![]() In 2013, the DPAA announced that it had found the Duck crash site, but the reported discovery turned out to be a "false positive," Salazar said. government's Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, or DPAA. serviceman on board the Duck aircraft recovered, in spite of a multimillion-dollar search effort funded by the U.S. The bodies of the crew from the crashed C-53 were never recovered nor were the bodies of three U.S. Army Air Corps, that also crash-landed on the glacier in bad weather, Salazar said. The Duck aircraft had been part of a search effort for the surviving crew of a C-53 Skytrooper aircraft, operated by the U.S. That plane crashed on the same glacier in Greenland in November 1942, just a few months after the lost squadron went down. Salazar now hopes that aerial drones equipped with ground-penetrating radar can help the team find the wreck of a Grumman J2F-4 amphibious "Duck" aircraft, operated by the U.S. The twin-tailed P-38 Lightning was an iconic World War II aircraft, but only about 10 remain in museums around the world and only a few are still flying, Salazar said. The team now hopes to recover the newly found P-38 fighter from its icy tomb and restore the plane to flying condition. Most of that money has come from Salazar himself, who owns a machinery business in Pasadena, California.Īfter the location of the Lost Squadron was tentatively identified by a drone, a ground-based team did a survey to confirm the buried aircraft's location. The summer expeditions, each consisting of a team of about six searchers, had cost between $300,000 and $450,000 apiece, Salazar said. ![]() Salazar has led searchers to the Greenland glacier in search of the Lost Squadron planes since 2011, through a nonprofit he co-founded with colleague Ken McBride called Arctic Hot Point Solutions. "As a pilot, you can clearly understand why there were so many difficulties in that area." "It's Greenland's 'Bermuda Triangle' … the weather there shifts in a matter of minutes," Salazar said. servicemen whose planes crashed in the same area were not so fortunate. Wilson and the other airmen from the lost squadron warplanes were rescued from the ice, but other U.S. The rediscovered fighter has been identified from its crash site as P-38 "Echo", piloted by Army Air Corps Lt. ![]() Salazar said that the area was known to pilots as Piteraq Alley because of its tendency to spawn severe snowstorms that can arise in minutes - called "piteraq" in the Greenland Inuit language.Ī similar storm kept the search team in its tents on the glacier for three days during this summer’s expedition, Salazar said. aircraft flew this route during World War II as part of Operation Bolero, which delivered warplanes, pilots, equipment and supplies for the planned Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe.īut after flying into a severe blizzard, the eight aircraft from the lost squadron were forced to crash-land on the surface of the glacier beside Køge Bay in southeastern Greenland. ![]() They were traveling through a chain of secret airbases in Newfoundland, Greenland and Iceland known as the Snowball Route. Ben Bloker/US Airforce)īoth aircraft were part of a group of two B-17 bombers and six P-38 fighters flying from the U.S. It was eventually restored to flying condition. A P-38 fighter from the same Lost Squadron known as "Glacier Girl" has also been recovered from the ice.
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