''Glacier Girl'' is a

Lockheed P-38F Lightning The Lockheed P-38 Lightning is an American single-seat, twin piston-engined fighter aircraft that was used during World War II. Developed for the United States Army Air Corps by the Lockheed Corporation, the P-38 incorporated a distinctive twi ...

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

fighter plane, 41-7630, c/n 222-5757, that was restored to flying condition after being buried beneath the

Greenland ice sheet The Greenland ice sheet ( da, Grønlands indlandsis, kl, Sermersuaq) is a vast body of ice covering , roughly near 80% of the surface of Greenland. It is sometimes referred to as an ice cap, or under the term ''inland ice'', or its Danish equiva ...

for over 50 years. Glacier Girl was part of the Lost Squadron.

Operational history

On 15 July 1942, due to poor weather and limited visibility, six P-38 fighters of

94th Fighter Squadron The 94th Fighter Squadron is a unit of the United States Air Force 1st Operations Group located at Joint Base Langley–Eustis, Virginia. The 94th is equipped with the F-22 Raptor. The 94 FS is one of the oldest units in the United States Air ...

/1st FG and two

B-17 The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is a four-engined heavy bomber developed in the 1930s for the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC). Relatively fast and high-flying for a bomber of its era, the B-17 was used primarily in the European Theater ...

bombers of a bombardment squadron were forced to return to

Greenland Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland is t ...

en route to the

British Isles The British Isles are a group of islands in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-western coast of continental Europe, consisting of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Inner and Outer Hebrides, the Northern Isles, ...

during

Operation Bolero Operation Bolero was the commonly used reference for the code name of the United States military troop buildup in the United Kingdom during World War II in preparation for the initial cross-channel invasion plan known as Operation Roundup, to be ...

and made emergency landings on the ice field. All the crew members were subsequently rescued, but ''Glacier Girl'', along with the unit's five other fighters and the two B-17s, were eventually buried under of snow and ice that built up over the ensuing decades.

Recovery and restoration

Fifty years later, in 1992, the plane was brought to the surface by members of the Greenland Expedition Society after years of searching and excavation. The aircraft was eventually transported to

Middlesboro, Kentucky Middlesboro ()Rennick, Robert. ''Kentucky Place Names'', University Press of Kentucky (Lexington), 1987p. 196 Accessed 26 August 2013. is a home rule-class city in Bell County, Kentucky, United States. The population was 10,334 at the 2010 U.S ...

, where it was restored to flying condition. The excavation of ''Glacier Girl'' was documented in an episode of

The History Channel History (formerly The History Channel from January 1, 1995 to February 15, 2008, stylized as HISTORY) is an American pay television network and flagship channel owned by A&E Networks, a joint venture between Hearst Communications and the Disney ...

's ''

Mega Movers ''Mega Movers'' is a television program on The History Channel. It first aired on April 18, 2006. The program details the preparations and inside problems and details of large moves, such as historical buildings being relocated to new sites mile ...

'' series, titled "Extreme Aircraft Recovery". The Lightning returned to the air in October 2002. On June 22, 2007, ''Glacier Girl'' departed

Teterboro Airport Teterboro Airport is a general aviation relief airport in the boroughs of Teterboro, Moonachie, and Hasbrouck Heights in Bergen County, New Jersey.New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

, in an attempt to fly across the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

Duxford Duxford is a village in Cambridgeshire, England, about south of Cambridge. It is part of the Hundred Parishes area. History The village formed on the banks of the River Cam, a little below its emergence from the hills of north Essex. One of t ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, to complete the flight it had begun 65 years earlier. On 28 June, however, a

coolant A coolant is a substance, typically liquid, that is used to reduce or regulate the temperature of a system. An ideal coolant has high thermal capacity, low viscosity, is low-cost, non-toxic, chemically inert and neither causes nor promotes corrosio ...

leak in the number-two (right) engine grounded the plane in Goose Bay,

Labrador , nickname = "The Big Land" , etymology = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Canada , subdivision_type1 = Province , subdivision_name1 ...

. On July 22, 2007, repairs were completed in Labrador, which included installation of two remanufactured Allison engines. ''Glacier Girl'' returned to the U.S. on July 23, and can now be seen at air shows in the USA. In 2007, ''Glacier Girl'' was sold to Lewis Energy's CEO,

Rodney Lewis Rodney Ray Lewis, known as Rod Lewis (born 1954), is founder, president, and chief executive officer of Lewis Energy, an oil and natural gas drilling company based in Texas, US. Biography Lewis was born and raised on a ranch in Laredo in Webb ...

Return mission in 2016

In April 2016, a team en route to the crash site in Greenland and under the guidance of veteran pilot and explorer, Ron Sheardown, was interviewed while at the airport in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, Canada, regarding plans to recover a second P-38. The team plans to extract another P-38 from the ice between May and August 2016. The glacier is drifting towards the sea, leaving most of the planes near or in a crevasse field too dangerous for a salvage mission. Led by entrepreneurs Ken McBride and Jim Salazar, the group of a dozen Canadian and American explorers who have been working on the project since 2010 will attempt to extract the P-38 ''Echo'', piloted by Capt. Robert Wilson and the second plane of the squadron to attempt landing, and donate it to a museum. Wilson's P-38 was the first to land wheels up after the first P-38, piloted by Brad McManus, flipped over when the front gear penetrated the ice on roll out and collapsed. The rest of the squadron successfully landed wheels up.

2018 Mission

In July, 2018, it was announced that Ken McBride and Jim Salazar had found a P-38 in the glacier.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Glacier Girl Individual aircraft of World War II Accidents and incidents involving military aircraft Aviation accidents and incidents in Greenland Aviation accidents and incidents in 1942 1942 in Greenland

Operational history

Recovery and restoration

Return mission in 2016

2018 Mission

See also

References