Glacier Girl: The Back Story

Air & Space Magazine ^ | July 01, 2007 (reprint-1993) | Karen Jensen

[Bartholomew Roberts]

You were right and I was wrong. It was in Greenland. That’ll teach me to run my fingers before checking.

This is from Wikipedia:

The Kee Bird was an American B-29-95-BW Superfortress, 45-21768, of the 46th/72d Reconnaissance Squadrons, that became marooned after making an emergency landing in northwest Greenland during a secret Cold War spying mission on 21 February 1947.

Although the entire crew was safely evacuated, after spending three days in the isolated Arctic tundra, the aircraft itself was left at the landing site. It lay there undisturbed until 1994, when a privately-funded mission was launched to repair and return it.

After months of painstaking work on the aircraft and setbacks such as the death of the mission’s chief engineer, the repairs were completed and the aircraft prepared to take off from a frozen lake nearby on 21 May 1995. As it was taxiing to its takeoff position, however, a fire broke out inside the rear fuselage, from an auxiliary power unit mounted there, and quickly engulfed the whole fuselage.

The entire crew on board escaped unharmed, but the Kee Bird’s fuselage and tail surfaces were completely destroyed. When the lake thawed in the spring, the wreckage (with nearly intact wing panels and engines) sank to the bottom, where it now lies.

The attempted repair and return of the Kee Bird was documented in the 1996 NOVA television episode “B-29 Frozen in Time”.

This is from Wiki about B-29s in Europe:

Although considered for other theaters, and briefly evaluated in England, the B-29 was predominantly used in World War II in the Pacific Theatre.

The use of YB-29-BW 41-36393, the so-named Hobo Queen, one of the service test aircraft flown around several British airfields in early 1944, was thought to be as a “disinformation” program intended to deceive the Germans into believing that the B-29 would be deployed to Europe.[citation needed]

The Hobo Queen even seems to have been featured in a photo in the Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter-the German newspaper’s headline showing the photo of the Hobo Queen soon appeared in Boeing factory posters of the era.

[Victoria Delsoul]

Great story. Thanks for the ping.

[SkyDancer]

It was a great vid - sorry to see the plane burn at the end. All that work .... sad.

[SunkenCiv]

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[sarge83]

It was, they brought her to the hanger in pieces and did the work right in the hanger. Around the plane and restoration project was a mini museum with WWII Army Air Corp memorabilia. Each day I could see the progress, but ever so often I would take my kids and we would go through the museum/hanger to get an up close view. When they were working the project supervisor and one of the eventual pilots would answer questions and talk about the plane.

I bought my little girl a Glacier Girl tee-shirt from the museum gift shop and whenever we would travel around the country if she had it on inevitably we would have one or more people come up and ask about the shirt and the plane.

The family that owned GG sold her and I think it is doing airshows in Europe and around the country now. I miss her she was a sight to see!

[TigersEye]

Thank you for sharing your experiences. Maybe it will come to an air show around here.