This is the place where the majority of the warbird (aircraft that have survived military service) discussions will take place. Specialized forums may be added in the new future
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Greenland P-38 recovery

Mon Sep 02, 2019 10:11 am

Was there supposed to be another attempt to recover a P-38 from Greenland this summer?

Re: Greenland P-38 recovery

Mon Sep 02, 2019 10:26 am

I'm glad you asked. I've been wondering the same thing for a while now. With all the talk of "global warming," you'd think the other P-38s and the B-17s--and who knows what all else--would be resurfacing sooner or later.

Re: Greenland P-38 recovery

Mon Sep 02, 2019 11:49 am

With all the talk of "global warming," you'd think the other P-38s and the B-17s--and who knows what all else--would be resurfacing sooner or later.


As perhaps the only geologist on this distribution list, I will speak to the question:

I do not know anything of the specifics of ice movement on Greenland, but this is a big island. I would not think that ice movement this far into the interior would be less than ~100 meters per year, so it would be a long time before this reached the coast. In the meantime, the ices flows much like a very thick liquid, and I would expect the planes to be rather severely disaggregated. When the ice reaches the coast, this progrades out into the ocean to "calve" usual in what amounts to a small landslide. I would think recovery there to be very unlikely.

From what I have read in an archived issue of Flying from last year https://www.flyingmag.com/another-wii-p-38-lightning-found-beneath-ice-in-greenland/, the next P-38 is more than 100 meters deep. As "Glacier Girl" was recovered from 82 m depth, the ice is still accumulating at this location. I understand that a lot of the Glacier Girl hardware was only useful as patterns, and would guess that a deeper recovery would find even less useful parts (of course, it seems that all that is vitally needed is a data plate these days).
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