Fellow Fot,
Thanks for the thoughts. I'll be brief.
In 1980, my buddy, Pat Epps, and I left Atlanta and flew his Bonanza up to
the Arctic Archipelago and landed at the last airport going north, Resolute
Bay. This was my first (of only two) zero-zero landing. The next day we
flew perhaps 250 miles further north to see which way the whiskey compass
points whilst inverted - positive G's, directly above the magnetic North
Pole.
On the way home, we flew up and down fjords along the west coast of
Greenland. One night, in a bar in Sondrestrom Fjord, we enjoyed a small
measure of notoriety by arctic pilots as being patently without even the
slightest bit of good sense. Naturally the topic of conversation revolved
around crashes on the icecap - the most famous being the two B-17's and six
P-38's that crash-landed together on July 15, 1942.
Of course, it didn't take us long to decide that sweeping the snow off the
wings and flying those planes off the icecap was to be our 1981 adventure.
Well. it took us six years to even locate the planes; they were 250 feet
deep into the rock-hard blue ice of the glacier. We spent the next five
years developing systems to melt shafts down to the planes and hauling up
artifacts. You know, machine guns, throttle quadrants, turrets and stuff.
In 1992, we hauled up Glacier Girl and brought her back to the U.S. in our
ski-equipped DC-3 (the only one in Georgia).
Roy Shoffner was our primary investor for the '92 expedition (our seventh),
in return for which he received 1/2 ownership in whatever we retrieved.
Because Epps and I had spent nearly 2 million dollars to date, we sold our
half of "Glacier Girl" to Shoffner to pay off some pretty handsome debts.
For the last 10 years, Shoffner has done an incredible job of rebuilding the
plane. Last weekend it looked terrific, sounded great and is a truly
outstanding example of dedication and perseverance. Roy deserves huge kudos
for his restoration accomplishment.
Media coverage since bringing the plane back to the States for restoration
has been handled exclusively by Roy Shoffner. I think that it is fair to
observe that Roy focuses somewhat more on his own achievement than those
which came before him. I also think that there might have been some
instances of rewriting history so as to reallocate credit in undeserving
portions to inappropriate quarters, but sometime those things happen. Kinda
like bench racing, isn't it?
So much for dirt.
The History Channel has been working on a 90-minute documentary for nearly a
year covering the crash landing, the search and recovery of the plane and,
finally, the restoration process. It will end with that spectacular flight
last Saturday. Their presentation will be March 3rd (I think), 2003, at 9:00
pm. I believe that a complete and balanced history, starting in 1942, will
be presented.
Keep tuned. It's a good story full of just about everything except the
creation of wealth and naughty sex.
Richard Taylor
TR-4
Atlanta
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