This episode is simply a variation of the story of a US Army Air Force P-40 Warhawk; one variation says it took off from Wheeler Field, Hawaii on December 7, 1941 to take on the Japanese Naval Air Forces attacking Pearl Harbor, then disappeared without a trace until a year later on December 7, 1942 when it belly-landed at Wheeler with the pilot's skeleton still in the cockpit. The original story was that the P-40 bore the markings of a unit that had been based in the Philippines, and it belly-landed in a field in China on May 6, 1943, the first anniversary of the Philippines getting overrun by the Japanese. That version came from an anthology of FICTIONAL short stories titled DAMNED TO GLORY, written by Brigadier General Robert L. Scott, commander of the USAAF fighter forces in China and author of the best-selling 1943 autobiography GOD IS MY CO-PILOT (adapted into a movie in 1945). People just assumed that since GOD IS MY CO-PILOT was nonfictional, so was DAMNED TO GLORY and especially that particular short story which is now entrenched in Urban Legend.
MYTH BUSTED!
MYTH BUSTED!