
Exhuming the Glacier Girl (2009) - EndXA
https://www.damninteresting.com/exhuming-the-glacier-girl/
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elihu
> Today, of the 10,000 or so P-38s Lightnings which were made in the 1940s,
> only about six working P-38s remain.

I'm often amazed at the scale of war-time manufacturing production. According
to wikipedia, there were over 15,000 P-51s and over 12,000 B-17 made.

~~~
markoman
Indeed. The U.S. Army Air Force had over 80,000 planes in its inventory at one
time during WW2, and by the end of the war, had built nearly 300,000 planes.
See [0] for details.

[0]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_aircraft_produ...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_aircraft_production_during_World_War_II)

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Pfhreak
The story of the landing and survival was far more interesting than the
recovery. I want more details about _that_!

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rlucas
This coverage leaves out that the expedition and recovery were financed by one
of the successful sons of Middlesboro, Kentucky, who put the refurbished plane
in a museum airstrip in that town as a trophy. Disclaimer: family hails from
near there and Middlesboro needs all the promotion it can muster.

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netsharc
Geez, I was wondering when the plot was going to thicken with the discovery of
the dead body of a girl while searching for plane wrecks. I wish a TL;DR at
the top would state that the "Girl" is what they named the plane...

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OJFord
Yes, excluding the title, the first reference is the _sixteenth_ paragraph.

I suppose I might've guessed from the leading photo, had I not already seen
comments here, but I only clicked into the comments assuming it was some
centuries/millenia old body/remnants.

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jcims
Reminds me of the story if the Kee Bird.

[https://youtu.be/CE9j-W_8USw](https://youtu.be/CE9j-W_8USw)

It’ll leave you with a knot in your stomach at the end.

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tunap
Heh, Vernon(team machinist) used to do specialty welding work for my friends &
I back in the day. Was inspiring & heartbreaking to hear him tell his 1st hand
account. An amazing & talented man.

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anonoholic
Are there many other planes with this design of airframe? I recall seeing a
plane similar to this in the air in the mid 70s (in the UK).

It stuck with me as it was unlike any plane I'd seen before, or since, until
recently a drone passed overhead which had a similar construction.

~~~
walrus01
It's not an uncommon design for modern VTOL UAVs that can transition into
single motor forward flight on wings. The twin boom design supports a
quadcopter lift system. This is a Chinese airframe manufacturer, people add
their own motors and electronics.

[https://www.muginuav.com/](https://www.muginuav.com/)

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scoot
Thanks, yes, a couple of those look about right in terms of design and scale.
Pretty sure it was military rather than private though.

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sneak
What is the purpose of this dangerous and risky salvage mission? What benefit
is yielded as a result of the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent
recovering and restoring this antique?

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WalterBright
I suspect with today's manufacturing technology and NC mills, one could be
built from scratch at a doable price.

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racnid
I'm surprised it's not more common in the warbird world. It seems like on the
deep restorations that's basically what they're doing. Looking a build logs it
looks like huge percentages of the aircraft are built from scratch.

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WalterBright
I know. Even more problematic, complete designs don't exist for the aircraft.
Often the tooling and jigs defined the design, and those are lost.

The restorers who do make parts from scratch would do the rest of the
community a service by preparing proper drawings for them.

I know a group that decided to make an Me262 from scratch. They borrowed one
from a museum in order to make the copy.

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duxup
The P-38 still looks amazingly like a modern aircraft.

~~~
lostlogin
It’s well worth reading the wiki. The development issues due to the high
speeds the plane could achieve and the eventual solution are interesting to
read about.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_P-38_Lightning](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_P-38_Lightning)

