Missing pieces of U.S. fighter plan returned to Intrepid after being shot down in WWII
NEW YORK -- With Fleet Week just days away, there will be a lot of attention on the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum.
This year, the museum is showcasing part of the ship's own history that serves as a reminder of all those who lost their lives defending the country.
It's a marvel discovery almost 80 years in the making -- the remains of a doomed World War II plane recently found in the Pacific Ocean, including the engine, propeller and part of a wing.
Eric Boehm, the museum's curator of aviation, says he's stunned over the remarkable find. A Japanese fisherman found the parts in his net.
"It's pretty rare to find artifacts like this. It almost has to be done by accident," Boehm said.
Through in-depth research, experts in Japan and America figured out the pieces were from a U.S. fighter plane, which took off from the Intrepid back in March 1945 when it was in use.
It was part of a daylight raid by a squadron of Navy bombers targeting a Japanese naval air base, but it was shot down before it could return safely.
Seventy eight years later, parts of the plane are now home.
"That airplane left the deck of the Intrepid in 1945 to return in 2023 without its pilot," said Boehm.
That pilot was 22-year-old Lt. Loren Isley, a farm boy from Missouri.
"February of 1945, married his high school sweet heart, and within four and a half weeks, he would be lost in his combat mission," Boehm said.
The devastating loss was profound for the Isley family, who feared his body and plane would never be located after eight decades of agonizing thoughts.
"We learned to live with that and expected that would never change, and then we got Eric's call to find out wreckage has been located," said Dale Isley, Loren's nephew.
He said his family now has a new, powerful connection to their late uncle.
"This was the plane that he flew, this is the plane that he died in," Dale Isley said. "It's hard to explain how an inanimate object like that can really be a powerful connection to someone who you never even really met but heard about through the family."
His death, sadly, was not an unusual story, but this homecoming is.
"They are just things, but they are connections to him," added Dale Isley. "Just has been a really fabulous thing for our family."
The museum is working to preserve the parts, and they will become a permanent exhibit in September when they go on display -- the same month the pilot would have turned 100 years old.
