Search for Richard Bong's Plane-- Part 4: His Death

Richard Bong married Marge Battendahl in 1945 and was assigned duty as a test pilot in Burbank, California, after his three combat tours in the South Pacific.

He was killed on August 6, 1945, when the P-80 jet fighter he was testing crashed. That was the same day that the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

Vattendahl was 21 when he died and went on to become a model and magazine  publisher in Los Angeles.  She died in September 2003 in Superior.

The search for Bong's plane comes just weeks after a deep sea exploration team searching for the wreckage of Amelia Earhart's lost plane in the South Pacific said it captured sonar image that "appears to be Earhart's Lockheed 10-E Electra aircraft.

--GreGen

Death of WASP Dorothy Olsen-- Part 2: Flew Planes From Factories, Test Flights and Pulled Targets

She traced her love of airplanes back to reading a book about "The Red Knight of Germany" Baron Manfred von Richthoven during World War I.  For other WASPs, inspiration came from stories about Americans Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart.

The WASPs were formed by combining two earlier groups, the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron and the Women's Flying Training Detachment.  WASPs were treated as civilians and limited to domestic flights that freed more men to fly in combat.

But their missions, which totaled 60 million were of critical importance and sometimes of life-threatening danger.

They ferried planes from factories to their points of embarkation for the war front, performed test flights and towed targets (the ones at Fort Fisher did this) for gunnery practice.

--GreGen

S.S. Lurline-- Part 2: Launched 1932, Amelia Earhart A Passenger in 1934

This was not the first ship in the Matson Line to be named the Lurline.  An earlier SS Lutline built  in 1908 served in the United States Shipping Board during World War I.

The WW II Lurline was the last of four fast and elegant ocean liners built for the Line, launched in 1932 and taking its maiden voyage in 1933.  It was 632 feet ling, beam of 79 feet and speed of 22 knots with capacity of 715 (475  first class,  240 tourist.  Mr. Merrick evidently was in a first class cabin on his trip.

Famous aviator Amelia Earhart was aboard the ship from Los Angeles to Honolulu with her Lockheed Vega airplane secured on deck December 22-27, 1934.   This was in preparation for her record-breaking Honolulu-to-Oakland solo flight she made in January 1935.

The Lurline was half-way between Honolulu and San Francisco on 7 December 1941, when she heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

--GreGen

So, That's What Happened to Amelia?

I recently read an article that reports it knows what happened to Amelia Earhart.

According to it, she spent several days in a Japanese prison before being executed in Saipan in 1937.

Just One More Possibility.  What Makes History So Interesting.  --GreGen