensive maintenance on his agricultural aircraft—and occasionally squeezing in racing projects—in his well-equipped shop.

How It Is Done

After acquiring the Yak in 2010, Dowd went through it carefully, rebuilding and replacing numerous parts that were broken, worn, or just not working properly. Over the next few years, he overhauled the engine, balanced control surfaces, and began redesigning some of the aircraft’s internal electrical and mechanical systems. Mostly, though, he sought to clean up the machine aerodynamically.

Most World War II aircraft, even those famous for high top speeds like the Mustang, really were designed to fly at 250 mph or so—or about how fast you fly when escorting bombers to their targets. The incidence settings of the horizontal stabilizer would reflect this, so these aircraft generally trim out easily to fly at that speed, or roughly half the pace required for the Gold.

This is why racing airplanes often have to use lots of trim to keep the nose down when approaching 500 mph. Sometimes the resulting aerodynamic pressure is rough enough to tear the trim tabs off the elevators. An elevator trim tab lost in this manner was named as a contributing factor in the crash of race pilot Jimmy Leeward’s P-51 Galloping Ghost at Reno in 2011. The accident killed Leeward and 10 spectators, while an additional 70 were injured by flying shrapnel when the airplane nose-dived into the ground and disintegrated. The stakes at Reno are high.

Getting his Mustang to fly fast meant Dowd had to reset the angle of its horizontal stabilizer and remove an offset built into the vertical fin to counter engine torque. Doing so significantly reduced “trim drag.” Curiously, the Yak flies fine at race speed without changes to the tail.

Spinner Afterbody

One of the modifications that makes Dowd’s Yak stand out is barely visible. It is a fiberglass fairing called a spinner afterbody. Like most radial-powered racers, the Yak uses a large-diameter propeller spinner to cover much of the engine cowling’s frontal area to improve aerodynamics. This arrangement leaves a narrow opening between the cowling and the spinner for cooling air to reach the engine.

As the air accelerates, it moves around the spinner and into the cowling. The void behind the spinner causes turbulence and pressure to build, causing drag. Dowd’s spinner afterbody, which he designed, is almost a mirror image of the spinner. The fairing matches the large diameter at the back of the spinner and narrows to a smaller diameter as it reaches the engine crankcase to which it is attached.

As a result, air flowing over the spinner continues smoothly across the fairing, expanding and decelerating to more efficiently cool the engine while reducing turbulence and drag. This is the kind of device aeronautical engineers dream up. It may not look like much, but the afterbody is effective, Dowd says. “It’s good for an extra 20 mph.”

Other racers took note, especially Dowd’s friend and longtime rival, Sam Davis, who flies a similar Yak, Miss Trinidad, and is known for his skill at fabricating custom aircraft exhaust systems. Dowd was sure that a set of Davis’ custom pipes would add even more speed to his Yak, which still had its original, inefficient exhaust system.

• READ MORE: Expanding the Campaign at Reno

Making Deals

“When I asked Sam about making the exhaust, he said he would do it, but he wanted me to make a fairing for him in exchange,” Dowd says. While giving that much help to a competitor might seem strange, it is the way things go in the air racing community. Pilots often take a year off from the sport to help rivals prepare their aircraft or join their race-day pit crew. Sometimes they even fly for them. In addition to supplying the spinner fairing, Davis proposed that Dowd fly Miss Trinidad for him as well. These are the types of deals that racers make all the time.

Davis, based in Corona, California, has been working steadily on Miss Trinidad for weeks, including the installation of Dowd’s fiberglass fairing. The airplane is based at Chino Airport (KCNO), home of the Planes of Fame Air Museum and Fighter Rebuilders, an operation that restores warbirds and prepares numerous racing aircraft for competition.

Recently, John Maloney, a longtime racer, film pilot, and son of Ed Maloney, who founded the museum and restoration businesses, test-flew Davis’ Yak and deemed it ready to race. Well, almost. The aircraft is at least ready to begin the process of countless tweaks, fine-tuning, and practice flying necessary for a good run at Reno.

In an interesting twist, Maloney has even offered to fly Miss Trinidad at Reno, possibly bumping Dowd to reserve-pilot status. “It’s fine. Johnny is one of the best sticks I know,” Dowd says, noting that he is often happier working with the crew than flying the airplane. “I’ll be there with all of my tools.”

This story first appeared in the September 2023/Issue 941 of FLYING’s print edition.

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This aircraft became known as the Fisher P-75 Eagle and proved to be a poor bet in more ways than one.

At the time, the Fisher Body Division was a subsidiary of General Motors, employing more than 100,000 people and producing a variety of metal components in more than 40 plants. With the advent of World War II, capacity was shifted to the manufacture of airframe components for the war effort. Among the aviation-related contracts were agreements to produce airframe parts for the B-25 Mitchell as well as the production and assembly of 200 Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers. 

When the military ordered 2,500 P-75s that existed only on paper, Fisher aimed to utilize some automobile manufacturing philosophies to develop, build, and deliver the aircraft in time.

Airframe assembly for production is considerably different from the design, testing, and manufacture of an entirely new aircraft from scratch, however, and Fisher would learn this the hard way. Most notably, the company selected a new, experimental engine, placed it in the center of the aircraft rather than in the nose, and utilized two drive shafts to link it to twin contra rotating propellers. Both unconventional and complex, the powertrain created new problems that flight test engineers had to identify and solve.

The 24-cylinder Allison V-3420 engine was itself notable for its size and complexity. The design was based on the V-1710 engine as used in the P-38, P-51, and the P-40 Warhawk. The new engine essentially took two of these V-12 engines and mated them together to create a massive W-24 that produced 2,600 hp.

• ICYMI: Why Only One WACO RPT Was Made

Perhaps recognizing the inefficiencies inherent in utilizing such unproven concepts, Fisher attempted to simplify the manufacturing process and expense of the aircraft through the use of existing components elsewhere in the airframe wherever possible. They utilized P-51 wings in initial versions, later switching to P-40 wings. The empennage and tail were repurposed from the Douglas A-24 Banshee, and the main landing gear came from the F4U Corsair.

Initial flight testing revealed serious problems, both aerodynamic and mechanical in nature. Miscalculations in the center of mass resulted in poor spin characteristics and stability issues. Fisher addressed these in part through a redesign of the tail, thus eliminating any production advantages to using the original A-24 tail. 

• ICYMI: The Wing Derringer: A ‘Sports Car’ of the Aircraft World

Work also had to be done on the engine, as it was prone to overheating and wasn’t able to produce the specified horsepower. By the time the problems were addressed, the military realized it would be quicker and more cost-effective to modify proven aircraft types that were already in service. Shortly after production had started, the contract was canceled entirely with only eight prototypes and six production aircraft having been completed. 

Of those 14 aircraft, three crashed during testing and all but one was scrapped. The sole remaining example, pictured here, has been restored and is presently on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.

The post The Unconventional Fisher P-75 Eagle appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

But those radials thrusting skyward have an inheritance from the design that came before it—the Beech Model 17, known to most as the Staggerwing—in those very engines, and much of the technology used initially to turn the company’s flagship single into a multiengine work of art.

Model Development

More than half the those originally sold to new owners in the 1940s went to pilots who already knew the Beech 17, according to Robert K. Parmerter, author of the comprehensive Beech 18: A Civil & Military His-tory. “Could this new twin-engine monoplane build on the growing reputation of the Beech Aircraft Company and pass on to a successor model the same legacy that it had received?” asked Parmerter in those pages.

It filled a gap left between the 3- to 5-passenger singles and larger multiengine aircraft such as the Douglas DC-2, which carried up to 14 passengers. The Bureau of Air Commerce (the precursor to the Federal Aviation Administration) challenged the industry to craft bids for a “small transport plane” with two engines, to be used by its own line inspectors. “Ted Wells, chief designer and vice president at Beech Aircraft Company in 1935, recalled 53 years later that the announcement of the Bureau competition was the impetus for Beech, and it instigated design work on a Beechcraft twin,” Parmerter wrote.

And was that model—fashioned to carry 6 to 11 passengers in that sweet spot—a success compared to its predecessor? More than 9,000 were built, with around 4,500 put to the war effort in World War II. Beech only built 745 of the various Staggerwing models, in comparison, making it clear that the twin came out on top.

The Care and Feeding of a Warbird

While Beech converted N611WP into the C-45H Expeditor model with an executive interior and configuration it now carries, Scarlette is still a warbird at heart. During the period from 1951 to 1952, the U.S. Air Force contracted with Beech to convert 900 of the C-45models, rebuilt from original RC-45s, C-45Bs, C-45Fs,T-7s, and T-11s. They exited the factory this second time as C-45G and C-45H models.

N611WP began life as a U.S. Air Force T-7C, construction number 6060, and in 1954 transformed intoAF-875, a C-45H. The FAA issued its new certificate of airworthiness on March 22, 1961, under its prior registration number: N9478Z. As N611W it flew for the Farm Service in Brawley, California, through 1965, when it was picked up by Pacific Airmotive in Palm Springs.

A midair collision while on approach at Van Nuys (KVNY) with a Piper PA-28 on July 15, 1967, only resulted in minor damage, thankfully, and it returned to service with a succession of California operators through the 1970s.

In October 1991, Jim McBurney, of Tyler Aircraft Company, in Tyler, Texas, purchased the airplane—now N611WP—and he showed it off several times at the annual Beech Party Fly-In in Tullahoma, Tennessee. McBurney sold the airplane to Malcolm Thurmond, of Georgetown, Texas, in May 2000, and 21 years later, Jerry Gregoire took over the care and feeding of this classic, basing her at San Marcos, Texas (KHYI).

As any modern owner of a vintage airplane can at-test, the purchase only begins the journey—both from a learning standpoint as well as a financial one. As the years pass between the time when a given airplane rolled out of the factory with all of its spare parts and manuals intact, those tools and instructions evolve, fade, and often disappear, leaving a certain amount of creativity necessary to keep an old girl flying.

You need a good relationship with oil, for example. Whether you put on gloves or not, the 450 hp Pratt & Whitney R-985-AN-14B engines circulate the dead dinosaur juice even when they’re not running. And that’s why my rendezvous with Scarlette began up on her wings, taking the oil scavenged from the drip bottles and filtering it back into the sumps on each engine.

A Pilot’s Challenge

The aircraft that demand the most from you as a pilot offer the highest rewards—so says Roger Sharp, who would shepherd me through my first hours taxiing and taking to the air in Scarlette.

He approached our briefing with a stack of notes to ensure he covered the first round of precious knowledge borne from experience. Much of our first preflight briefing centered around the differences be-tween controlling the Beech 18 on the ground versusmost every other airplane I’d ever flown.

The model has a non-steerable tailwheel, and an empennage that sits outside of the propeller slipstream when the airplane is on the ground. “The rudder is mechanically blocked by the wing in its three-point attitude,” according to Sharp’s notes from that briefing.

“On takeoff—raise the tail early. On landing, keep the tail up.” The idea is to keep the tail and rudder elevated into the relative wind as long as possible.

With counter-rotating props, there is real torque and P-factor at play, equating to a significant amount of left-turning tendency on the ground when the power comes up.

Mastering the Taxi

Control on the ground during taxi—and when the tail is still planted during takeoff and landing—only happens by using differential throttle and braking, in that order of preference. Sharp calls it “wrist control,” and I would soon learn what that special twist of the right wrist would feel like as I made my first exit from the chocks on the thankfully wide ramp at San Marcos Airport.

“The rudder doesn’t do anything,” Sharp says. “Sotry and not push the pedal before braking. Good luck with that.” Turns out, most pilots who have flown anything else more than the Beech 18 cannot help but push on the rudder pedal while applying the brake on one side when taxiing. The powerful muscle memory sticks, even as you think to yourself, “Don’t push the pedal.” Everyone does it, yours truly included.

Taxiing along goes well at first—I recall back to the only other airplane I’ve flown that has a similarmeans of ground control, the Douglas DC-3—as I get the “wrist twist” and tapping on each pedal as needed,to keep us in line and make our way slowly out to the runway. The cool white endcaps on the throttle leversfit neatly into my hand, turning that twist into second nature in short order.

For the runup, we lock the tailwheel; and because the amount of power in the Wasp Juniors will over-come the parking brake, we throttle up each engine separately, running through the prop control, and checking feather and the mags.

Ready for Takeoff

We’ve briefed the takeoff, and I ask Sharp to demo the first one so I can concentrate on watching the progression. This is a technique learned from other good instructors—a student new to any aircraft benefits from just watching. Released from the worry of “doing it right,” you register more of what’s going on, and you can look where you want—not just down the runway—in the case of the takeoff.

With the tailwheel locked—and we won’t touch it until we’re ready to turn off onto the taxiway after landing—the power comes up and the yoke is almost full forward. We want that tail in the air as soon as possible to gain rudder effectiveness. Differential throttle keeps us aligned with a minimum of brake tapping. Clearly, those brakes extend the takeoff run if applied.

Any crosswind correction calls for special attention because of this—it takes full aileron into the wind with any significant amount of crosswind because of the large tail surface. Throttles come up deliberately to 35 inches of manifold pressure. They’re not governed, so jamming the power forward is a big no-no.“You lead with the left throttle,” Sharp says. “If it veers left and you push the right rudder, it won’t help, so it’s setting you up for an issue.” When the tail comes up—early as planned—you also don’t want the right rudder already in when it becomes effective.

The tail comes up around 30 knots indicated, and on that first run, we lift off after about 2,000 feet of runway just above the VMC speed of 85 knots. Gear comes up, and the barber poles of the landing gear indicators disappear. We’re clean and flying off to the practice area near Lockhart (50R), about 10 nm to the east.

Once airborne, Scarlette handles very sweetly, with a minimum of adverse yaw, and a relative nimbleness given her size, weight, and age. I play around with steep turns, lazy eights, and slow flight before bringing the airplane back into a stall, which with power off re-mains docile.

Back in the traffic pattern, the Beech 18 can be hard to slow down, so you want to plan for that and make a relatively wide downwind and base. Sharp uses 120mph indicated for gear and flaps—“it’s something a bit higher, but 120 works well”—and we want to keep at least 15 inches of manifold pressure in.

Flaps don’t come with detentes, so you count 3 seconds approximately to actuate them in 15-degree increments. 

Making the Landing

The first landing Sharp also demonstrates. To keep that rudder effective as long as possible, we make a wheel landing as a matter of practice. You can have the tailwheel come down at 60 mph or at 30 mph, and most pilots would prefer to be going a little more slowly when the inevitable swerve occurs as the small wheel in the back touches the pavement.

Off the runway, Sharp gives me the airplane to taxi back for my own takeoff and landing. I forget to come up on the brakes, and take a little more of an excursion than I did in my first attempt at taxiing. Lesson learned. Sharp remains calm; I think every transitioning Beech 18 pilot has trimmed the grass a bit in mastering the girl’s somewhat contentious ground handling. But I get my act back together enough to return to the approach end of Runway 13.

Time for my takeoff. I am up on the brakes a bit to start after locking the tailwheel and adding power slowly and smoothly. With the yoke forward, I can feel the relative wind build and engage the elevator, and the tail comes up as predicted. I have about half the aileron deflection in to counteract about 5 knots of crosswind component, and the deflection is removed as the tail rises.

Without too much fuss we’re back in the air and making a stately trip around the pattern. I throttle back to keep us within gear and flap speed, and psychologically prepare myself for the milestone ahead. Fortunately for us all, the wind stays light and mostly down the runway, which is thankfully 100 feet wide and also prepared for my first landing in the Beech 18. The approach profile is best made relatively flat, with about a 3-degree descent profile, with a level pitch attitude. The goal is to touch down with minimum sink in that same attitude, with the yoke forward, and let the tail stop flying on its own. “Don’t chop the throttle, fly it on,” Sharp says.

He’s cautioned me that, owing to a shutoff valve within the hydraulic system between the brake actuators on the rudder pedals, whichever pilot applies the brakes first “wins.” “I can’t fix it,” he says. If I apply the brakes, he can’t override my actions. A sobering thought as I approach that first landing.

When the tires squeak on the pavement, and I play a bit with the yoke forward to feel that weight staying on it till at last it sighs and falls gently to the pavement. I’m ready for the swerve, which is minor, and I keep it together until we are slowed down enough to make the crossing runway and leave the active.

Maybe it was beginner’s luck, but I’ll never forget that sweet moment.

Sharp likes the airplane because it demands that you pay attention and fly it continuously from start up to shut down. I now understand why the Beech 18 has the reputation it does, as a “tricky” airplane, but one that still compels pilots to want to master it.I

t’s an entirely worthwhile pursuit.

Beech 18/C-45H Expeditor

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