Glacier Girl, the Lockheed P-38 Lightning Buried Under Two Hundred Sixty-Eight Feet of Greenland Ice, and the Ten-Year Recovery That Brought Her Back to the Sky

On October 26, 2002, a Lockheed P-38 Lightning designated serial number 42-67543 - known as Glacier Girl - flew again for the first time since July 15, 1942. She had spent the intervening six decades under 268 feet of Greenland ice. Her recovery stands as one of the most remarkable warbird salvage operations in aviation history.

What Was Operation Bolero and How Did Eight Aircraft End Up on the Ice?

Operation Bolero was the large-scale movement of American aircraft and personnel across the North Atlantic to England in the early years of World War II. On July 15, 1942 - nine months after Pearl Harbor - a flight of eight aircraft departed Goose Bay, Labrador, bound for Greenland, then Iceland, then England.

Six of the aircraft were Lockheed P-38 Lightnings. Two were Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses. The P-38s were brand new, equipped with ferry tanks for the crossing, flown by young Army Air Forces pilots on what was called a ferry mission - moving equipment to the theater.

Weather over the Davis Strait between Labrador and the Greenland coast deteriorated rapidly. Visibility dropped. Cloud cover thickened. The flight could not reach its destination at Bluie West Eight, the Army airfield on Greenland’s western coast. With fuel reaching critical levels and no runway within range, the decision was made to put all eight aircraft down on the Greenland ice cap.

What Happened When the Aircraft Landed?

All eight aircraft landed successfully on the ice. Every crew member survived. There were no fatalities and no serious injuries. Eight aircraft made forced landings on an unprepared glacial surface - the P-38s touching down at roughly 90 miles per hour on a surface none of those pilots had ever trained to use - and every one of them walked away.

The aircraft were another matter. With the wartime logistics chain already strained beyond capacity, there was no practical way to recover eight large airframes from the middle of the Greenland ice cap. The Army Air Forces rescued the crews by air and assessed the situation. The planes were abandoned with the intention to return for them. They never did.

How Deep Did the Lost Squadron Sink?

The Greenland ice cap accumulates snow year-round. Unlike lower latitudes, summer temperatures do not melt the snowfall - it simply builds. New accumulation compresses older layers into ice, and the ice sheet flows slowly, as all glaciers do. Anything resting on the surface sinks as fresh snow accumulates above it.

By the 1980s, the eight aircraft - which had come to be called the Lost Squadron - were far from the surface. Radar data confirmed they were sitting at approximately 268 feet below the ice, the equivalent of a 22-story building straight down through solid glacial ice. Glacial flow had also carried them roughly two miles from their original landing position.

Who Organized the Recovery?

Pat Epps, a pilot who operated Epps Aviation out of DeKalb-Peachtree Airport northeast of Atlanta, Georgia, read about the Lost Squadron and could not let the story go. He brought in Richard Taylor, another pilot and businessman with the same commitment to the idea. Together they formed the Greenland Expedition Society, raising money, assembling a team, and mounting expeditions north to search.

The first challenge was locating the aircraft. Ground-penetrating radar - which sends signals through ice and reads what bounces back, with metal providing strong returns - became the key technology. After years of difficult and often inconclusive expeditions throughout the early and mid-1980s, in 1988 the Greenland Expedition Society obtained radar returns confirming eight aircraft at approximately 268 feet below the surface.

They were still there.

How Did the Team Reach the Aircraft?

Drilling or mechanically excavating 268 feet of glacial ice without destroying whatever was at the bottom was not a viable approach. The team developed a device they called the thermal mole - a hot-water melting probe that bored straight down through the ice by melting rather than cutting. No drill bit, no mechanical force. Just sustained, controlled heat applied to ice, foot by foot, toward a target visible only on a radar screen.

The expeditions ran across the late 1980s and into the early 1990s, conducted under brutal conditions on the ice cap. Every piece of equipment, every supply, every team member arrived by aircraft. There was no road, no nearby infrastructure, no margin for error. Progress came slowly. There were setbacks and years that yielded less than hoped. But the radar data had confirmed the aircraft were real, and Pat Epps kept going back.

In the summer of 1992, the thermal mole finally broke through to one of the P-38s.

What Did They Find Under the Ice?

The aircraft had survived in better condition than most had dared predict. The P-38’s twin-boom structure proved more resilient under ice pressure than a conventional fuselage might have been. The wings had been compressed inward and required replacement. But the center nacelle, the engines, and the basic airframe architecture were intact and recognizable.

The serial number confirmed the aircraft as P-38 42-67543. She was given the name Glacier Girl.

Recovery involved disassembling the aircraft and hauling components up through the melt shaft over subsequent expeditions - engine components, fuselage sections, cockpit hardware, systems components. Every piece was documented and catalogued. Every section of sixty-year-old aluminum had to be evaluated to determine what was serviceable and what required new fabrication.

How Was Glacier Girl Restored?

The restoration took roughly a decade and drew on original Lockheed engineering drawings, craftsmen with specific P-38 expertise, and sourced or newly manufactured components throughout. Both Allison V-12 engines were rebuilt from the ground up. Hydraulic, electrical, and fuel systems were either fully restored or replaced. The wings, crushed by ice pressure, were rebuilt to original specifications with new aluminum skinned over new structure. The cockpit canopy, which had not survived, was fabricated new.

This was not a conventional warbird restoration using salvage parts. A P-38 is complex enough that not everyone can work on one correctly, and Glacier Girl’s specific history made the work more demanding still. It was a multi-year, multi-discipline, multi-facility undertaking on a one-of-a-kind airframe.

When Did Glacier Girl Fly Again?

On October 26, 2002 - sixty years after the emergency landing on the Greenland ice cap - Glacier Girl flew again. Both Allison V-12s running, counter-rotating props at speed, the unmistakable twin-boom silhouette climbing away from the runway.

The P-38 Lightning already carried an extraordinary wartime record. It was the aircraft type that flew the long-range intercept mission that killed Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in 1943 - a mission no other American fighter of that era could have completed at that range. The Germans called it the “fork-tailed devil.” Glacier Girl carried all of that history, plus fifty years under more than two hundred feet of ice.

Why This Matters for Aviators

The pilots of the Lost Squadron did exactly what aviators are trained to do: assess an impossible situation, make the best decision available, execute with precision, and bring everyone home. The aircraft they landed were lost to the ice for half a century - but they were not gone.

Glacier Girl’s story is a demonstration of what sustained commitment, engineering ingenuity, and respect for aviation history can accomplish. The distinction between something being buried and something being lost drove Pat Epps and the Greenland Expedition Society to keep going back year after year. The airplane confirmed they were right.

Key Takeaways

• On July 15, 1942, six P-38 Lightnings and two B-17s made emergency forced landings on the Greenland ice cap during Operation Bolero. All crew survived with no fatalities.
• By the 1980s, the aircraft - known as the Lost Squadron - had sunk to 268 feet below the surface and drifted roughly two miles from their original landing position.
• Pat Epps and the Greenland Expedition Society used ground-penetrating radar in 1988 to confirm the aircraft’s location, then a hot-water thermal mole to reach them.
• In summer 1992, excavators reached P-38 serial 42-67543 - Glacier Girl - and found the airframe substantially intact despite decades of ice pressure.
• After a decade-long restoration using original Lockheed engineering drawings, Glacier Girl flew on October 26, 2002, sixty years after her emergency landing.