Appears the Wau B17 is still there
www.postcourier.com.pg 29/05/2006
‘Ghost’ kept under guard
CUSTOMS officers in Lae kept a close eye on controversial American World War II B-17 bomber dubbed Swamp Ghost over the weekend. The commissioner general of the Internal Revenue Commission David Sode had instructed that no export permit be given pending the outcome of a Public Accounts Committee inquiry on July 1. The war plane was to be shipped to the United States but the PNG Government had intervened and it is now sitting at the Lae Bismarck Maritime Wharf. The plane was allowed to leave the country under an agreement signed in 1999 between the Military Aircraft Restoration Corporation in the United States and the custodian of the aircraft, the National Museum and Art Gallery. This has permitted American Alfred Hagen and Robert Greinert to remove the plane early this month from the Agiambo swamps in Northern Province where it had crash-landed 64 years ago during the World War II. But the plane had survived the crash and is fully intact. Officers at the wharf say the plane was moved from its original spot on the wharf on Thursday and shifted further inside the wharf to give space to the containers off-loaded from incoming ships. The former curator of the war museum brand of the national museum and present director of the Kokoda-Buna Historical Foundation, Maclaren Hiari said the plane was the World War II’s rarest bomber. “The Swamp Ghost is a highly-regarded prized war relic in the aircraft archaeology world particularly in Australia, New Zealand and USA ... according to my close consultation with former crew members of the aircraft, leading international aircraft archaeologists, aviation historians and aviation museums and organisations,” he said. But that contradicts the view from the National Museum and Art Gallery, whose acting director Simon Poraituk said the plane was worth only “K12,000”. Mr Hiari said the swamp ghost was the oldest Boeing-built B-17 in existence and the only remaining example of a B-17E model flying fortresses remaining in the world — one is near Black Cat Gap on the Kuber Ranger near Wau in Morobe Province while the third is in Greenland covered with ice. But ti iss till intact, he said. He said for the board of trustees of the museum to approve the salvaging and restoration of swamp ghost did not help the Government’s efforts to restore the existing war collections in the country.