Wingtip of WWII ace Bong's 'Marge' fighter reaches Wisconsin museum

Recovered wingtip is ‘in effect a permanent loan,’ Pacific Wrecks founder says

The 6-foot-long aluminum wingtip reached the Richard I Bong Veterans Historical Center in Superior on Sunday, completing a journey by air, land and sea from Papua New Guinea. Wisconsin national guard members collected the recovered section and returned with it to Milwaukee aboard a military refueling tanker, the guard said in a July 24 news release. The artifact was displayed at an airshow and brought to Poplar, Bong’s hometown, before the final leg of about 20 miles (32km) to the museum bearing his name. The US defense department described the artifact as a recovered Marge wingtip.

Marge was the Lockheed P-38 Lightning Bong nicknamed after his girlfriend, Marge Vattendahl, whose portrait was painted on its nose. Bong, a native of Poplar, is credited with shooting down 40 Japanese aircraft during the second world war — more than any other US military pilot — three of those victories while flying the plane. He earned the Medal of Honor in 1944, later married Vattendahl, who became a fashion model and magazine publisher, and was killed in a test flight crash in August 1945, the same day the US dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

The plane crashed in March 1944 over what is now Papua New Guinea while being flown by fellow US military pilot Thomas Malone. An engine failure forced Malone to bail out, and the wreckage was not recovered for decades.

The Bong Center announced in March 2024 that it was collaborating with Pacific Wrecks, a historical preservation group, on a joint search for Marge. Two months later, the organizations said explorers hiking in the jungles of Papua New Guinea’s Madang province had discovered what remained of the plane, whose wingtips still carried the paint Bong had applied.

The recovery followed two years of negotiation. Wisconsin Public Radio reported that Pacific Wrecks spent that time working with Madang’s government, local landowners and Papua New Guinea’s national museum — which owns Marge’s wreckage — to recover a piece of the downed plane. Papua New Guinea’s defense force flew the wingtip to the capital, Port Moresby; from there, Wisconsin national guard members, who have a partnership with Papua New Guinea for purposes such as disaster response and medical readiness, flew the artifact to Milwaukee.

An export permit was required because the US government had relinquished ownership of second world war relics, Pacific Wrecks founder and director Justin Taylan told WPR. The wingtip at the Bong Center is “in effect a permanent loan,” Taylan said, and in return the recovery mission involving Pacific Wrecks secured another section of the plane for Papua New Guinea’s national museum, which has its own display honoring Bong.

WPR reported that officials with the Bong Center joined family members of the ace in flying to Papua New Guinea to retrieve the artifact, a trip that included a boat ride on the way to the crash site.

Wisconsin national guard Brig Gen Adria Zuccaro said her troops were “honored to bring a piece of Richard Bong’s legacy home.” Bong’s nephew, Jim, told WPR that it was priceless for visitors of the museum in Superior “to actually have something tangible right in front of you that is a part of what he flew in combat.” Briana Fiandt, the Bong Center’s director of collections and exhibits, told Wisconsin news channel WDIO that she hoped the wingtip would “help inspire future generations to be interested in history.”