Glacier Girl and the P thirty-eight Lightning buried under two hundred sixty-eight feet of ice

In July 1942, eight U.S. military aircraft — six Lockheed P-38 Lightnings and two Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses — made emergency landings on the Greenland ice cap during a ferry mission to Europe. All 25 crew members survived, but the planes were left behind. Over the following decades, annual snowfall compressed into glacier ice and buried the aircraft under 268 feet of solid ice. In 2002, one of those P-38s, dubbed Glacier Girl, flew again after a recovery and restoration effort that spanned more than two decades.

How Did Eight Aircraft End Up Buried Under a Greenland Glacier?

The aircraft were part of Operation Bolero, the massive effort to ferry fighters and bombers across the North Atlantic to support the war in Europe. The route ran from Maine through Labrador to Greenland, then to Iceland, and finally to the British Isles — the North Atlantic Ferry Route.

On July 15, 1942, the flight of eight departed a base in Greenland bound for Iceland. Most of the pilots were young men barely out of flight training, ferrying brand-new aircraft to the war zone. The P-38 Lightning — with its distinctive twin booms, twin Allison V-1710 engines, counter-rotating propellers, and tricycle landing gear — was fast and capable, but not designed for what came next.

Greenland weather closed in without warning. Visibility dropped to zero, the ceiling collapsed, and snow engulfed the formation. The field behind them was socked in. With fuel running low and nowhere to land, the pilots put their aircraft down on the ice cap.

The P-38s’ tricycle gear actually helped — they bellied in and slid to a stop. The B-17s came down too. Every single crew member walked away. Rescue teams arrived by dogsled and boat over the following days and evacuated all 25 men. The airplanes stayed where they were.

How Did the Planes End Up 268 Feet Deep?

Greenland’s ice cap is not static. Annual snowfall compacts into ice, layer upon layer, and the glacier itself flows slowly toward the coast. Season after season, the eight aircraft sank deeper. Within a few years they were covered. Within a decade, fully buried. The planes drifted from their original crash positions as the glacier moved, eventually settling 268 feet below the surface — the equivalent of a 25-story building made of ice.

Who Went Looking for the Lost Squadron?

In 1981, Pat Epps — a fixed-base operator at Peachtree DeKalb Airport in Atlanta — and Richard Taylor, an architect, launched the first expedition to recover the planes. Their assumption was simple: after nearly 40 years in nature’s deep freeze, the aircraft would be in perfect condition. Brush off the snow, fuel them up, fly them home.

They were spectacularly wrong.

The first expeditions with metal detectors found nothing. The glacier had moved the aircraft far from their original positions. It took multiple expeditions over seven years, ground-penetrating radar, geophysicists, and glaciologists before the team finally located the aircraft in 1988. The radar signatures were unmistakable — but the depth reading was staggering.

How Did They Extract an Airplane From 268 Feet of Ice?

Epps and Taylor formed the Greenland Expedition Society and engineered a device called the Super Gopher — a thermal probe made from copper tubing that used hot water to melt a shaft straight down through the ice. The plan was to bore down to the aircraft, carve out an ice cavern around it, disassemble it piece by piece, and haul everything back to the surface.

The logistics were brutal. The work site sat hours from the nearest settlement on the open ice cap. Everything — fuel, generators, living quarters, food — had to be flown or dragged in. Temperatures routinely hit minus 30 to minus 40 degrees. Wind was constant. And the team was performing precision disassembly in an ice cave 268 feet underground.

The recovery of a single P-38 took from 1992 to 1995. When they reached it, the airplane was not pristine. Ice had crushed sections. Wings were damaged. The fuselage was compressed. But the core components survived: engines, superchargers, instrument panel, and control surfaces — all recoverable.

The Restoration of Glacier Girl

The disassembled P-38 was crated and shipped to Middlesboro, Kentucky, where a restoration team led by Bob Cardin and later Roy Kinsey began rebuilding her. The project, eventually associated with Epps Aviation, would consume nearly a decade and tens of thousands of hours of labor.

The team rebuilt the aircraft around every original component that could be saved — the data plate, original placards, and surviving structural members were all incorporated. Destroyed parts were precision-machined as replacements. New old stock Allison engines were sourced and installed.

Glacier Girl Flies Again

On October 26, 2002 — sixty years after she went down on the ice cap — Glacier Girl flew again. Test pilot Steve Hinton lifted her off from Middlesboro, Kentucky, both Allison engines running, counter-rotating props turning, the unmistakable twin-boom silhouette climbing into a clear autumn sky.

That P-38 had rolled off the Lockheed assembly line in Burbank, California in 1942. She went into the ice before ever seeing combat. She spent more time buried in a glacier than any airplane in history. And she came home.

Glacier Girl has since become a regular on the airshow circuit, based with the Lewis Air Legends collection and appearing at Oshkosh, Sun ’n Fun, and other major events.

What Happened to the Other Seven Aircraft?

The remaining five P-38s and two B-17s are still under the ice. They continue drifting slowly with the glacier toward the Greenland coast, settling deeper each year. Eventually, the glacier will calve into the sea and take them with it — unless someone mounts another recovery effort.

Pat Epps passed away in 2009, having spent decades and substantial personal resources on what most people dismissed as an impossible dream. Richard Taylor, Bob Cardin, and the Kentucky restoration crew invested years of their lives in bringing a single aircraft back from the ice.

Key Takeaways

• Eight U.S. aircraft made emergency landings on Greenland’s ice cap in July 1942, and all 25 crew members survived
• Annual snowfall and glacial compression buried the planes under 268 feet of solid ice over the following decades
• Recovery efforts led by Pat Epps and Richard Taylor spanned from 1981 to 1995, requiring ground-penetrating radar and custom thermal boring equipment
• Glacier Girl flew again on October 26, 2002, after a decade-long restoration incorporating original recovered components
• Seven aircraft remain buried under the ice cap and continue to drift toward the coast