US team raises WWII bomber from Labrador lake
I couldn't find anything about it on the net, so here is the report from Saturday's National Post.
Quote:
A Second World War-era bomber is on it's way to the Southern United States after being raised from a frigid Labrador lake and towed on a non-stop "mad dash" through the uncharted northern waters.
The fragile wreck of the B-17 Flying Fortress, which crash landed in 1947, was brought to dry land just before a raging storm hit the area earlier this month, creating 6 - to 8 - foot swells that would have destroyed the plane.
Don Brooks, an American auto-parts millionaire, plans to restore the bomber to flying condition.
But years of painstaking preparation and legal wrangling with provincial authorities, capped by a daring resurrection of the craft, almost ended in disaster. Pulling the wreck with fishing boats, the crew travelled through the night to get the plane to safety.
"We made a mad dash and it didn't allow us any time to stop. If we had, we might have lost the plane on the last day," said Bob Mester, who led the salvage operation. "This environment was so involved, with islands, outcroppings, trees, snags. It was just a nightmare to go through...We had no sooner turned in to land than the weather turned into a horror story.
It was on Christmas Eve, 1947, when the US Air Force plane was forced to make an emergency landing on frozen Dyke Lake, 430 kilometers northwest of Goose Bay. It was on it's way back from a mission to pick up a Danish doctor and a Canadian weather service officer who had died in the Arctic.
The crew and passengers were retrieved in a dramatic rescue mission. The plane eventually sank when the ice melted. Mr. Brooks and his team found it in 1998. But Newfoundland and Labrador went to court to fight their efforts to salvage the bomber, arguing the wreck belonged to the province.
Last year, the Federal Court ruled that the Americans could retrieve the B-17, but left open the question of ownership.
As part of a deal reached last month, the province has agreed to hand over the plane to Mr. Brooks, a warplane buff who owns 38 NAPA Autoparts stores in Georgia. In return, Mr. Brooks has agreed to fund an exhibit somewhere in Newfoundland and Labrador on the B-17 and it's history and fly another restored B-17 to the province sometime next year.
"I think it's a win-win for both of us," Brent Meade, assistant deputy minister of tourism, culture and recreation, said yesterday. "He'll have the aircraft; he'll restore it...He'll have it flying again. It will be a testament to his vision, but it will also tell the story of what happened at Dyke Lake all those years ago."
As lawyers battled in court, the salvage team worked for years to perfect the system they would use to lift the plane out of Dyke Lake. Air bags were even tested on a restored B-17 at the Seattle Museum of Flight.
"It was a monumental task," said Mr. Mester, whose company Underwater Admiralty Services, specializes in such work.
When the plane was finally floated to the surface this month, time was of the essence. Team members figured they had barely enough buoyancy left in the air bags to keep the plane from sinking, and weather reports recieved by satellite phone indicated a major storm was brewing in the area, which is dominated by the massive reservoir of the Churchill Falls hydroelectric dam.
They set off as quickly as possible, using satellite positioning devices to guide them to a spot where a road met the water. Navigating channels that were sometimes not much wider that the plane's 103-foot wingspan, they sailed through the night without sleep, the only light provided by the stars and the Aurora Borealis.
A day after they reached the landing place, a storm hit, churning up huge waves on the reservoir. The wreck was then trucked to Labrador City, where it awaits air transport to Georgia.
End quote.
I don't know how they'll have it flown out. The airport at Lab City can handle a Herc no problem, but is a Herc big enough to handle a B-17?