Glacier Girl and the P-38 Lightning pulled from two hundred sixty-eight feet of Greenland ice

Glacier Girl is a Lockheed P-38F Lightning recovered from 268 feet beneath the Greenland ice cap after spending 60 years buried in glacial ice. Originally part of the Lost Squadron forced down during a 1942 transatlantic crossing, the fighter was excavated in pieces during the 1990s, painstakingly restored over a decade, and returned to flight on October 26, 2002, making it one of the most extraordinary warbird recoveries in aviation history.

How Did a P-38 Lightning End Up Under 268 Feet of Ice?

On July 15, 1942, six P-38 Lightnings and two B-17 Flying Fortresses were crossing the North Atlantic as part of Operation Bolero, ferrying American warplanes to England for the air war over Europe. These eight aircraft became known as the Lost Squadron.

Deteriorating weather forced the flight leader’s hand. Ceilings dropped, visibility collapsed, and fuel gauges told a grim story. The entire formation turned back to Greenland and put down on the ice cap. Every crew member — all 25 men — survived, set up camp, and were rescued over the following days by dog sled teams and a Coast Guard cutter.

The Army considered retrieving the planes but ultimately wrote them off. The war demanded new production, and Lockheed’s Burbank assembly line was turning out P-38s daily. The eight aircraft were abandoned on the ice.

Why Were the Planes So Deep?

The Greenland ice cap doesn’t simply accumulate snow — it flows. Each year brought more snowfall that compacted into ice, burying the aircraft deeper while the glacier carried them laterally. The planes twisted, settled, and endured crushing pressure under decades of accumulation.

By the time searchers pinpointed the P-38 that would become Glacier Girl, she sat beneath 268 feet of solid glacial ice — the equivalent of a 25-story building. An airplane abandoned on the surface for less than 50 years had been swallowed whole. The accumulation rate on that section of the ice cap is extraordinary.

Who Found Glacier Girl and How?

In 1981, Pat Epps, an aviation businessman at DeKalb-Peachtree Airport outside Atlanta, and Richard Taylor, an architect from Middlesboro, Kentucky, hatched a plan to recover the Lost Squadron. Their initial assumption was simple: scrape the snow off, fuel the planes up, fly them home.

Reality hit hard. Their first expedition in 1983 used a magnetometer to scan for metal beneath the ice. They found anomalies — but not near the surface. Not at 10 feet. Not at 50 feet. The planes were more than 260 feet down.

Over the next decade, multiple expeditions spent millions of dollars deploying drilling equipment, heated probes, and a custom thermal device called the Super Gopher — a hot-water circulation system that could bore through ice. The team would melt a shaft, lower a camera, and search the deep blue frozen world for airplane-shaped shadows.

In 1992, they reached a P-38. The glacier had rotated the airframe roughly 80 degrees from its original orientation and squeezed it under immense pressure. But it was recognizable. It was an airplane.

How Do You Extract a Fighter From a 268-Foot Ice Shaft?

The recovery operation was unlike anything attempted before. The team melted a four-foot-diameter shaft through 268 feet of solid ice, then widened it into a cavern around the aircraft. Working conditions were surreal — walls glowing blue from filtered light, constant sub-freezing temperatures, still air, and the sound of the glacier groaning and cracking around them.

Every piece of the P-38 had to be cut apart, tagged, hauled up through the narrow shaft, loaded onto sleds, and dragged to a pickup point. The recovery spanned from 1992 through the mid-1990s. Some components arrived crushed; others were remarkably intact. Cockpit instruments were still readable. Some rubber gaskets remained flexible after 50 years in deep freeze. The counter-rotating propellers were bent, but the hub assemblies were salvageable.

The Decade-Long Restoration

The recovered pieces went to a restoration shop in Middlesboro, Kentucky, where the mission shifted from adventure to devotion. The team wasn’t building a museum piece. They intended to make Glacier Girl fly.

The restoration consumed more than ten years and required:

• Fabricating parts that no longer existed, using crushed originals as templates
• Sourcing Allison V-1710 engines — liquid-cooled V-12s producing 1,200 horsepower each with turbosuperchargers, out of production for decades
• Tracking down original 1940s technical manuals and consulting with retired Lockheed engineers
• Scouring museums, private collections, surplus dealers, and old Air Force depots for components like V-1710 reduction gears

The Allison engines posed the greatest challenge. Finding parts for a powerplant that hasn’t been manufactured in over 80 years meant a scavenger hunt spanning continents.

Glacier Girl Flies Again

On October 26, 2002, pilot Steve Hinton lifted Glacier Girl off the runway at Middlesboro, Kentucky. Twin Allisons turning, the distinctive P-38 sound filled the Appalachian valley.

The P-38 Lightning produces one of the most recognizable engine notes of any World War II fighter. Its counter-rotating propellers eliminate torque effect while creating a harmonic interplay between the two engines — a synchronized hum building into a roar. People on the field that day wept watching an airplane that had spent 60 years under ice climb back into the sky.

Glacier Girl has been flying the airshow circuit since her return to service. She wears markings honoring the Lost Squadron and has appeared at Oshkosh, Sun ’n Fun, and major warbird gatherings across the country.

Why an Original Matters More Than a Replica

A replica is a tribute. An original is a witness. Glacier Girl’s aluminum absorbed the vibrations of those Allison engines when the aircraft was new in 1942. Her control cables were rigged by a Lockheed mechanic in Burbank. She is a physical connection to a specific moment in history — one that recedes further every year. Keeping her flying keeps that connection alive in a way no reproduction can match.

What Happened to the Rest of the Lost Squadron?

The remaining aircraft — five P-38s and two B-17s — are still beneath the Greenland ice cap. They have drifted deeper every year and now sit well below the depth where Glacier Girl was found. Various recovery proposals have surfaced over the years, but the logistics grow more daunting with time. The window for recovery may have already closed.

Pat Epps passed away in 2014, having spent much of his life pursuing those airplanes. Richard Taylor and the broader team carried the work forward — a group of people who looked at an impossible situation and decided to try anyway.

Key Takeaways

• Glacier Girl is a P-38F Lightning recovered from 268 feet of Greenland glacial ice after being abandoned during a 1942 forced landing as part of the Lost Squadron
• All 25 crew members from the eight downed aircraft survived and were rescued by dog sled teams and a Coast Guard cutter
• Recovery efforts spanned from 1983 to the mid-1990s, costing millions and requiring custom thermal boring equipment to reach the aircraft
• The restoration took over a decade, requiring fabricated parts, sourced Allison V-1710 engines, and original wartime technical documentation
• Glacier Girl returned to flight on October 26, 2002, piloted by Steve Hinton, and continues flying the airshow circuit today