‘Glacier Girl’ Set to Complete Flight Begun 65 Years Ago
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 06.22.07 | 12:23 PM ET
This afternoon, a restored P-38 airplane that made an emergency landing in Greenland in 1942, and became buried under ice for 50 years, will take off from New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport in an attempt to complete its mission—to fly to England. “Glacier Girl” was part of an eight-plane team flying from the U.S. to England to help with allied defenses during World War II when rough weather over Greenland forced all the planes onto the ice. In the early ‘90s, The Lost Squadron was located and “Glacier Girl” was excavated from under more than 200 feet of ice.
Now it’s restored with 80 percent of its original parts, according to a story by Neil Graves in the New York Post.
Nobody perished in the crash, and one pilot survived: 89-year-old Col. Brad McManus.
“Today, he’ll take part in the first 100-mile leg of the flight, which will include stops in Canada, Greenland and Iceland before finally touching down in Duxford, outside London,” writes Graves. Awesome. You can track the flight of “Glacier Girl” at Flight Explorer.
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