| Glacier Girl - Last Survivor of The Lost Squadron | |
They tell me the route we rode from Knoxville, Tennessee, up to Cumberland Gap and Middlesboro, Kentucky, is one of the prettier motorcycle rides in this part of the country. I hope I can get back there someday and find out for myself, but on this particular day, though I rode it, I didn’t see hardly a bit of it. Later that day the radio would report that this had been the heaviest single-day rainfall ever recorded in the area’s history. Just my luck.
 Yet, for once, the old motorcycling axiom about the journey and the destination were flip-flopped: In this case, it was the destination that really mattered, moreso than the getting there. My friends and I had heard about The Lost Squadron Museum in Middlesboro, and were taking a day off from attending the Honda Hoot in Knoxville to ride up to Kentucky in hopes of getting a close-up and personal look at the restored P-38 said to be housed there.Story goes that in the early days of WWII, we desperately needed to beef up Allied airpower in England. It had only been seven months since Pearl Harbor, and we were new to the war, but England was getting the crap kicked out of her by the Luftwaffe. They needed fighters, and we had a brand-new one that, coincidentally, with drop tanks installed, was the only fighter in the world capable of flying across the Atlantic. There was no such thing as mid-air refueling back in those days, so all the other fighter planes had to be shipped over by boat. Not only a time-consuming process, but at the time, the Nazi U-boats were sinking about half of everything that we sent out. So it was that a flight of eight brand-new P-38 fighter-bombers headed out for England, by way of Maine, Greenland and Iceland, to Scotland, in early July of 1942. They were turned back twice by bad weather, and eventually two of the planes had to be left behind because of mechanical problems, but the remaining six planes finally headed out on the leg from Greenland to Iceland on Sunday, July 12. Once again, bad weather turned them back, but this time, the inexperienced navigator in the lead plane, a B-17, had made a mistake plotting the route, and they missed their base in Greenland by several hundred miles. Lost in heavy clouds and running out of fuel, the decision was made to crash land the planes on the ice cap, and wait for rescue. At least one of the planes flipped over on its top when the nose wheel dug into the ice, but most of the planes landed with their gear up, and suffered very little damage, due to the P-38’s heavily-armored steel underbelly. No one was badly injured, and the crews were rescued 11 days later, but with much more pressing priorities due to the war, the squadron of planes was left behind. After the war  was over, several attempts were made to locate and rescue the planes, without any success. In fact, from 1977 to 1989, no less than 11 attempts were made, without much success other than to locate where the planes were, and to bore a small hole down through 50 feet of ice to verify their existence.Then, in May of 1992, the Schoffner Expedition arrived with the “Super Gopher III,” a unique, four-foot wide hot water boring tool, and bored a hole down through 268 feet of ice, at the rate of four feet per hour, to one of the P-38s. Using hot water as a blasting tool, an ice cavern was hollowed out around the plane, and work was begun dis-assembling her and hauling the parts up through the shaft. It took three months, and the damage was considerably more extensive than they had thought it would be. Fifty years under the ice had taken its toll. Disassembly and removal to the surface took over three months of concentrated effort, but eventually the entire plane was back on the surface ice, loaded in transports and flown back to Middlesboro Airport, where a special hangar had been built to house the reconstruction project. Hundreds of companies and thousands of people became involved in the restoration of the rescued P-38, now dubbed “Glacier Girl.” Despite the massive effort, it would take nearly 11 years to complete the project. One of the reasons it took so long was the fanatical determination of the men involved to be as historically accurate as possible in everything they did. One small example of that fanaticism: When the original tires were removed, the small amount of air remaining in them was drained into compressor holding tanks. Then, when the new tires were fitted, the original air from 50 years ago was added to the tires when they were inflated. On October 26, 2002, in front of a crowd of tens of thousands who came to watch history being made, Glacier Girl lifted of from Middlesboro Airport, and took to the sky once again, for the first time in over 60 years.  Nowadays, Glacier Girl travels to airshows around the country, and is on display the rest of the time in Middesboro, in the same hangar where the reconstruction took place, now converted into a small museum. She is the only fully-functional P-38 fighter-bomber left in existence, and has an estimated value of $15 million. When I told that to an airplane buff, he argued with me that there was another flyable P-38, and he had seen it at an airshow in Texas. I checked, and while he was right about seeing the famous “White Lightning” P-38 several years ago, that plane had crashed in 2001, and seems doubtful to ever fly again, leaving Glacier Girl as the only functioning P-38 remaining in the world.The museum is small, but free, and fascinating. You can get a closeup look at Glacier Girl, see films about her rescue and restoration, and usually even talk to one of the curators of the museum, who were also members of the rescue and restoration team. Dozens of souvenirs are on sale, like the typical pins and calendars, and actual relics from the plane itself, from tiny, rusted-out pieces of hydraulic line, to sections of ammunition belt, still holding their deadly, 50 cal. cargo. There are also videos of the rescue and restoration, to be viewed on site, or purchased and taken home. The museum is open from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. seven days a week, and is well worth the trip—especially if you can make your ride through the mountains on a day when it doesn’t rain. Glacier Girl The Lost Squadron Museum P.O. Box 776 Middlesboro, Kentucky 40965 (606) 248-1149 www.thelostsquadron.com |
