Glacier Girl, the Lost Squadron, and the P Thirty-Eight Lightning They Dug Out From Under Two Hundred Sixty-Eight Feet of Greenland Ice

Glacier Girl is a Lockheed P-38 Lightning that crash-landed on the Greenland ice cap in 1942, was buried under 268 feet of ice over the following 50 years, and was recovered piece by piece in 1992. After a decade of restoration in Kentucky, she flew again on October 26, 2002 - sixty years after her crew last saw her in the air. It remains one of the most improbable aircraft recoveries in aviation history.

What Was the Lost Squadron?

In the summer of 1942, the United States needed fighters in Europe fast. But the P-38 Lightning lacked the range to cross the Atlantic in a single hop, so the Army devised a stepping-stone ferry route under the code name Operation Bolero - up through Maine, across to Labrador, on to Greenland, then Iceland, and finally Scotland. The water gaps were short enough for a fighter to island-hop across the top of the world.

On July 15, 1942, a flight of eight aircraft departed for Iceland: six P-38 Lightnings and two B-17 Flying Fortresses. The Fortresses carried the navigation gear and range, so the Lightnings followed in formation.

Then the weather closed in. Iceland was socked in, Greenland behind them was deteriorating, and fuel was running low with the ceiling on the deck. The flight leader made the only call left: he put all eight aircraft down on the Greenland ice cap.

Did the Crews Survive the Crash Landings?

Yes. All 25 airmen survived. The first Lightning attempted a wheels-down landing, but its gear dug into the snow and flipped it onto its back - the pilot crawled out unhurt. After that, every remaining aircraft came in gear-up, bellies sliding across the ice with propellers curling back.

The crews survived on the ice cap for over a week, running the aircraft radios until the batteries died and melting snow for water. A rescue party eventually reached them by dog sled and brought every man out alive. The abandoned aircraft became known as the Lost Squadron.

How Did the Aircraft End Up 268 Feet Underground?

The Lightnings didn’t stay on the surface. Snow fell, packed down, and turned to ice, and the glacier crept and flowed as glaciers do. Winter after winter, the aircraft sank deeper into the ice cap - not because they were heavy, but because Greenland simply buries everything over time.

By the time anyone went looking decades later, the P-38s lay 268 feet below the surface - deeper than a football field is long, standing on end. The glacier had also carried them more than a mile from where the crews had stepped out of them.

How Was Glacier Girl Recovered?

The recovery was led by the Greenland Expedition Society, driven by men including Roy Shoffner and Pat Epps, across a series of expeditions through the 1980s and into the 1990s.

The first challenge was simply finding the aircraft, since the surface they had landed on was long gone. Teams walked grids across the glacier using ice-penetrating radar, listening for a hard echo where everything else read soft - until they got their hits: metal, deep down.

To reach it, they built a device they called “the gopher” - a large brass ring circulated with hot water, lowered on a hose to melt a shaft straight down through the ice. Hot water in, meltwater pumped out, foot by foot, boring a shaft barely wide enough for a person.

The first Lightning they reached had been crushed by the ice. But a second aircraft had survived: the glacier’s weight had squeezed a cavern around it, leaving the airframe largely intact in the dark.

How Do You Bring an Airplane Up a Manhole-Sized Shaft?

You take it apart. Working by lamplight in the meltwater cave beneath a quarter-mile of ice, the team disassembled the fighter piece by piece - wings, tail booms, engines, and center pod - cutting and unbolting it into sections small enough to haul up the shaft. Every piece was brought to the surface in the summer of 1992, exactly 50 years after the crew last saw the sky. They named her Glacier Girl.

How Was Glacier Girl Restored to Flight?

The recovered pieces were shipped to Middlesboro, Kentucky, where restoration took roughly another decade. Craftsmen went over every rib, spar, and fitting - saving what they could and rebuilding the rest from scratch to the original drawings. Both Allison engines, the turbochargers, the twin booms, and the twin tails were brought back to factory standard.

On October 26, 2002, Glacier Girl started her engines, ran down a Kentucky runway, and lifted off - 60 years after she went down on the ice.

Why the P-38 Lightning Still Turns Heads

The P-38 doesn’t sound like a single-engine fighter. It has a distinctive twin-engine harmony - two Allisons running slightly out of sync, producing a deep, pulsing beat you feel before you spot the aircraft. Its silhouette is unmistakable: twin booms flanking a central pod, the shape that reportedly earned it the nickname “the fork-tailed devil” from German pilots.

Glacier Girl’s story is ultimately about people refusing to let historic aircraft disappear. The 25 airmen of 1942 walked away and left their Lightnings behind because they had no choice - and their survival became the story that inspired others, decades later, to dig one back out.

Key Takeaways

Glacier Girl is a P-38 Lightning that crash-landed on the Greenland ice cap on July 15, 1942, as part of the eight-aircraft flight later called the Lost Squadron.
All 25 airmen survived the forced landings and a week-plus on the ice, rescued by dog sled.
Over 50 years, glacial movement buried the aircraft 268 feet deep and carried them more than a mile from the landing site.
The Greenland Expedition Society recovered the aircraft in 1992 using a hot-water melting device nicknamed “the gopher,” disassembling it underground and hauling it up piece by piece.
After roughly a decade of restoration in Middlesboro, Kentucky, Glacier Girl flew again on October 26, 2002 - 60 years after going down.