glacier girl

Glacier Girl Flies

Mike Bealmer

Middlesboro, Ky., Saturday, Oct. 26, 2002

The Morristown, Tenn., Citizen Tribune

Brad McManus, left, one of the eight pilots who landed on the ice in Greenland in 1942, with Steve Hinton, the pilot who flew Glacier Girl on Saturday.

By: STAN JOHNSON, Tribune Staff Writer

October 26, 2002

When a Lockheed P-38 Lightning lifted off the runway at Middlesboro, Ky., about 3:30 Saturday afternoon it was the first time the airplane had been in the air since July 15, 1942, the day it skidded to a stop on the icecap of Greenland.

The plane was one of six P-38 fighters and two B-17 Bombers being flown to Europe about seven months after the United States entered World War II. When bad weather caused the eight aircraft to turn back they discovered that bad weather had also closed in behind them. The flight leader decided the best thing to do was have the entire flight land together before they ran out of fuel.

The crews were rescued within a few days, but the airplanes were left where they stopped and over the years they were covered by ice. A few attempts to salvage the airplanes were made but were unsuccessful.

Eventually a Middlesboro businessman named Roy Shoffner acquired the salvage rights and in 1992, 50 years and one month after the planes landed, once was finally removed from under a layer of ice 268 feet thick.

Using photos taken by the original crews while they were waiting rescue, the salvage workers knew selected the least damaged of the planes and reached it by boring a hole through the ice using hot water. The airplane was transported to Middlesboro, where a 10-year restoration began.

The end of that expensive and lengthy restoration ended Saturday when Steve Hinton, one of only a handful of active pilots with experience flying a P-38, climbed in and took off for a few circle of the airport that included a pair of low passes for photos by the more than 20,000 people who were there to witness the event.

"I loved it," Hinton said after landing. "It was perfect."

Among the distinguished guests present for the first flight of "Glacier Girl," as the plane has been nicknamed, was Brad McManus, one of the pilots who landed on the ice in 1942.

In 1942, the P-38 was the fastest fighter in the world, and they flew in both the Pacific and European Theaters during the war. After the war ended almost all of them were melted down for scrap metal.

Only about a half dozen remain, according to Bob Cardin, the project manager of the recovery and restoration of Glacier Girl.

Plans are to have the airplane on display at the Lost Squadron Museum in Middlesboro. Cardin said it is uncertain how much it will be flown
in the future.

©Citizen Tribune 2002