They’re going back! Team returns to Greenland to excavate WW2-era P-38 warplane from 350ft of ice

Jim Salazar and other members of Lost Squadron Greenland are returning to the glaciers of Greenland to recover a second World War 2-era P-38 Lighting warplane buried in over 350 feet of ice. Operations are currently scheduled to begin as soon as mid-May 2016.

It’s not his first trip – he and his team recovered their first P-38 in 1992, using innovative ice-melting tunneling equipment to reach the plane they’d nicknamed “Glacier Girl” from nearly 270 feet of snow and ice. “Glacier Girl” then underwent an extensive overhaul, returning to flight-worthy status in 2002. She still tours and attends air shows to this day.

The six P-38 fighters and two B-17 bombers embedded in the ice were lost in July 1942 during Operation Bolero, the massive US military troop and equipment movement across the ocean in preparation for an eventual invasion of mainland Europe. The flight group of the 94th Fighter Group and 97th Bomb Group were forced back by weather and were forced down onto the Greenland ice cap by low fuel in the largest single loss of the operation. All of the crew were rescued, and the aircraft were abandoned.

There is no plans to return the current target (nicknamed “Echo”) to service. She’ll instead be donated to the Wings of History aviation museum of San Martin, California.

The operation is far from complete. The team will have to contend with extreme dangers–storm, bitter cold, shifting ice, even the risk of the under-ice chambers collapsing. “Echo” may be in worse shape than the others of the squadron, she flipped upon landing. However, the remaining plane appear to be in an ice crevasse, too dangerous to recover at this time.

The team has secondary objective as well. In November 1942 a single-engine amphibious Grumman Duck disappeared in the same region during a storm. Though the plane was rediscovered in 2013, the bodies of the three crewmen aboard remain unrecovered to this day. The location has likely shifted, meaning the team will have to re-locate the crash site.

I only have one question … can I come? Please?

More about the Lost Squadron and the recovery of the P-38 Lighting “Glacier Girl.”