Buried for over 50 Years Under 268 Feet of Ice, Glacier Girl, the recovered and restored WWII P-38 is now at the Lone Star Flight Museum through Jan. 31, 2024, marking the first time the aircraft has ever been on museum display.
On Jan. 11, a special presentation by Bob Cardin, lead excavator and head of restoration, will tell the story of Glacier Girl.
Glacier Girl is the only rescued survivor of an entire squadron of P-38s and B-17s that attempted to cross over Greenland in 1942, during WWII. This aircraft was finally pulled piece by piece from under 268 feet of ice on August 1, 1992. Kentucky businessman Roy Shoffner financed the Greenland Expedition Society, a team formed by Patt Epps and Richard Taylor specifically for the recovery effort and brought Bob Cardin on board as expedition leader.
Ingenuity and endurance brought Glacier Girl back to the surface where she had crash-landed half a century before. The team created a device they called the “Super Gopher,” which circulated heated water through a metal cone to melt holes 27 stories deep and reach key sections of the plane. Then they began the long, dangerous process of dragging out the pieces, including the 3-ton, 17-foot-long fuselage. It took 20 minutes to lower each worker down to the aircraft in the claustrophobic 4-foot-diameter shafts. The final section emerged on August 1, 1992. The P- 38ʼs sections were in good enough shape for restoration. The team estimated it would take two years. It would take ten to reconstruct the plane. Glacier Girl has the only complete set of working P-38 machine guns in existence and is considered by many to be the finest warbird restoration flying. In 2006, Rod Lewis purchased what would become the signature aircraft as part of the Air Legends Foundation.
Glacier Girl is on loan from the Air Legends Foundation.
The Lone Star Flight Museum (LSFM) is a 501c3 aviation museum and STEM learning center with a mission to celebrate flight and achievements in Texas aviation as well as educate and engage our youth through science, technology, engineering, and math. Located 20 minutes from downtown Houston, Visit online at lonestarflight.org for discount tickets, memberships and more.
