The Kee Bird and the B-twenty-nine they almost flew out of Greenland after forty-seven years on the ice

In February 1947, a B-29 Superfortress made a gear-up belly landing on a frozen lake in northwest Greenland after its crew lost navigation during a classified Arctic reconnaissance mission. The bomber, nicknamed the Kee Bird, sat virtually untouched for nearly half a century until pilot Darryl Greenamyer led an extraordinary multi-year effort to repair her on the ice and fly her home. On May 21, 1995, four rebuilt engines roared to life and the aircraft taxied under its own power — then an auxiliary fuel leak sparked a fire that destroyed her in minutes.

Why Was a B-29 Flying Over Greenland in 1947?

The Cold War was barely a year old, but the U.S. military already recognized the Arctic as the shortest route between two nuclear-armed superpowers. The Air Force sent B-29s on long-range reconnaissance flights over the polar region to map terrain, test navigation systems, and probe the limits of heavy bomber operations in extreme cold.

On February 21, 1947, B-29 tail number 44-61651 departed Ladd Field in Fairbanks, Alaska, on a classified mission commanded by Lieutenant Vern Arnett with a crew of eleven men. The flight plan took them northeast, deep over the Greenland ice cap.

How Did the Kee Bird End Up on the Ice?

Hours into the flight, the navigation equipment failed. In 1947 there was no GPS and no inertial navigation — crews relied on celestial navigation, dead reckoning, and radio fixes. Near the magnetic pole, compasses were virtually useless. By the time the crew reestablished their position, they lacked the fuel to reach any airfield.

Lieutenant Arnett found a frozen lake and brought the bomber in gear-up for a belly landing. The B-29 slid across the ice and came to rest intact. No fire. No fatalities. All eleven men survived, endured three days on the ice at roughly minus 40 degrees before rescue aircraft located them and dropped supplies.

The bomber — all 60,000 pounds of her — was left on the frozen lake called Tuto Ikorfat, roughly 200 miles from Thule. Nobody had the means to extract a B-29 from the Greenland ice cap in 1947. So they walked away.

How Did the Arctic Preserve the Airplane?

The Kee Bird’s name, painted on her nose, was a joke about the mythical Arctic bird that cries “kee, kee, kee” because it is so cold. The joke proved fitting — the deep freeze turned out to be the world’s best preservation environment.

The dry, frigid air produced almost no corrosion. The tires remained inflated. The paint faded, but the airframe stayed structurally solid. Control surfaces were intact. The instrument panel looked functional. Decade after decade, the bomber sat in a condition that put most museum aircraft to shame.

Who Was Darryl Greenamyer?

Darryl Greenamyer was one of the most accomplished pilots and speed record holders of the twentieth century. He set the world piston-engine speed record in 1969 at 483 miles per hour in a modified Grumman Bearcat. He was a test pilot, Lockheed engineer, and air racer who had already recovered a Grumman Tigercat from a glacier.

When Greenamyer learned about the Kee Bird, he decided he would not disassemble her or strip her for parts. He would repair her on the ice, start her engines, and fly her home.

What Did the Recovery Effort Involve?

Greenamyer assembled a team of mechanics, engineers, pilots, and volunteers — working people who burned vacation time and personal savings to bring a dead bomber back to life in one of the most hostile environments on Earth.

The logistics were staggering. The site was accessible only six to eight weeks per summer. All tools, parts, generators, heaters, replacement engines, and supplies had to be flown in by ski-equipped aircraft. Storms could shut down work for days. Temperatures dropped low enough to make metal brittle and shatter tools.

Over multiple expedition seasons through the early 1990s, the team:

Built a working camp on the ice
Sourced and installed replacement Wright R-3350 radial engines
Fabricated new propeller blades on site
Rebuilt ignition, fuel, and flight control systems
Rigged an auxiliary fuel system with additional containers and improvised plumbing to extend range for the ferry flight south

Installing a radial engine on a B-29 is a major job in a heated hangar with proper equipment. Doing it on the Greenland ice cap with improvised tools and frostbitten hands was something else entirely.

What Happened on May 21, 1995?

By spring 1995, the team was closer than anyone had ever come to pulling off what most of the aviation world considered impossible. The engines were installed, propellers mounted, controls checked, and fuel loaded.

Greenamyer took the controls. The four Wright radials coughed, caught, and roared to life — the first time those engines had run in 48 years. The B-29 began to taxi across the frozen lake under her own power.

Then the auxiliary fuel system developed a leak. Fuel sprayed onto a hot surface — likely an exhaust stack or heater duct — and fire erupted in the aft fuselage. There was no fire suppression system, no crash crew with foam trucks. Greenamyer and his copilot shut down the engines and evacuated. Everyone got out safely.

The fire consumed the fuselage in minutes. The aluminum buckled and melted, the tail section collapsed, and the wings sagged. The airplane that survived 48 Arctic winters could not survive ten minutes of fire.

Where Is the Kee Bird Now?

The wreckage remains on that frozen lake in northwest Greenland, visible in satellite imagery. The ice shifts it slightly each year, and the Arctic is slowly reclaiming what was left there in 1947.

The entire recovery effort was documented by a PBS NOVA television crew. The resulting episode, B-29 Frozen in Time, captured the years of work, the engines starting, and the fire. It remains one of the most compelling pieces of aviation documentary filmmaking ever produced.

Why the Kee Bird Story Still Matters

The Kee Bird story is not about failure. It is about what drives certain people to attempt things everyone else has already written off as impossible — and to come heartbreakingly close to succeeding.

Every warbird flying today exists because someone looked at a pile of corroded aluminum and old radial engines and refused to accept that the airplane was finished. Most of the time, the story ends with a crowd cheering at an airshow. Sometimes it ends in smoke on a frozen lake. The effort is no less extraordinary either way.

Key Takeaways

The Kee Bird, a B-29 Superfortress, crash-landed on a frozen Greenland lake in February 1947 during a classified Cold War reconnaissance mission; all 11 crew survived
The Arctic’s dry, extreme cold preserved the airframe in near-flyable condition for almost 50 years with minimal corrosion
Darryl Greenamyer led a multi-year volunteer recovery effort in the 1990s, installing new engines and systems on the ice with improvised equipment
On May 21, 1995, all four engines ran and the B-29 taxied under its own power before an auxiliary fuel leak caused a fire that destroyed the aircraft
The PBS NOVA documentary B-29 Frozen in Time captured the entire effort and remains essential viewing for aviation enthusiasts