Arctic Ghost Planes

[CoastieJohn]

I came across this YT video a bit ago. It was posted in April. I thought it was entertaining telling the back stories of some aircraft still left where they set down or crashed and some recent video or pics of them.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRuZFmAm4UY

[Mick G]

I remember reading something several years ago, that the Canadian government was going to clean up the north of a lot of relics from the Cold War and DEW Line projects Im not sure if they ever did, but some if these wrecks may not be there anymore.

[JohnB]

In an early '70s article for FLYING magazine, author (and WIX-er) Stephan Wilkinson commented on a B-24 near Resolute Bay.
I have mentioned it before and some thought it was an Avro York...a wreck which has been pretty well picked over. He also mentioned a F-27 and Hughes 300. On another site their are photos of a Bell 47 cabin shell...all plastic and everything else is gone.

[wendovertom]

I thought that the B-24 up in the Aleutians was recovered by the museum at Hill AFB. I thought I would check but they seem to taken most of their planes off the website . . but I would swear that is where they got thier B-24.

Tom P.

[JohnB]

Tom

The B-24 I referred to was no where near the Aleutians rather it's in Nunavat, formerly Northwest Territories.

[phil65]

I thought that the B-24 up in the Aleutians was recovered by the museum at Hill AFB. I thought I would check but they seem to taken most of their planes off the website . . but I would swear that is where they got thier B-24.

Tom P.

I remember seeing a show about this one, I believe you are correct.

Phil

[Dan Jones]

If there's a B-24 in the NWT I've never heard of it, and I've flown up there for years.

The wreck at Resolute Bay is actually a Lancaster, not a York, and yes it is pretty thoroughly picked over. Wixer Tony Jarvis (aka "hercrat") picked off a bunch of turret pieces a few years ago that I think went to Hamilton for their Lanc. That C-46 in Pelly Bay is still there, as is the C-47 at Isachsen. The Lancaster in the lake at the beginning of the video is KB999, an airplane that my father once "owned" after Crown Assets gratuitously transferred title for it to him. It now belongs to the aviation museum in Winnipeg and was still intact in the late 1970's but the ice got it finally. One main wheel used to be washed up on shore and from the air you can see this wadded up ball of something in the water, but it's not a Lancaster anymore.

[Chris Brame]

I was going to ask about the C-60 Lodestar CF-CPA up in Quebec, but I guess Weeks Lake isn't Arctic enough to qualify . Too bad that recovery didn't work out.

[Richard Woods]

The Lancaster in the lake at the beginning of the video is KB999, an airplane that my father once "owned" after Crown Assets gratuitously transferred title for it to him. It now belongs to the aviation museum in Winnipeg and was still intact in the late 1970's but the ice got it finally. One main wheel used to be washed up on shore and from the air you can see this wadded up ball of something in the water, but it's not a Lancaster anymore.

See, that always gets me puzzled.

You can put a B17 under a frozen river, and its doesn't come out too bad. Similarly the Lanc in the lake at Peenemunde gets frozen in every year, yet the wing and bomb bay floor are still intact. The Lincoln wreck at Watson Lake also survives a good freeze each year.

It takes an awful lot to bundle a Lancaster into a wadded up ball, for instance the one in the museum in Berlin went into a lake, inverted, after being shot down, and the wing and centre section were recovered intact.

Surely KB999 has got to be worth another look...?

[Dan Jones]

Well, like I said, one main wheel used to be washed up on shore, so you can imagine the damage that she’d have suffered to cause that. But when the ice breaks loose in the spring and floats, it’s unbelievable how much force it has when five acres of it is being pushed by twenty knots of wind, and that’s a calm day sometimes out in that neighbourhood. I stood beside an insurance adjuster once and we watched helplessly as about a thousand square feet of ice destroyed our dock n Yellowknife. That string of photographs was fascinating to look at after.