It was A B-29.
Nova did a program about it - it was very sad.
The Superfort made an emergency landing after running low on fuel in a snow
storm while on a "monitoring" mission.
The crew was picked up, but since the B-29 was close to being retired, they
just left it there. That was in 1947 or 1949, I believe.
An explorer noted in his diary finding the plane while flying. He noted
seeing a plane "similar" to a B-29 sitting on the ground intact.
A hot-shot ex- test pilot named Darryl Greenamyer (sp?) organized an effort
to bring the plane home. The plan was to repair it to the point where it
could be flown to Thule AFB, and then shipped home to the US.
The crew worked long and hard hours, fighting the short sping/summer period
to get the plane operational. The hard work was partly responsible for one
of the crew dying of pnemonia.
When the plane was finally airworthy, Darryl took it for a taxi test around
the site, and to get it lined up on the makeshift runway. During this taxi,
he hit a large "bump", and an auxiliary fuel tank gravity feeding the APU
(auxiliary power unit - it's pump failed, so they needed to gravity feed
fuel to it) fell and dumped AVGAS on the APU. The tail section of the plane
caught fire and nobody could get to a fire extinguisher in time.
The plane burned to the ground on the ice of a frozen lake. Now the little
that remains is at the bottom of the lake.
I'd love to meet Darryl one day. I'd like to shake his hand for organizing
the effort to get the plane in the air (it almost flew), and then punch him
in the face for being careless and destroying one of the few -29's left
that could be flyable.
Did anyone here realize that the B-29 was the first aircraft to have a
fire-control analog computer?
This computer would take the gunners inputs from the sights and compensate
for several factors and then aim whatever series of guns (up to four
turrets) were assigned to him.
As one B-29 pilot said, "The plane was real Buck Rogers back then".
Neat stuff....
- Matt
>I remember seeing a documentary about a bunch of guys trying to rescue a
>B-17 (I think, WW II, silver colour etc.) from either greenland or
>from some similar cold place (it's -30 celsius outside at the moment
>so I *can* relate :-) It was a truly sad documentary. One member of the
>team got pneumonia and passed away, they had a million obstacles in their
>way.
>
>I don't remember the name of the documentary but I'd love to see it again.
>
>(spoiler warning...)
>
>
>
Matthew Sell
Programmer
On Time Support, Inc.
www.ontimesupport.com
(281) 296-6066
Join the Metrology Software discussion group METLIST!
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Many thanks for this tagline to a fellow RGVAC'er...
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