From our internal Lockheed Martin newsletter:
Glacier GirlLockheed P-38 flies again after being recovered from 268 feet of ice
When eager expeditionists set off more than 10 years ago to recover a downed airplane deep in a Greenland ice cap, the group was initially propelled by a sense of adventure.
It wasn’t long after they’d recovered the Lockheed-built P-38 warplane that their focus changed from adventure to a deep sense of history and purpose.
“Once we started talking about our discovery with men who had fought in World War II, we realized that what we were doing was a tribute to the veterans who fought for the freedom we have today,” said J. Roy Shoffner, who funded the expedition and is sole owner of the aircraft, which today has been impeccably restored. “So many of them have told us that when they were pinned in foxholes, they’d hear the distinctive sound of the P-38 and would say, ‘We’ll be all right. Here come the P-38s.’”
Designed by Lockheed’s legendary Kelly Johnson, the P-38 Lightning was the fastest and highest-flying aircraft used in World War II. Flying high above the U.S. bombers, it effectively protected them from enemy fire.
Of the more than 10,000 P-38s that were produced, only 24 exist today. And of those, only six — including Shoffner’s, which he dubbed “Glacier Girl” — are capable of flying.
In fact, last fall, the unbelievable recovery efforts and 10 years of restoration work culminated with Glacier Girl’s first flight. The event took place in Middlesboro, Ky., where Shoffner lives, and it attracted 25,000 visitors — more than two and a half times the number of people who live in the town.
“There were people stacked four abreast on either side of the runway, whose length is the equivalent of 10 city blocks, and there were an additional 200 people at each end,” Shoffner said. “Every parking lot in town — at the Kmart, the Wal-Mart, the high school, the churches — they all were full.”
Hundreds of veterans and their families attended the first flight, as did people who had heard about the expeditionists’ wild excursion to Greenland, their incredible tale of lifting the airplane — piece by piece — from 268 feet of ice, and their dedicated restoration effort.
When the team members headed to Greenland, they followed in the footsteps of 12 teams that had previously tried to locate the plane. Shoffner’s team found success using a global positioning system to locate the aircraft’s general vicinity and low-frequency radar to pinpoint the exact location.
The team recovered the aircraft on July 15, 1992, exactly 50 years from the day when the plane was forced to land due to poor weather conditions and shortage of fuel. Lt. Brad McManus, who was flying the plane when it crashed on the ice cap in 1942, was on hand five decades later for the recovery celebration.
The expeditionists spent 14 weeks in Greenland, using a specially designed melting unit to reach the aircraft 27 stories below.
Once that feat was accomplished, the team used a special water pump to move water away from the aircraft so it could dissemble it down below. And it used specially designed gantries to lift the pieces up one by one. All 35,000 of them.
The aircraft arrived at Shoffner’s hangar at the Middlesboro Bell County Airport in late October 1992. For the next 10 years, a team of 12 mechanics with experience working on World War II planes restored the aircraft to its original glory.
“This is a one-of-a-kind aircraft, the only P-38F in the world,” said Bob Cardin, who served as project manager for the recovery and restoration and now is curator of The Lost Squadron Museum where the aircraft is on display in the same hangar where it was restored.
Cardin noted that the aircraft was 62 days old with only 74 hours of flight time when it crashed. It is the only one in existence from the beginning of the war, and it has the only complete set of P-38 guns in the world. It also has its original ammunition.
“We recovered not only an airplane, but an artifact from World War II,” he said. “This is a symbol of the freedoms we have today and the tool used to guarantee us the preservation of those freedoms.”
Today, the Lockheed-built relic is on display at the unassuming Lost Squadron Museum. In the near future, it will move to a new home at the same airport — a museum built for the project by the state of Kentucky.
“Veterans react with a tremendous amount of pride and emotion when they see Glacier Girl,” Cardin said.
“The first time a fella came in and said, ‘That thing saved my life,’ I knew we had done something good.”
For comprehensive information about Glacier Girl, check out The Lost Squadron Web site at
http://www.thelostsquadron.com.
