http://www.kpbs.org/news/2010/jul/16/nova-b-29-frozen-time/ Anyone else see this? Just watched it on TV... OMG.... almost made me CRY!!! AMAZING story.... Jedi
Thanks for validating my opinion... I just expected it to FLY!!! And I never saw the death of the "one guy" coming (no spoilers as much as I can do!!).... Such a hard show to watch... no, I "didn't see it coming".... Jedi
Rescuing huge piston engine aircraft from the arctic?!?! YEP that's RIGHT UP MY ALLEY! I've GOT TO see this show now!
I just finished watching it on youtube.....I did cry. That hit so close to home given that I work on airplanes like that in the north. I get how much effort goes into that, and I've rescued airplanes at -40 with the wind howling in the dark night of 4 in the afternoon 'cause you gotta get that plane home. I cried....
They should have left it there as the co-pilot of the B29 said earlier in the film. Seemed they discussed the rescue being highly profitable as a big motive...greed ruins a lot. Trying to save money repairing it just enough and under too quick of a time constraint cost them. Btw, the SR71 pilot that led the rescue ejected from his Starfighter after setting that low altitude speed record. Apparently he has a thing for destroying things right after getting something to work. Disassembling the B29 and flying the pieces out would have made a lot more sense.
Incredible story, thanks for posting! Interesting that it shows up here. Darryl Greenamyer had a number of interesting Ferraris over the years including 315 S #0684, a 275 GTB and a Daytona. Adventurous guy who lives life out on the edge.....a little nuts, but he's certainly not just taking up space. If I recall, he also participated in the Reno Air Races for a few years.
Admittedly they cut one too many corners (who forgot to bolt down the APU?) but it was a "new" plane after all and they had already invested a couple years and a small fortune getting where they did. Disassembling it probably would have required a saw to get the pieces small enough to get out.
I don't see how dissasembling it was an option. Maybe if you were trying to salvage it for parts, but if you wanted the airframe the only way you were getting it out as anything more than scrap was to fly it out. It seems obvious to me, that they had get-out-of-here-itis and rushed it. It's unbelievably hard to NOT rush it though when you're in that position. It takes a strong and patient patient person to do things safely in those climates.
My first thought was why didn't they put up an erectable structure of some sort to protect the plane? It would have given them much better working conditions and much more time to sort and test everything. They certainly seemed rushed, but, in the end, it's their lives at stake. Sad to see the outcome, though. That said, they always had to deal with poor runway conditions. I don't know what the right or best way of dealing with it was. CW
This entire operation was done on a slip-shod sloppily conceived exercise by someone who had no sense of quality about how to execute his plan. The B-29 was destroyed because an OPEN barrel of aviation fuel feeding the APU was left near the APU while it was running. The manhandling of the airplane on the rough snow and ice spilled the fuel out of the barrel and you know the rest. Inexcusable, clumsy, and disgusting.
I think the wings could be removed and placed on again without losing much structural integrity if any. You can use helicopters to move the pieces back the 200 or so miles or at least to a freighter next to the arctic circle to their west. I'm not sure on how the B29 is designed, but removing wings isn't what makes the plane un-airworthy in the future. Cutting the fuselage in certain sections does (i.e. what the gov't does when they sell planes for scrap). Pretty damn sad that plane was lost in that fashion. Being that it was in great shape for others to view the time capsule as a visit. Btw, the "Swamp Ghost" B17 in New Guinea was pulled out and is now at Pima I think. Wings removed for transport among others. Not sure if they are doing a static display or making it fly again. The way they are doing that is the way to do it imo. http://www.pacificwrecks.com/aircraft/b-17/41-2446.html
having worked on B-29's and B-50's I know exactly how that airplane could have been dismantled into workable sections. There are five production breaks in the fuselage, four in the wings. It wouldn't hurt the airplane in any way to unbolt them. The engines and props are certainly removable as is the tail group and landing gear. Saving the airplane was secondary in this adventure, flying it out was first. Switches
A shame. If they had put up a shelter and ut the plane into storage condition, they could have come back the next year, and would have been able to fly it away, after very little work. Art
I'm sure this bunch of Yahoos were daydreaming of the day they'd fly into Thule 50 years overdue, to a hero's welcome. Trying to save the plane on a shoestring budget cost someone their life, and deprived us of a piece of history, which now sits in a charred mass on the bottom of the lake.
KEE BIRD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kee_Bird https://www.historynet.com/sad-saga-of-the-b-29-kee-bird.htm Image Unavailable, Please Login .
Darryl Greenamyer (1936-2018) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darryl_Greenamyer https://www.avweb.com/recent-updates/business-military/record-breaker-darryl-greenamyer-passes-away/ .
yeah, and after all that time/work ..... another heart breaker! "Red Baron" F-104 On October 24, 1977, Greenamyer, flying a modified F-104 Starfighter "Red Baron" (N104RB), set a FAI Class C-1 Group III 3 km speed record of 1,590.45 kilometres per hour (988.26 mph), which still stands.[5] An earlier attempt on October 2, 1976 yielded a higher speed (1,630 km/h), but one timing camera didn't work on one run, meaning the record couldn't be certified.[6][7] He built the Starfighter by collecting and putting together myriad parts over a 13-year period. The cockpit side panels and some control column bearings of the Red Baron came from the very first production F-104A, which crashed in Palmdale, California 22 years earlier. The tail of the Red Baron, minus stabilizers, came from a junkyard in Ontario, California. The stabilizers and some nose wheel parts were from scrap piles in Tucson and Homestead, Florida. The idler arm for the elevator controls, the ejection seat rails and some electrical relays came from an F-104 that crashed and burned at Edwards Air Force Base on the edge of the Mojave Desert. Greenamyer got his throttle quadrant from a Tennessee flying buff he met at the Reno National Air Races. The trunnion mounts for the nose gear, some of the cooling-system valves and a few relays on the Red Baron came from a 25-ton pile of junk that Greenamyer bought at Eglin Air Force Base. In a swap with NASA, he obtained the nose of a Lockheed NF-104A, with its reaction controls. The all-important J79-GE-10 engine was obtained from the US Navy.[8] On February 26, 1978, while preparing an assault on the FAI altitude record using the same aircraft, he was unable to get the landing gear to lock before landing. As it was dangerous to land in this condition, he was forced to eject and the airplane was destroyed. Image Unavailable, Please Login https://www.i-f-s.nl/red-baron/ Addison Thompson was the Director of Operations at Edwards AFB at that time. He had met Darryl and knew of his project. Addison remembered: "On the Saturday that Darryl Greenamyer had to eject, I received a phone call from the Command Post to tell me that there was a civil F-104 over the base that couldn't get one of the main gear down and to ask me what they should recommend he do. Having flown the 104 and having seen films of some of the early arresting barrier tests I knew that any attempt to land with one or no main gear would most likely be fatal. So I told the Command Post to recommend he bailout on our bombing range southeast of the airfield.... And unfortunately that is what happened." .
