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World War II fighter plane recovered beneath Greenland ice on journey to complete mission

The Associated Press Published: June 22, 2007

on:

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/06/22/...acier-Plane.php

The Legend of the "Rescue of the Lost Squadron"

Officers and Enlisted Men of the Secret Task Force "Bluie East Two" in 1941-42. Forced down on the Greenland Icecap by off-course encounters with severe Arctic weather, 25 young Army Air Corps crewmen were stranded with their brand-new war birds on July 15, 1942 (during the first year of World War II ).

Meantime the Greenland Base Command (GBC), already beset with other problems, was making little progress in arranging rescue of these men from their crash-site some 10 miles back on the Icecap behind a crevassed glacial barrier, a coast-line gorged with icebergs and floes, and had no planes suitable for safe operation on the Icecap. It was then, seemingly by default, that a tiny U.S. Army Air Corps weather-reporting station located 100 miles to the North of the crash-site was remembered by High Command, and awarded the honor of solving the rescue problem.

The men of that little outpost station picked up that challenge, and played out their role in the largest successful rescue in the U.S.Airforce's history. The twenty-five airmen of "The Lost Sqaudron", and their five-man rescue team from Secret Task Force Bluie East Two all returned to duty by July 24, 1942 with no loss of life or even a serious injury.