Marge

The name “Marge” appeared on at least two P-38J Lightnings flown by Richard Bong, each bearing a small photograph of Marjorie Vattendahl — the girl from Superior, Wisconsin who had captured the young ace’s heart. Bong met Marge while on leave, and from that point on every aircraft he flew carried her image below the cockpit. It was the most famous nose art in the Pacific Theater.

The first Marge, serial 42-103993, was a P-38J-15-LO built at Lockheed’s Burbank plant. Bong flew this aircraft during his extraordinary scoring run in early 1944, but on March 24, 1944, while Bong was away, 2nd Lieutenant Thomas Malone took the aircraft up and crashed in New Guinea due to bad weather and mechanical issues. The wreck site was not found until May 2024, when Pacific Wrecks identified the remains.

The second Marge, serial 42-104380, replaced the first and carried Bong through the rest of his combat tour, including the devastating October 1944 campaign over the Philippines where he shot down 8 Japanese aircraft in a single week. This aircraft survived the war, though its ultimate fate is unknown.

What made Bong extraordinary wasn’t just the kill count — it was how he did it. General Kenney wrote that Bong was a “poor shot” who compensated by closing to point-blank range before firing. Where other pilots opened up at 300 yards, Bong would bore in to 50 yards or less, so close he could see the rivets on the enemy aircraft. His wingmen described it as “terrifying to watch.” He simply refused to miss.

By December 1944, Bong had reached 40 confirmed victories — surpassing Eddie Rickenbacker’s WWI record of 26 and establishing a mark that no American pilot has matched since. General MacArthur personally presented him with the Medal of Honor in the Philippines. Bong was then ordered home, too valuable to risk losing.

He married Marge Vattendahl on February 10, 1945. He was assigned as a test pilot for the new Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star — America’s first operational jet fighter. On August 6, 1945 — the same day the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima — Major Richard Bong was killed when his P-80’s engine failed on takeoff at Lockheed Air Terminal in North Hollywood. He was 24 years old.

The Lockheed P-38 Lightning was the only American fighter aircraft in continuous production throughout the entire United States involvement in World War II. Its radical twin-boom, twin-engine design was unlike anything else in the sky — instantly recognizable from any angle. The Germans called it der Gabelschwanz-Teufel — the Fork-Tailed Devil.

What made the P-38 unique among fighters was its nose-mounted armament. While conventional single-engine fighters placed their guns in the wings (causing convergence issues at varying ranges), the Lightning concentrated all five weapons — one 20mm cannon and four .50-caliber machine guns — in the central nacelle. This meant every round went exactly where the pilot aimed, with devastating effect at any range. A one-second burst from a P-38 could cut an aircraft in half.

In the Pacific Theater, the P-38 was the undisputed king. Its twin engines provided the range and reliability essential for operations across vast ocean distances where a single-engine failure meant death in the water. The two top American aces of WWII — Richard Bong (40 kills) and Thomas McGuire (38 kills) — both flew P-38s exclusively. The Lightning also carried out the war’s most famous interception: Operation Vengeance, the mission that killed Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto on April 18, 1943.

Over 10,000 P-38s were built between 1941 and 1945. They served as fighters, fighter-bombers, night fighters, and photo reconnaissance platforms. The reconnaissance variant, the F-5, photographed virtually every major target in Europe and the Pacific before the bombers arrived. The P-38 was the aircraft that made Lockheed — a company that would go on to build the U-2, the SR-71 Blackbird, and the F-117 Stealth Fighter.