02-02-2013, 14:50
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חבר מתאריך: 13.11.04
הודעות: 16,823
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מציאות נוספות ממלחמת העולם השנייה - וויילדקט ולייטנינג
הלייטנינג נקבר בקרח ב 1942, התגלה מחדש ב 1980, חולץ סופית ב 1992, שוקם לאורך עשור וחזר לטוס ב 2002. הוויילדקט FM-2 חולץ לפני כחודשיים ממימי אגם מישיגן.
GLACIER GIRL - WWII P-38 Lightning marks 20 years since recovery from Greenland glacier
http://airman.dodlive.mil/2011/09/h...e-glacier-girl/
In July 1992, crew members raised the P-38 piece-by-piece through an icy tunnel from beneath 265 feet of ice. The late Roy Shoffner, who also supplied major financial backing for the 1992 expedition, restored the P-38 in Middlesboro, Ky., and on Oct. 26, 2002, Glacier Girl flew for the first time in 60 years. Rod Lewis, founder of Lewis Energy Group, bought the historic plane and gave the P-38 its new home at Lewis Energy in San Antonio. A California recovery team is still working to retrieve the five remaining P-38s, using a Russian-built Antonov AN-2, the short takeoff and landing PZL 104 Wilga 80 and a radar detection probe.
On July 15, 1942, the Army Air Forces 94th Fighter Force’s six fighters and two bombers were forced to land on the Greenland glacier. The planes were part of Operation Bolero, a massive buildup and movement of Allied aircraft from the United States to Europe. The squadron flew a day earlier from Goose Bay, Labrador, Canada to Sondre Storm on the western coast of Greenland. They were flying over Greenland’s ice-capped mountains and the Denmark Strait and were headed to Reykjavik, Iceland, and eventually to Scotland. But the weather turned foul quickly, with temperatures falling to below minus-10, and the planes had to land on Greenland’s frozen glacier.
An Army Air Force ski and dogsled team rescued the 25 crew members huddled inside the two B-17 Flying Fortresses three days later, but the eight planes remained for five decades, covered by ice and snow. In August 1980, Epps and Taylor heard about the lost squadron in a bar at a remote land strip during a stop on the way home from buzzing around the Arctic in a single-engine plane. Other pilots thought the two were crazy, but Epps, an Air Force veteran and 1998 Gathering of Eagles honoree, and Taylor, a U.S. Army Airborne during the Korean War, are both self-ordained adventurers. They thought nothing of taking a one-engine plane in extreme climates, even going as far as rolling the North Pole.
When Epps and Taylor began discussing the idea of resurrecting the lost squadron, they had no idea it would take seven expeditions and 11 years, let alone more than $2 million to bring up just one plane. In 1989, the GES team had a twin-engine airplane for the first time with Don Brooks’ Douglas DC-3 with skis. Bobbie Bailey of Our Way Inc., designed, fabricated and packaged the probes, casing, drill shaft and keyhole saws that enabled the crew to retrieve pieces of the B-17 about 250 feet deep. Brooks built a 4-foot device called a thermal meltdown generator that melts the ice by circulating hot water through copper tubing coiled around it. The device allowed the crew to bore a hole through the ice to the planes. But its lack of a guidance system led to the device that became known as the Gopher.
FM-2 Wildcat Recovered from Lake Michigan
http://www.flyingmag.com/aircraft/p...d-lake-michigan
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/12...-lake-michigan/
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