Glacier Girl, the P Thirty-Eight Lightning the Greenland Ice Cap Swallowed for Fifty Years Before a Georgia Pilot Melted Her Back Out

Glacier Girl is a P-38 Lightning that belly-landed on the Greenland ice cap in 1942, was slowly buried under 268 feet of glacial ice over the following decades, and was finally melted out, restored, and flown again in 2002. She is the only aircraft ever recovered from the “Lost Squadron” - eight American warplanes forced down together during a wartime ferry flight across the North Atlantic. Her recovery remains one of the most extraordinary salvage and restoration efforts in aviation history.

What Was the Lost Squadron?

On July 8, 1942, a formation of eight American aircraft was crossing the Greenland ice cap at 10,000 feet: six P-38 Lightning fighters escorted by two B-17 Flying Fortresses. The bombers navigated; the fighters followed. On board were 25 airmen, most of them very young, all bound for the war in Europe.

They were part of Operation Bolero, the wartime effort to ferry aircraft to England across the top of the world - Newfoundland to Greenland to Iceland to Scotland. Flying the planes over saved them from U-boats sinking transport ships, but it meant crossing some of the harshest weather on the planet with little more than a compass, a clock, and dead reckoning.

This particular flight was code-named Tomcat Green. Having left Greenland for Iceland, the formation hit a wall of weather, iced up, and turned back - only to find the field behind them had also closed. With no place to land and fuel running low, the flight leader made the only call left: put every airplane down on the ice cap, together.

Did Anyone Survive the Crash Landings?

Every one of the 25 men survived. The two B-17s went in first, bellying across the snow. The first P-38 attempted to land with its gear down, dug into the soft snow, and flipped onto its back. The pilot crawled out unharmed and radioed the others a critical warning: land gear-up, on the belly. The remaining five Lightnings did exactly that, sliding to a stop with their propellers curled back.

Stranded roughly 400 miles from anything, the airmen were all rescued over the better part of two weeks by dog sleds, ski-equipped aircraft, and a Coast Guard cutter. The eight aircraft, however, were written off by the Army and left where they sat. Sending a salvage crew hundreds of miles onto a glacier made no sense when factories back home were building new fighters every day.

How Did the Airplanes End Up Under 268 Feet of Ice?

A glacier is not a static snowbank - it is a slow-moving river of ice. It piles fresh snow on top year after year, compresses that snow into hard ice, and creeps downhill, dragging along whatever sits on its surface.

The Lost Squadron didn’t just get covered; it got pulled down and sideways, deeper each decade. By the time the aircraft were located, they had drifted roughly two miles from their landing site and lay under 268 feet of solid ice - deeper than a football field is long, standing on end. At that depth the ice is blue, dense, and hard as concrete.

Who Found and Recovered Glacier Girl?

In 1981, two Atlanta men caught the story of the Lost Squadron: Pat Epps, an aviation businessman based at Peachtree DeKalb Airport, and architect Richard Taylor. Epps initially imagined the planes sat under a light dusting of snow - fly up, brush them off, fuel them, and fly them home.

The reality was far harder. The team mounted expedition after expedition and at first couldn’t even find the aircraft, because the glacier’s surface looks identical in every direction and the planes had moved. Using magnetometers and ice-penetrating radar, they finally got a hit in the late 1980s, drilling a probe down and bringing up a curl of aircraft aluminum.

To reach an airplane that deep, they built a device they called the “gopher” - a large brass cone fed by a heater and pump that ran hot water to melt a shaft straight down through the ice, pumping the meltwater back up. The shaft was barely wider than a manhole and descended the equivalent of about 26 stories.

What Condition Was the P-38 In?

When the team reached the bottom in 1992 and melted out a cavern in the blue ice, they found a P-38 Lightning sitting right where she had slid to a stop 50 years earlier. The rubber tires still held air. Maps remained in the cockpit. The immense pressure had flattened parts of her and folded the tail, but the airframe was intact and recoverable.

Because no whole airplane could be hauled up the narrow shaft, the crew disassembled her piece by piece in the ice cavern - engines, booms, center section, and wings - and brought each component to the surface one at a time.

How Was She Restored and Flown Again?

The recovered Lightning went to a restoration shop in Middlesboro, Kentucky, run by Roy Shoffner. Restorers straightened what the ice had bent and remade what it had ruined, ultimately saving more than 80% of the original aircraft. The finished plane was named Glacier Girl.

On October 26, 2002 - 60 years after she went down - Glacier Girl rolled onto a Kentucky runway, fired up both Allison engines, and flew under her own power before a crowd that could scarcely believe it.

Are the Other Aircraft Still Under the Ice?

Yes. Of the original eight, only Glacier Girl has been recovered. Five P-38 Lightnings and two B-17 Flying Fortresses are believed to remain beneath the Greenland ice cap, still drifting and still sinking. Recovery of another aircraft - a B-17 in particular - is occasionally discussed, but the depth and cost have so far kept it from happening.

Glacier Girl’s value lies in her authenticity. She is the actual metal that iced up over Greenland in 1942 - not a replica or a reproduction. That original aluminum is what makes a recovered warbird worth the enormous effort: not that it is old, but that it is true.

Key Takeaways

Glacier Girl is a P-38 Lightning that force-landed on the Greenland ice cap on July 8, 1942, as part of the eight-aircraft “Lost Squadron” during Operation Bolero.
All 25 airmen from the six P-38s and two B-17s survived and were rescued within about two weeks.
Over 50 years, glacial movement buried the aircraft under 268 feet of ice and dragged them roughly two miles from the landing site.
Recovery in 1992 required melting a manhole-width shaft with a hot-water device called the “gopher,” then disassembling the plane in an ice cavern and hauling it up piece by piece.
After restoration in Middlesboro, Kentucky - saving over 80% of the original airframe - Glacier Girl flew again on October 26, 2002; seven aircraft from the squadron remain under the ice.