The Rise of the "Loch Quioch Bomber" 1944 ...

[shrike]

If nothing else, there was a recovery team that wasn't busy enough, and the CO gave them an assignment.
"My boys can do anything..."

There were so many aircraft accidents occurring at the time, the RAF maintenance unit recovery teams had more than enough to keep themselves busy.

But I agree with p51, the factories in the USA were turning out so much material that the effort required to separate, dismantle, inspect and re-label waterlogged parts from a wreck just wasn't worth it.

Just my opinion.

That there WERE recovery teams and that they WERE busy shows that that it was considered worthwhile to recover wrecks. Even if it was just bad PR to leave them scattered across the countryside.
Even if normal spare parts were plentiful, having an airframe to cannibalize for the the uncommon parts, or for sub-assemblies that could be made from scratch locally but are much faster to reuse wholesale is the reason EVERY fleet operator has a boneyard of some sort. "Spare parts" rarely includes entire wings, or a fuselage than can be cut to easily splicable sections to save days if not weeks of fabrication and repair.

[airnutz]

I wonder why they pulled it out.

Because it's a brand new bomber and there was a war on?
A month in cold fresh water would be easily remediated

By 1944, B-17s weren't hard to get, nor parts for them. That seems like a huge expenditure in time and resources for a plane they likely wouldn't have done much with other than turning her into scrap.
Someone really didn't want to answer to their CO for losing all the .50 caliber machine guns?
Yeah, it doesn't make much sense to me...

I wasn't proposing the depot guys would systematically break down the bird to components into stock, I was mainly addressing lucky52's concern with the waterlogged aspect of the wreck. It would be handy to have such a new aircraft hauled into the boneyard to be picked over for the good bits as needed as some folks later intimated. The maintenance officer would know what high use or backorder items to single out for special attention.