The Real Story Of The P-40 ghost plane

An instance of this kind of history took place on September 2, 1942, in the vicinity of Kienow, China, during World War II. An aircraft was identified by Chinese military forces, and two American pilots, who were serving at the time for the Republic of China Air Force (also known as the renowned "Flying Tigers of the 76th Fighter Squadron"), took off with their Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighters in an attempt to intercept the intruder. They believed that the aircraft was made up of Japanese aircraft.

When the American pilots were able to intercept the intruder, they were taken aback to discover that it was a Curtiss P-40B fighter.

This fighter was an older version of the fighters that they themselves flew, and it had roundels that had not been used since the beginning of the war. These roundels consisted of a white star with a red circle in the center. There were bullet holes in the aircraft, and it was in a pretty terrible state overall. Additionally, the left wheel of the elevator's landing gear was missing from the aircraft. As they got closer to the P-40B, the American pilots saw that the pilot of the jet seemed to be either asleep or otherwise deceased.

After following that jet for some time, the two American pilots eventually came to the conclusion that it was beginning to drop and crashed into a rice field. Immediately after the occurrence of that incident, a group of Chinese guerrillas led a party of American pilots from the 76th Fighter Squadron, including Colonel Robert Scott, to the location where the P-40B had crashed.

It was possible for Scott to retrieve a diary that had been partly burnt as well as a bundle of letters from the airplane. As a result of the presence of a Japanese patrol in the vicinity, they were unable to successfully bury the pilot unfortunately. Following the recovery of the journal and letters from the P-40B, they were sent to the military intelligence. At that point, the trail of this narrative was completely lost.

The mysterious story of the aircraft that vanished without a trace was published by Time magazine in 1943.

The narrative was read by a young man named Curt Norris, who was 16 years old and from Norton, Massachusetts. This information is provided by the website The-Wanderling.com. A couple of years later, he enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces and was sent to Bataan, Philippines, which was the location where the phantom aircraft tale was still being told.

Norris devoted himself to studying this intriguing narrative after the war, and it wasn't until he eventually contacted Milton McMullen, a former sergeant in the United States Army who was stationed with the 19th Bombardment Group in Mindanao, Philippines, that he was able to contact him.

Following his participation in a veterans conference, McMullen revealed that he had been a member of the crew that worked on the aircraft. Following the Japanese invasion of the Philippines at the beginning of the Pacific War, he and other Americans remained in the deep jungles of the Philippines to continue their struggle against the Japanese.

They were able to retrieve a pair of P-40 fighters that had encountered an accident in the forest, and using the components that they had obtained, they were able to make one of the aircraft capable of flying. One of the aircraft's left wheels broke when it was being tested for departure, and as a result, they had to construct a skid made of bamboo poles that would fall off when the plane took off.

At long last, they prepared a little landing field in the middle of the bush. On September 2, 1942, the aircraft was taken off by an unknown individual, and the American troops were no longer aware of who it was.

McMullen harbored a nagging suspicion that the individual in question was an American pilot, concealed in the nearby woods. McMullen and the other American troops who were sheltering in the bush were taken captive by the Japanese not long after that.

They had a dreadful ordeal while being held captive. Among the whole group, McMullen was the only one to survive. It is because to him that we are able to be aware of the roots of that intriguing mythology today. It goes without saying that the name of the pilot who was responsible for that last flight in the P-40B is still unknown to this day.