The swamp ghost comes home

hoppy · Post by **hoppy** » Sat Jun 12, 2010 4:22 am

World War II bomber 'Swamp Ghost' returns to US - Yahoo! News

Clodhopper · Post by **Clodhopper** » Tue Jun 15, 2010 6:54 am

You might be interested to know that we have an archaeological tv programme called "Time Team" over here. Usually they deal with Mediaeval or Roman sites, but occasionally they do something a bit different. One such was the recovery of a B17 from the English Fens, where she'd crashed in cloud returning from a mission near the end of WW2.

Two B17s went down. One was recovered from the surface, but the other had gone into soft ground and buried herself; she wasn't recovered until these archaeologists went and dug her out. No-one had ever quite worked out why the incident had happened, since these were experienced fliers, but they were able with the help of an air crash investigator to work out exactly what had happened. Some sort of display and memorial is now in place at a museum. I think it's the RAF one at Duxford, but it's possible that the USAAF has a museum in the area.

I'm afraid I can't remember the exact sequence of events since it was quite complex to a non-flier, but as I recall it boiled down to really bad luck.

hoppy · Post by **hoppy** » Tue Jun 15, 2010 7:40 am

Interesting. I'm always interested in stuff like that. My dad was with the 8th army air corps as it was called in WW2. Stationed at Mendlesham. Thanks for posting that.

Clodhopper · Post by **Clodhopper** » Tue Jun 15, 2010 7:53 am

It's a while since I saw the programme, but a couple of other bits have come back to me:

There was of course an original crash investigation as standard procedure. It had concluded that the crash was a result of pilot error. In the course of trying to work out what had happened, Time Team had found an airman in another B17 who'd witnessed part of the incident and knew the men who died. He'd never believed the pilot error verdict and was very pleased when they managed to show it wasn't. I imagine he'd have passed the word to any others still with us.