While the search for the missing Malaysian 777 still goes on, there's another search close to an ending after 70+ years. It's a tale of incredible heroism, sacrifice, tragedy, and determination. It dates all the way back to World War II, and heroes who have neither been forgotten nor abandoned. There are elements of the story that boggle the mind - feats of airmanship that would be rejected as too unbelievable for a Hollywood movie.
More below the Orange Omnilepticon.
In World War II, the North Atlantic was a treacherous barrier to the war effort. American-made aircraft and their crews flying to England took a route that leads over some of the most treacherous landscape on earth, and weather that could - and did - prove deadly. Think about it: no satellites to give precise GPS positions, no satellites to keep an eye on the weather, relay communications, or keep an eye on the earth below. No radar coverage of the fly ways. No jets yet - at least none capable of making the crossing. No helicopters. Just the power of piston engines turning propellors to stay in the air, and basic navigation tools to find the way.
And some never completed the trip. What follows below is largely taken from Frozen in Time, by Mitchell Zuckoff.
On November 5, 1942, a C-53 Skytrooper variant of the C-47 went down somewhere on the Greenland ice cap. All 5 men aboard survived the crash, and were able to radio for help. But… they didn't know their position, and no one was able to get any kind of bearing on their radio signal. An urgent search began to find them. It would ultimately prove to be in vain; they were never found. That search would however generate another story.
On November 9, 1942, a B-17 took off from a base on Greenland for yet another search mission. The ferry crew had been on their way to England with a bomber so new it didn't even have a name - just the call sign PN9E. They'd been diverted to help with the rescue effort, and took off with several volunteers on board to add more eyeballs to the effort. Their assigned search area took them up Koge Bay and over the surrounding glacier. And that's when it went wrong for them.
A sudden storm swept in, before the crew realized it, before they could turn and run for the coast. They found themselves in a white out, "like flying through milk". It was impossible to tell ground from sky - but they knew the glacier was rising ahead of them, perhaps faster than they could climb. Pilots Armand Monteverde and Harry Spencer gambled on a turn - and lost. A wing tip caught the surface, and PN9E ended up sliding to a halt on top of the glacier, broken in two pieces.
All nine aboard survived, though some with injuries. They had no shelter with the broken off tail of the bomber exposing it to the weather. They had little in the way of survival gear - and no training to survive in the arctic conditions of Greenland. In the days immediately following the crash, the crew did what they could rig some kind of shelter and began to explore the crash site. After Harry Spencer nearly fell to his death in a crevasse hidden by the snows of winter, they realized the glacier was too dangerous for them to try to walk out.
The plane's radio had been damaged in the crash - but one of the crew, Radioman Lolly Howarth was eventually able to piece it together enough to get it working. The B-17's emergency "Gibson Girl" transmitter had failed to be heard; the radio was their only chance. A week after the crash, Howarth succeeded - and was able to call for help.
It wasn't until November 24 that a plane was able to reach them, and drop supplies. Commanded by an already legendary Bernt Balchen, the C-54 Skymaster made several runs, trying to directly drop enough supplies at the crash site with low level passes so that the crew could recover at least a few of them. Parachute drops had proved dangerous - the winds pulled them away across the glacier.
Balchen was able to size up the situation; the crew had crashed on an extremely dangerous part of the glacier. (The tail section would eventually fall into a crevasse.) The only possible approach route looked to be from the north - but crossing overland in the Greenland winter with white-outs, gale force winds, subzero temperatures, and blowing snow would be a formidable challenge.
Among those involved in the rescue efforts was the Coast Guard Cutter Northland, part of the Greenland Patrol. With Balchen's location of the crash site, the Northland took up station in Comanche Bay, about 30 miles from the downed PN9E. Gale winds and drifting ice floes made it a challenge; Rear Admiral Edward "Iceberg" Smith of the Greenland Patrol directed the Northland's Captain Frank Pollard to not unduly hazard his ship, but Pollard persisted.
A special urgency had arisen; one of the downed crew members was in failing health and needed to be rescued as soon as possible. Attempts to reach them across land had already run into obstacles. Lt. John Pritchard of the Northland proposed a rescue plan based on one of the Northland's assets: a Grumman Duck.
With Pritchard as pilot, and Benjamin A. Bottoms as radio man, the plan was simple, daring - and had never before been done by anyone. No plane had ever landed on the Greenland icecap and taken off again. With a rare spell of relatively calm weather, they took off from Comanche Bay and flew towards the PN9E. Balchen was in the air again, dropping more supplies; he suggested a landing site nearby, but the crew of the downed plane warned them off: too dangerous.
Instead, Pritchard found a spot several miles away, and gambled on a landing with the wheels down. They sank into the snow - but the Duck tobogganed on its central float and pontoons to a successful landing. It was November 28, 1942. The crew had been on the ice for almost 3 weeks at this point. Pritchard and Bottoms managed to find a path through the crevasses and reached the wreck.
Two crew members in the worst shape were picked for the first flight out; Harry Spencer went along to help them with the trek. Al Tucciarone and Lloyd Puryear were helped into the Duck's lower compartment, and the plane readied for take off. Sliding, bumping - the Duck finally lumbered into the air, made a low pass over the PN9E, and headed back to the Northland waiting in Comanche Bay. The plan was to make further flights to carry out the rest of the crew; a rescue party coming by motorsled had finally reached the crash site, but it was decided air evac was the better option.
The next morning Pritchard and Bottoms took off again in the Duck; weather at Comanche Bay was not good, but it was clear up on the glacier and they did not want to waste a chance to get another flight in. Meanwhile, the motorsled crew had been moving their machines closer to the wreck, when one was suddenly lost in a crevasse. No trace of the driver was found. The Duck crew had landed successfully again, and it was decided they should return as quickly as possible to get more help from the ship. They decided to take Lolly Howarth back with them.
Back at the Northland, the weather had continued to deteriorate. They got a frantic message from Bottoms and Pritchard calling for the ship to send out radio signals for them to home in on - and then nothing. Greenland had claimed another plane.
The rest of the saga would take months to unfold. The survivors were forced to shelter on the ice cap as best they could, with supplies dropped to them by air when the weather permitted. While some help did reach them, there was no way to get them out. It wasn't until February 5, 1943 that the ultimate means of rescue would be attempted: another landing on the icecap. Only this time it wouldn't be a Duck - it would be a PBY Catalina. It succeeded, and paved the way for several more flights, but it wasn't until April 6, 1943 that the last of the B-17's crew was finally flown off the ice. This BBC feature on the story says more than enough about what an ordeal they'd been through.
It almost didn't happen. The PBY made several fruitless attempts to lift off, before the wind picked up enough to give it a boost. One of the engines had been damaged, and failed. The PBY barely made it back to the coastal airbase they'd been aiming for before fuel ran out. On landing, they nearly crashed into a parked airplane before sliding to a stop.
What of Pritchard, Bottoms, and Howarth? The wreckage of the Duck was eventually spotted - but with no signs of life it was considered too dangerous to try to reach it. War time urgencies prevented any further efforts. Time and Greenland's relentless weather eventually concealed it under snow and ice. Pritchard and Bottoms are considered exemplars of the Coast Guard's finest traditions - that their remains were never recovered has long been a concern.
And then several things came together. The successful effort to recover P-38s that had crashed elsewhere in Greenland demonstrated that tools and techniques now available might make it possible to find the Duck. Zuckoff's Frozen In Time is both an account of the original ordeal, and a telling of the attempt 70 years later to find the crash site.
Greenland has grown no kinder, the glaciers no less dangerous, the weather no more gentle than it was for the crew of PN9E. The expedition, on cobbled together finances and with equipment operating in an extreme environment did their best to sort through decades old clues to find the wreck. It wasn't until literally the last day, with the weather closing in that they finally got a camera down through 40 feet of ice to spot what appears to be wreckage from the Duck in 2012. Here's a Coast Guard press release; here's another news story.
The story is not over. Although the Duck has been found, recovering it will be no easy task. The Government Security News detailing the USCG request for proposals hints at how daunting the challenge is.
Based on the above, the USCG is seeking capabilities statements from businesses that can provide these services in a potentially dangerous arctic environment. The mission must be performed between July 1st and August 12th due to severe arctic conditions. Beyond this timeframe, the risk is too great due to weather concerns. It is unknown at this time when and if weather conditions will allow the mission to be undertaken next year.
As it happens, there was an expedition in 2013.
Zuckoff blogged extensively about it via the Boston Globe. It's another epic tale, and one still lacking a resolution. Chance, the weather, equipment limitations - the Duck still lies waiting.
But not forgotten.