One Of The 'Lost Squadron' Airplanes Lost in 1942

The Greenland glacier that is the final resting place for six P-38 fighters and two B-17 bombers may soon give up another of the aircraft that has been buried in the ice since 1942.

The aircraft were forced to land on a remote glacier off Koge bak in Southeastern Greenland when they ran into weather en route to Reykjavik, Iceland where they planned to refuel. The aircrews were all rescued, but the airplanes remained on the glacier, and were eventually buried in up to 350 feet of ice and snow.

One of the P-38s, "Glacier Girl", was discovered in 1992 and restored to airworthy condition. Now, Smithsonian Magazine relays a report from Popular Mechanics that a second P-38, dubbed "Echo" and flown by Robert Wilson, has been located, and a recovery effort is planned.

The plane was first noted as an anomaly during a radar search of the glacier by the nonprofit Arctic Hot Point Solutions in 2011. Earlier this year, the group returned with drones equipped with ground penetrating radar and pinpointed the location of the airplane. They used a heat probe to drill down through the ice, and it returned covered in hydraulic oil, meaning they had found the airplane, according to a report form Live Science.

American Military News reports that the a team now plans to use large heated plates to melt through the ice and reach the airplane. They plan to construct a cavern that will allow them to disassemble the warbird and bring it back to the surface, where it will be reassembled.

The long-range plans include restoring Echo to airworthy condition.

Along with the Lost Squadron, there are other WWII aircraft that could be retrieved from the glacier. The team hopes to recover a U.S. Coast Guard "Duck" aircraft that went down on the glacier in November of 1942 while searching for survivors of a C-53 Skytrooper aircraft that went down in the region.

(U.S. Army image)

FMI: Source report