Originally posted by SirLoin
I believe there is a book out on this restoration project...Great story!
There is. Its called "The Lost Squadron". Not sure if its still in print or not. I have it and read it a couple years back. Wonderful adventure story about how they scrambled to find sponsors, several failed expeditions, a lot of money gone with nothing but photos to show for it. The book makes a good read with a lot of photos and input from members of the team. I got my hardback edition off a bargain rack and enjoyed reading it.
Of the 6 or so P-38s that crashed, most of them had been crushed by the shifting ice into pieces the size of dog tags, frisbees, and soup cans. Ice looks stable, but its actually a very slow moving compactor. Each year the recovery team went back to the glacier, they would have to dig down through the previous year's campsite, so they kept recovering their own tents, bulldozers, and refuse that had been abandoned 8 months earlier, and then they re-dug the holes that had been dug before. There was a lot of re-work involved and it proved to be very frustrating.
For what they spent on recovery and restoration, they could've built a full-scale replica by hand in less time with less frustration and with less money.
