Glacier Girl, the P Thirty-Eight Lightning Pulled From Two Hundred Sixty-Eight Feet of Greenland Ice, and the Lost Squadron That Waited Fifty Years to Fly Again

Glacier Girl is a P-38 Lightning that belly-landed on a Greenland glacier in July 1942, sank under 268 feet of accumulating ice over the next half century, and was recovered in 1992 and restored to flying condition, taking to the air again in October 2002. She was one of six P-38s and two B-17s - the so-called “Lost Squadron” - forced down on the ice cap during a wartime ferry flight. All 25 airmen survived, and decades later a determined recovery team melted a shaft down through the glacier to bring one of the fighters back to the sky.

What Was the Lost Squadron?

In July 1942, with Britain desperate for aircraft and Atlantic shipping routes menaced by German U-boats, the Allies ferried fighters to Europe by air instead of by sea. Because fighters lacked the range to cross the ocean directly, they flew the northern “Snowball Route”: up through Labrador, over Greenland, on to Iceland, and down into Scotland - island-hopping along the shortest path the globe allowed.

One flight consisted of eight aircraft: six P-38 Lightnings and two B-17 Flying Fortresses. The long-range Fortresses led and navigated while the shorter-legged twin-boom fighters tucked in behind them across the open water.

Why Did the Aircraft Land on the Ice Cap?

The flight launched from Greenland bound for Iceland, but the weather closed in. Ceilings dropped and the horizon vanished into a flat white void where sea and sky became indistinguishable. Compounding the danger, a German weather station was broadcasting false readings specifically to disrupt these crossings.

With Iceland socked in, the flight turned back for Greenland - only to find conditions there even worse. As fuel ran low, the flight leader made the only survivable call: put every aircraft down on the ice cap.

They executed gear-up belly landings on the glacier. One Lightning pilot, Brad McManus, touched down wheels-first and flipped onto his back, ending up suspended upside down in the cockpit - and he survived.

Did Anyone Die in the Landings?

No. All eight aircraft went down, and every one of the 25 airmen walked away. Not a single man was killed. They set up camp and waited nine days on the glacier in brutal cold before rescue reached them - a man arrived by dog sled, and the entire crew was brought home safely.

The men were saved. The aircraft stayed behind. In the middle of a global war, no one was going back for eight belly-landed planes, and the assumption was they’d be easy to retrieve later.

How Deep Did the Aircraft Sink?

That assumption proved badly wrong. Greenland’s snow doesn’t melt - it packs down, turns to ice, and the whole glacier slowly flows and builds. Anything left on the surface sinks a little deeper every year, with fresh snow piling on top.

Expeditions in the 1970s and 1980s searched roughly where the aircraft should have been and came home empty; the glacier had shifted and the planes had drifted and sunk. It wasn’t until a team brought ground-penetrating radar that the “Lost Squadron” was finally located.

The aircraft were 268 feet down - deeper than a football field is long, buried under a solid column of glacial ice built up over the 50 years since the crews walked away.

How Do You Recover a Fighter From 268 Feet of Ice?

You can’t dig or blast an aircraft out from under that much glacier without destroying it. The recovery team built a hot-water drill nicknamed the “Gopher” that pumped heated water downward to melt a vertical shaft about four feet across, boring straight down 268 feet until it reached one of the six Lightnings.

Then a person descended the shaft. When they reached the aircraft, the news was mixed: the crushing weight of 268 feet of ice had bent the tail booms and mashed the center section. This plane could not simply be dusted off and lifted out intact.

So the team melted a cavern around the aircraft roughly 260 feet below the surface and disassembled the P-38 piece by piece in that ice cave, hoisting the parts up the shaft to daylight one at a time. The recovery was completed in 1992, almost exactly 50 years after she went down.

How Was Glacier Girl Restored to Flight?

The aircraft was brought to Middlesboro, Kentucky, where a crew set out to do what many said was impossible - not just preserve her, but make her fly.

This was no ordinary restoration of a corroded airframe. This was an aircraft that had been physically squeezed by a glacier. About 80 percent of the material recovered from the ice was usable; the rest had to be remade by hand to the original drawings, including work on the Allison engines, turbochargers, and booms. The effort consumed thousands upon thousands of hours from volunteers and craftsmen over many years.

They named her Glacier Girl.

When Did Glacier Girl Fly Again?

On a day in October 2002 - ten years after she came up out of the ice and 60 years after the crews walked away from her - Glacier Girl started her two Allison V-12 engines, rolled down the runway, and lifted off. Witnesses who had seen everything aviation has to offer stood on the ramp in tears, because recovering a flyable aircraft from 268 feet of glacier was supposed to be impossible.

Why Glacier Girl Matters

Glacier Girl never fired a shot in combat. She never reached the war. Her entire operational record is a single belly landing on an ice cap during a crossing she never completed. By the arithmetic of history, she’s a footnote - an aircraft that didn’t make it across.

But she stands as physical proof of what people can accomplish when they refuse to accept the impossible: 25 young men who put eight aircraft on a glacier without losing a soul, a pilot who survived hanging upside down in his cockpit, the dog-sled rescue that brought them home, and the stubborn team who looked at 268 feet of ice a lifetime later and went down anyway. She sat under a glacier for half a century, and people loved her back into the sky.

Key Takeaways

• Glacier Girl is a P-38 Lightning that belly-landed on a Greenland glacier in July 1942 as part of a flight of six P-38s and two B-17s known as the Lost Squadron.
• All 25 airmen survived the landings and were rescued after nine days on the ice, partly by dog sled.
• Over 50 years, the aircraft sank to 268 feet beneath the glacier’s surface and had to be located with ground-penetrating radar.
• The recovery team used a hot-water drill called the “Gopher” to melt a shaft and cavern in the ice, then disassembled the aircraft underground and lifted it out in 1992.
• After a decade of restoration in Middlesboro, Kentucky - reusing about 80 percent of the original material - Glacier Girl flew again in October 2002.