TIGHAR surveyed B-17E 41-2446 in 1986. The video of the expedition,
Lady In Waiting is dubbed from an ancient VHS copy so the quality is, shall we say, appropriately historic. The 39 year-old investigator doesn't look like that anymore either.
The name "Swamp Ghost" was coined by the RAAF helicopter pilots who first spotted the wreck. Our friend, Fred Eaton, who had been the pilot, hated the name. The airplane did not have a name. We simply called "The Agaiambo E" after the name of the swamp. It was the lead article in the very
first edition of TIGHAR Tracks.
We were working with the Travis Air Force Base Museum to recover the airplane, but Papua New Guinea imposed a moratorium on all WII aircraft recoveries due to the abuses of American warbird salvagers. In 2006, Philadelphia builder Fred Hagen bribed PNG officials and lifted the aircraft out of the swamp with a rented Russian helicopter, significantly damaging the plane in the process. The bomber was impounded and sat corroding on the dock in Lae for years before it was finally exported and eventually, in 2013, ended up at the Pacific Air Museum on Ford Island, Pearl Harbor where it I allegedly being "restored."
At an Explorers Club meeting in Philadelphia, I told Hagen to his face that I considered what he did to be the worst act of vandalism in aviation history. The aircraft was doing fine in situ. A properly permitted, competently executed recovery, and prompt exportation to a facility where conservators could stabilize the structure could have resulted in the aircraft's genuine preservation.
From what Travis says, the fallout from Hagen's crime continues.