Lewis Air Legends Lockheed P-38F Lightning "Glacier Girl"

Lewis Air Legends, of San Antonio, Texas, is the owner of this famous, and extremely rare, Lockheed P-38F Lightning "Glacier Girl", which is available for airshows, flybys, film and is also a member of the extremely popular United States Air Force Heritage Flight program.

Easily one of the most recognizable fighters of its time because of its distinctive twin-boom design, the Lockheed P-38 Lightning was one of the most famous American warplanes of World War Two and the mount of America's two top acesDick Bong, who scored 40 aerial victories, and Tommy McGuire, who was credited with 38 kills. However, although more than 10,000 Lightnings were built during the war, the big fighter did not fit into the Air Corps' post-war plans and was soon retired from service.

At an empty weight of 12,7801b, a standard Lightning is about twice the weight of contemporary single-engined Allison-powered fighters such as the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk. It has twice the number of engines, coolant systems, hydraulic and electrical lines.

In 1942, Glacier Girl was a brand new Lockheed P-38F, one of hundreds of airplanes sent as part of Operation Bolero to counter theGerman U-boat threat in the Atlantic. Instead of sending warplanes by ship, the U.S. Army Air Force had its pilots base-hop across the North Atlantic from Maine to Scotland. Not all squadrons made it across, and this particular one was forced down by weather to an emergency landing on an ice cap in Greenland. For Glacier Girl, that was leg one.

Lieutenant Harry L. Smith had a 23-year-olds knack for popular expressions and a military pilots level head. Before attempting to land his P-38 on a forlorn stretch of the Greenland ice cap, he flew over another pilots Lightning, which had just slammed over on its back in the slushy summer snow. Smith was searching hopefully for some sign of life in the upside-down aircraft. "Susie-Q, its happened! Its true!" Smith rhymed in a journal written shortly after the July 15, 1942 crash landing of six P-38s and two B-17s. "The lad is climbing out, hes waving at
me. Old Mac! I pull er up in a roll over him, and circle to approach".

Smith throttled back at 200 feet, cut off the fuel, feathered the props, and slid, wheels up, into a snowy landing. Before sprinting off to join his downed buddies, he logged in details of the light and landing, shrugged off his parachute, removed his helmet, and threw the keys to the P-38s canopy inside the cockpit.

After decades of snowstorms, Glacier Girl had been buried 268 feet deep. Crews used streams of hot water to melt a 48-inch-wide tunnel down to the plane and open a cavern around it.

Disassembling and retrieving the plane took about four months and cost about $638,000, said Bob Cardin, director of the restoration effort. Tooling parts to replace those destroyed by the weight of the ice has pushed the cost to the $3 million range, Shoffner said.

Restoration of Glacier Girl began in January of 1993, after all shipments of aircraft parts from the dig were finally gathered together. The restoration was being done in Roy Shoffner's (project financier) hangar in Middlesboro, Kentucky. Under supervision of Bob Cardin (project coordinator for the 1992 expedition) warbird specialists began their task by disassembling the massive center section. After initial deconstruction of the plane began, it was evident that damage was more extensive than what appeared on the surface. The more they took apart, the more damage they found. The plane had to be taken apart down to the smallest manageable pieces, making sure each piece was marked for later identification. Parts were then cleaned and checked for functionality to determine if it could be used again, repaired for use, or replaced entirely. Damaged parts served as templates for construction of replacements.

Aiding in the process of restoration, an extensive research library was compiled. For research and copy fees of $1,200, the Smithsonian Institution supplied eight reels of microfilm and stacks of photocopies of era aviation maintenance handbooks, parts and repair manuals. Cardin's team, using the acquired documents, managed to more or less duplicate the original construction process carried out in the 1940s.

Spring of 1993 saw the beginning of actually rebuilding the plane, the main spar being the starting point. Clicos -- temporary fasteners resembling bullets -- were used so parts could be attached and removed to ensure proper fit and to be certain no pieces were overlooked.

Parts were much cheaper to acquire than creating molds to fabricate new ones. Finding them proved to be another adventure in itself. Cardin said he and Shoffner had visited people who claimed to have P-38s, only to discover unrecognizable piles of aluminum that wouldn't pass as airplane parts. They felt like they spent more hours playing detective than actually acquiring parts. Even when parts were located, owners were reluctant to part with them.

A 22-year slog through recovery and restoration could not have been completed without the ingenuity, stamina, and fortune of a whole squadron of people beguiled by the P-38. During this period, the airplanes chief benefactor, the late Roy Shoffner, a Kentucky businessman, named the P-38 Glacier Girl.

When this project was completed, Glacier Girl was one of the most perfect warbird restorations ever. "This is going to be the finest P-38 in the world, and it may be the finest restoration of any warbird ever done," said Cardin.

Work completed, thousands of people, from veteran aviators and aviation buffs to curious onlookers, came to the hangar in Middlesboro, Kentucky, to see a not-so-forgotten piece of history. With propellers whirling and 1,275-horsepower twin engines humming, pilot Steve Hinton raced the P-38 Lightning down the runway and lifted it into a gray sky for a 30-minute flight before an estimated 20,000 spectators in this small eastern Kentucky town.

Today, there are probably fewer than a score of intact Lightning airframes left in the world and only about half a dozen of those are flyable or restorable to flying condition. Glacier Girls new owner Rod Lewis, bought the fighter in 2006.

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