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Glacier Girl: The Back Story
Air & Space Magazine ^
| July 01, 2007 (reprint-1993)
| Karen Jensen
Posted on 02/27/2010 1:52:27 PM PST by caveat emptor
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The following story, originally published in the January 1993 issue of Air & Space/ Smithsonian, recounts adventures during the second leg of the journey, a 22-year slog through recovery and restoration that couldnt have been completed without the ingenuity, stamina, and fortune of a Roy Shoffner, a Kentucky businessman, named the P-38 Glacier Girl and began to plan the completion of its mission.
.....How They Did It
Using a steam probe, an eight-foot-long steel rod trailing 300 feet of steel-reinforced rubber hose, the team located the airplane. They ran 264 feet of one-inch steel pipe down the hole made by the probe and erected an I-beam truss on the surface above. From the truss, a cone-shaped heater with a hole in the centerthe Super Gopherwas lowered by an electric winch at he rate of two to four feet per hour. Guided by the pipe, it melted a shaft four feet in diameter. A bilge pump removed the meltwater.
Using a hot-water cannon, the crew carved out a 50-food-wide cavern around the P-38, which they took apart and sent piece by piece to the surface. They had to sink five shafts to excavate a hole wide enough to lift the last piece of the airplane, the 17-foot-long, three-ton center section. It came up on August 1, 1992, three months after the expedition had begun.
For the story of Glacier Girls restoration and first flight, see Air & Space/Smithsonian, March 2004......
To: caveat emptor
A long read, but a good story.
To: caveat emptor
The glaciers have all been melting away this century. How did it get covered with 268 feet of ice? /s
3
posted on
02/27/2010 2:05:47 PM PST
by
TigersEye
(It's the Marxism, stupid! ... And they call themselves Progressives.)
To: TigersEye
Thats what we said back when we dug it out in 92.
4
posted on
02/27/2010 2:10:54 PM PST
by
HANG THE EXPENSE
(Life is tough.It's tougher when you're stupid.)
To: TigersEye
I work across from the hanger where she was restored. Each day when the hanger doors were open you could look across the runway and see the progress they were making on the old girl.
Got to watch her take off on her maiden flight, that was sweet!!! Saw her fly in and out a few times. It was a sad day when I watched her fly out for the final time.
5
posted on
02/27/2010 2:12:14 PM PST
by
sarge83
To: imahawk
You people are just hallucinating that ice. Everyone knows that Greenland is close to spontaneously combusting. lol
6
posted on
02/27/2010 2:22:25 PM PST
by
TigersEye
(It's the Marxism, stupid! ... And they call themselves Progressives.)
To: sarge83
It sounds like a great project. It must have been neat to watch it come together.
7
posted on
02/27/2010 2:23:22 PM PST
by
TigersEye
(It's the Marxism, stupid! ... And they call themselves Progressives.)
To: TigersEye
Note that the excavation occurred in 1992. During the previous 11 years Republican administrations had been in power and their attitude towards people of color, gays, the poor, helpless, disadvantaged and those who were not Republican party donors was so cold that the weather was affected. This resulted in ice accumulating at a rate of about 20 feet a year or more in Greenland.
Which neatly explains the deep ice.
To: 17th Miss Regt
Ah, yes, I forgot all about that. And they persisted in their evil in the ‘90s and made ketchup a main dish in school lunches. Somehow Jean sKerry must have had a hand in that too.
9
posted on
02/27/2010 2:58:40 PM PST
by
TigersEye
(It's the Marxism, stupid! ... And they call themselves Progressives.)
To: caveat emptor; metmom
The AAF logo they found on the wings likely stood for “Amelekite Air Force”. According to standard theories, it would take about 3500 years for that much ice and snow to get put down over the plane, i.e. the thing has to date from the time of Moses, and the only nation organized enough to build such a thing at that time would have been the Amalekites...
To: wendy1946
Yeah, their dating for the age of the earth is just as accurate.
11
posted on
02/27/2010 3:42:34 PM PST
by
metmom
(Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
To: TigersEye
Hence the name greenland.
12
posted on
02/27/2010 3:56:14 PM PST
by
HANG THE EXPENSE
(Life is tough.It's tougher when you're stupid.)
To: caveat emptor; SkyDancer; Victoria Delsoul
I’ve watched it fly at the EAA Airventure in Oskosh. It’s a thrill to see such wonderful aircraft take to the skies.
13
posted on
02/27/2010 5:39:03 PM PST
by
Northern Yankee
(Where Liberty dwells, there is my Country. - Benjamin Franklin)
To: Northern Yankee
I read the story about it. Also watched a video of reclaiming a B29 from Greenland ice.
14
posted on
02/27/2010 5:47:12 PM PST
by
SkyDancer
(If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed)
To: SkyDancer
Also watched a video of reclaiming a B29 from Greenland ice.
You only saw the first half, and missed the part where they suspended a 5-gallon can of gasoline ABOVE an operating APU in the rear fuselage. Then did some high-speed taxi runs on the ice.
Result: priceless warbird, extra crispy.
To: tanknetter
Saw that part too ... they sat in lawn chairs and watched it burn.
16
posted on
02/27/2010 5:52:53 PM PST
by
SkyDancer
(If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed)
To: SkyDancer
Saw that part too ... they sat in lawn chairs and watched it burn.
Shoulda gone the viking funeral route and thrown Darryl Greenamyer's a** onto Kee Bird as she burned.
To: SkyDancer
It was in Alaska. Greenland was a stop for aircraft going to the European Theatre. Alaska was a stopover for aircraft going to the Pacific Theatre.
B-29s only fought in the Pacific (with the exception of two B29s that flew through Europe, on their way to India, to scare Hitler.)
To: Bartholomew Roberts
Ok, I knew that B29’s were used exclusively in the Pacific but the way it looked from the video I could have sworn that they mentioned Greenland - which to me was an oddity - however, didn’t some B29’s go to England after WWII at the start of the Cold War????
19
posted on
02/27/2010 6:47:09 PM PST
by
SkyDancer
(If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed)
To: tanknetter
It was a stupid thing to do - and after all that work and that guy dying ....
20
posted on
02/27/2010 6:49:29 PM PST
by
SkyDancer
(If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed)
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