Once Frozen, Refurbished, Minty Fresh Lightning Offers a Night Of Curiosity

Lone Star Flight Museum's P-38 "Glacier Girl" will be the subject of a special presentation next month, with the once ice-bound aircraft presented to attendees after 10 years of excavation and restoration.

Bob Cardin, lead excavator, will walk visitors through the impressive history of the plane, showing them just how much work went into the recovery and rehabilitation of the classic warbird.The session will offer attendees a chance for Q&A as well as an up-close photo opportunity.

Glacier Girl is the only rescued survivor of a squadron of P-38s and B-17s that attempted a ferry flight over Greenland in 1942. The crashed aircraft was buried under 268 feet of ice, with the Greenland Expedition Society going to great lengths to recover her. The aircraft required incredible effort to rescue, beating back freezing conditions and slowly winching up the wreckage piece by piece.

"Ingenuity and endurance brought Glacier Girl back to the surface where she had crash-landed half a century before. The team created a device they called the “Super Gopher,” which circulated heated water through a metal cone to melt holes 27 stories deep and reach key sections of the plane. Then they began the long, dangerous process of dragging out the pieces, including the 3-ton, 17-foot-long fuselage. It took 20 minutes to lower each worker to the aircraft – an eternity in the claustrophobic 4-foot-diameter shafts – and three days of hand-cranking to bring up the last piece. The final section emerged on August 1, 1992, and, thankfully, the team's worst fears were not realized. Glaciers have a tendency to crush anything they've swallowed, but the P- 38's sections were in good enough shape that the team optimistically estimated a two-year restoration. They were about eight years shy of the mark."

In the end, the team was able to use "around 80%" of the plane's original parts.

FMI: www.lonestarflight.org