Kee Bird and the B-twenty-nine that burned on the Greenland ice after fifty years of waiting

In February 1947, a Boeing B-29 Superfortress made an emergency landing on a frozen lake in northwest Greenland. It sat there, perfectly preserved by Arctic cold, for nearly half a century. In 1995, after three grueling summers of restoration work on the ice, the aircraft caught fire and burned to nothing — minutes before its planned rescue flight. The loss of Kee Bird remains one of the most devastating near-misses in warbird recovery history.

How Did a B-29 End Up on a Frozen Lake in Greenland?

On February 21, 1947, B-29 serial number 44-61739 was flying a classified Cold War reconnaissance mission codenamed Ptarmigan. The aircraft belonged to the 46th Reconnaissance Squadron based at Ladd Field in Fairbanks, Alaska. Its crew of eleven was mapping the Arctic and gathering weather data over the North Pole.

Somewhere over northwest Greenland, the navigator’s equipment failed. The crew lost their position. With fuel running low and nothing below but ice, aircraft commander Lieutenant Vern Arnett made the decision to put the bomber down on a frozen lake near Thule, roughly seventy miles from the nearest settlement.

Landing a 140,000-pound bomber on a frozen lake appears in no Boeing checklist ever written. Arnett pulled it off. Every crew member walked away uninjured. They survived three days in brutal Arctic conditions before a rescue team reached them by dogsled.

The Air Force recovered its men and left the airplane where it sat.

Why Was the Kee Bird So Remarkably Preserved?

The dry Arctic cold acted as a natural preservation chamber. With no humidity, no vegetation, and no scavengers, the aircraft avoided the corrosion and deterioration that would have destroyed it anywhere else. The tires remained inflated. The propellers stayed intact. The paint faded but the markings were still readable.

The aircraft earned its name from the Arctic kittiwake gulls that nested near the lake. Over the decades, bush pilots and military survey flights occasionally photographed the ghostly silhouette of a B-29 sitting alone on the ice, surrounded by nothing but white. Kee Bird became a legend among warbird hunters, and one question kept surfacing: could someone fly her out?

Who Was Darryl Greenamyer and Why Did He Take On This Project?

Darryl Greenamyer was one of the great speed pilots of the twentieth century. He held the world absolute speed record for piston-engine aircraft, set in 1969 in a modified Grumman F8F Bearcat at 483 miles per hour. He understood fast airplanes, and he understood impossible projects.

In 1994, Greenamyer decided to bring Kee Bird home.

What Did the Recovery Effort Involve?

The logistics were extraordinary. The lake was accessible only during a narrow annual window — frozen solid enough to support heavy equipment but warm enough for humans to work without risking frostbite in minutes. Everything had to be flown in by helicopter or hauled overland: tools, fuel, replacement engines, food, and shelter.

Greenamyer assembled a volunteer team of mechanics, pilots, and warbird specialists. Over three successive summer seasons, they lived in tents on the frozen lake and rebuilt the airplane by hand.

The scope of the mechanical work was immense:

All four Wright R-3350 radial engines were pulled and replaced. Each engine produced 2,200 horsepower, had 18 cylinders, and weighed over 2,800 pounds.
Replacement engines were sourced from other surviving B-29 airframes.
Flight controls were rebuilt, skin was patched, and parts were fabricated in the field when replacements couldn’t be obtained.

The environment fought them constantly. Tools stuck to bare skin in the cold. Fuel lines had to be heated before they would flow. Wind off the ice cap could flatten a tent without warning. And the clock never stopped — once the summer thaw advanced too far, the lake surface would soften and the bomber would begin sinking.

What Happened on May 21, 1995?

By spring 1995, after three full seasons, the team was ready. The engines were installed, the propellers were turning, and the systems were functional. Greenamyer had prepared a makeshift runway on the lake surface, packed and graded by hand. A documentary crew was filming the attempt.

All four Wright radials fired successfully. Greenamyer took the left seat. The airplane was alive for the first time in nearly forty-eight years. He began taxiing forward.

Then someone smelled fuel.

An auxiliary power unit (APU) installed to provide electrical power and heat had developed a fuel leak. Gasoline pooled under the fuselage. A spark ignited it.

The fire started under the belly near the bomb bay area and spread rapidly. Aviation gasoline is unforgiving. Flames climbed the fuselage within moments. Greenamyer shut down the engines, and the entire crew evacuated safely — mirroring the original 1947 crew’s outcome.

But there was no saving the aircraft. Three summers of work, thousands of volunteer hours, and hundreds of thousands of dollars burned in a column of black smoke rising into the Arctic sky. The fire collapsed the wings, burned through the fuselage, and melted aluminum into the ice.

The aircraft had been minutes from flying.

What Remains of Kee Bird Today?

The wreckage still lies on that lake in northwest Greenland, gradually settling into the permafrost. The elements are finishing what the fire started.

The loss carries particular weight when measured against the surviving B-29 fleet. Only two flyable B-29s exist today: Fifi, operated by the Commemorative Air Force, and Doc, restored in Wichita, Kansas. Had Kee Bird lifted off that ice, there would be three.

The recovery effort was documented in a film called Rebirth: The Story of Kee Bird, and raw footage has been shared by several aviation history archives. The final moments remain some of the most difficult footage in aviation preservation history.

Key Takeaways

Kee Bird (B-29, serial 44-61739) force-landed on a frozen Greenland lake on February 21, 1947, during the classified Ptarmigan mission, with all eleven crew surviving.
Darryl Greenamyer led a volunteer team that spent three summers (1993-1995) rebuilding the aircraft on the ice using replacement engines and field-fabricated parts.
On May 21, 1995, an APU fuel leak caused a fire that destroyed the aircraft minutes before its planned takeoff — all crew again escaped unharmed.
Only two flyable B-29s remain today (Fifi and Doc); Kee Bird would have been the third.
The wreckage remains on the Greenland ice, slowly disappearing into the permafrost.