Aero Vintage Books

With the advancements in restoration technology over the last 20+ years, and previously unrestorable wrecks breathing new life again, adding in the fact that the Greenland ice sheet has been shrinking.. Is there any new hope for the two B-17s that lay crushed under the snow? Or has that always been more of a "Anything is possible for anyone who is willing to throw big $ at digging them out" type of thing?

Not worth it. With the expense of recovery and the expensive of a rebuild which would be a almost entirely new build airframe, it is not feasible. If it was they would have been recovered when Glacier Girl was recovered. There are perhaps other airframes around that are not under 200+ feet of ice that can be recovered, but the cost involved with recovery and restoration can out weigh the cost of obtaining a restored example.

I posted about this a while back, specifically regarding B-17s. I could see it happening when every available B-17 airframe has been spoken for (which will be sooner than later), and it would be necessary to recover all the otherwise unobtainable internal components to put into a new-build fuselage. When you figure that the USAF will never release any of their B-17s to become flyers, there's not much left - one complete airframe stored in Brazil, the Black Cat Pass plane, the G model that may or may not be in Greenland, and two more that sank in fjords which were supposed to be the next big recoveries but were never located. Then you have crash sites in the USA; most have little left to recover and/or are on Federal land (like the Tells Peak C model); the recovery of the wreckage of 44-85505 was a rare exception.

In a nutshell, it will happen when someone or some group wants one bad enough and there's no other choice.

warbirdcrazy wrote:Not worth it. With the expense of recovery and the expensive of a rebuild which would be a almost entirely new build airframe, it is not feasible.

There are some projects that are essentially new-build airframes, which was the point of my original post. 20-30 years ago these airframes were deemed "unrestorable". Technology & tooling today in 2014 allows for new build airframes... the only "feasibility" is "$". It may not be feasible for the average joe, but for someone fortunate enough to have access to resources?

warbirdcrazy wrote: If it was they would have been recovered when Glacier Girl was recovered. There are perhaps other airframes around that are not under 200+ feet of ice that can be recovered, but the cost involved with recovery and restoration can out weigh the cost of obtaining a restored example.

The Greenland expeditions in the 80's and 90s were again, limited. It was thought at the time that they were going to fly the bombers off the ice cap. That was not the case. There will still B-17 fire bombers availible in the 80s. Warbird values have skyrocketed since glacier girl came out of the ice. If I am not mistaken...Roy paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $3.5M to resotre glacier girl to flight status during a time when Lefty Gardner couldnt sell White Lightning for under a million (when he had it up for sale in '97). Ultimately Rod Lewis paid somewhere around $7M for to add Glaicier Girl to his collection in '07...

What about the wrecks near Tibet. The c.I.a. b17 s have they ever been discovered.