When America’s Ace of Aces, Richard Bong, returned from his third tour of duty the P-38 Lighting Bong had named “Marge” after his girlfriend (and later wife) stayed behind. Another pilot was assigned to fly Bong’s famous P-38. When Marge developed engine trouble in 1944, the pilot bailed out and the P-38 went spinning into the jungle of New Guinea. The Lighting was the first American fighter to be built with stainless steel.
“Marge” was found in 2024, 80 years after she tumbled into the jungle. The six-ton wreck buried in the jungle with tons of steel has value, and not just historic value but to value to illegal salvagers. Steel produced before and during World War II is valuable, and salvagers are robbing World War-era gravesites and wrecks to get to it.
Pre-war steel, or “low-background steel,” is steel smelted before the Oppenheimer team at Trinity detonated the first nuclear bomb. Two more atomic bombs in 1945 and over 1,000 more were detonated in the years to follow, which released radioactive isotopes into the atmosphere. Those isotopes, including Plutonium-239, Strontium-90, Caesium-137, and Technetium-9 were not natural, and they have remained lurking in the air.
The Bessemer process of making steel requires blown air. Even using “pure” oxygen will produce steel with traces of radioactive isotopes. Even a small amount will disrupt some scientific instruments like neutrino detectors, so salvagers are hunting for World War II shipwrecks to tear them apart and salvage the steel. Although the banning of Atmospheric Nuclear testing has resulted in radioactive levels dropping to near pre-war levels, even using pure oxygen with the “Basic Oxygen Process” has some traces of radioactivity.
Pre-war steel still has extreme value. Enough for thieves to loot gravesites. Pre-war steel fetches about 30 times the price of post-war steel, or about $34,000 a ton. Hundreds of millions of tons of Pre-War steel lie in the inky depths of the Earth’s oceans in the form of warships and transports sunk during the war. And there are plenty of people willing to disturb those gravesites to harvest the steel.
Unsurprisingly, the Chinese play a major role in plundering. In May 2023, a Chinese salvager was caught stripping steel from two sunken British warships. The Chinese thieves had stolen tons of steel and pre-WWII ammunition. There is a significant demand for it, in China’s scrap metal market, and the Chinese don’t care where it comes from.
Other warship shipwrecks containing the remains of sailors have been stripped of steel. Unrecognizable balls of debris are left on the ocean floor after thieves have stripped a wreck. If looters find a ship with thinner skins (like a destroyer), they often tear the ship apart but leave it like a thief looting a dead body and an empty wallet. Remains of warriors who died on ships of war are of no consequence to the thieves. There are around 6,000 shipwrecks and hundreds of warships that salvagers are trying to strip not just of steel but bronze propellers and copper wire.
Countries with hundreds of wrecks have had little success stopping shipwreck looters. There is too much profit in China for them to stop.
Bong’s “Marge” might be too inaccessible for thieves. It might be contaminated with airborne isotopes as well. With just a few tons of stainless steel, Marge likely has too little amount of steel to be profitable. But thousands upon thousands of tons of pre-war steel await willing thieves with no conscience about looting warrior grave sites to get to it.
