At the start of the United States' participation in World War II, a squadron of two Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers and six Lockheed P-38 Lighting fighters were forced to make an emergency landing in the ice fields of Greenland due to bad weather. The crews were rescued nine days after the incident, however, the eight planes were entombed in the ice and snow that accumulated in the ensuing decades.
In 1992, the Greenland Expedition Society extracted from the ice the Glacier Girl, one of the P-38s. Pat Epps and Richard Taylor led seven expeditions over 11 years to Greenland. They took all kinds of aircraft just to get to Greenland. They found the Glacier Girl 260 feet under the solid ice. Surviving snowstorms and the arctic wind, they were able to bring the plane up piece by piece.
The Glacier Girl was transported to Middlesboro, Kentucky, in sections. There, it was reassembled and restored to flying condition. Glacier Girl took to the skies once again in October 2002. Now, the plane appears in various shows around the country.
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