B-29 Tragedy.

[Flanker35M]

S!

Not gonna say anything about the persons involved in the B29 incident. But as it was they worked in harsh and primitive conditions. This alone enforces one rule, to be extra careful! It is different to maintain/repair a plane in the hangar than out there in the snow. People tend to make shortcuts to get into warm, tiredness makes your concentration slip etc. So here they put in an APU, but not well enough, the fittings were makeshift and hurried it seems. Now it escalated when they taxied at high speed causing jolts to the already flimsy installation. Fuel tank broke loose, spilled on APU that was running STILL even pre-flight was done..So actually the slogan "Small errors cause big problems" is very true..Here it just escalated and caused loss of a plane and a life.

In projects like these hurry and too much eagerness is your enemy and backfires for sure. A leader of this kind of project should know and make assessments of the risk and put extra attention to the work, to be done even more carefull than usual, to avoid mistakes and minimize risks to both personnel and equipment.

[dduff442]

I'm sure they felt terrible after the plane went up in smoke. Still, if they didn't have the resources to lay out a decent runway on the ice then they didn't really have the resources to do the job. It's a pity to see such a beauty destroyed.

[swiss]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

They picked up a plane nobody knew about or would dare salvage up to that point and through a combination of difficult circumstances and their own mistakes they failed. It's an inherent risk.

Maybe they wouldn't have crashed it if they were more careful, but that doesn't mean it would be parked in some museum. The most probable outcome if they really were careful would be that it would end up grounded there and then, this time in full exposure to the elements. Maybe they or someone else could have raised the money to fly it out of there after a few years, or maybe nobody would and it would rot, nobody can know for sure.

- Ppl did know about this plane
[btw, there a Ju52, supposed to have a cargo of160mil in gold, under 30m of ice here in Switzerland...)
- It was not in danger, like being pushed out into the sea by a glacier
- nobody picked up on it because the basic plan ist to disassemble and fly out parts. That involves a shitload of money.
Therefore you just leave it there until on fine day a lunatic with enough cash shows up and does the job(...right).


What could the fate of the plane have been?
a.) Sold to private collector. Now you dont want to build a hangar for such huge bastard without it being productive.
They would use it for commercial flights, ~$400/30min per per persona.
b.) Sell it to a museum. There are enough of them who would not store it oustside.

And yes, I can give them credit for the balls to plan and raise funds for the expedition. The executive part however is different story.

Short resume: http://www.b-29s-over-korea.com/shor...b29-frozen.htm

I love this part:
When it landed the tires dug into the soft ground and were pulled off the rims. It took hours to dig it out, and they had no means of inflating the tires. Rick came up with a questionable solution. They would use propane gas from the camp stove to inflate them. If the wheels became too hot they would explode.

Originally Posted by BLR_Tonin_fr

For Christ's sake do you even have a little compassion for at least one of these fellows ? None of all you guys would have 1 °/0000000 of the skill/guts necessary to achieve that kind of project.

Absolutely right!

I can only talk for myself - and I have non of that.
- I'm a tech but no aircraft tech
- I don't have the resources(I would estimate 5-8mill.)

That's why I wouldn't touch it and therefore the bird would be still there in his original condition.

[swiss]

Originally Posted by Azimech

If you want to take off in a plane that has been stationary for 50 years in any country that has air traffic regulations, they'd tell you to completely strip the thing bare and restore it.

Right.
So was the basic plan anyway. Fly it out - to?
The FAA will to show you the finger if you ask for permission.

Maybe the next Greenland airport and disassemble it there?

[Mhallie66]

Originally Posted by major_setback

At first I thought ..wtf, wtf, wtf...what are they doing!! Then later...oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...
..such a disappointment, such a waste!!
Who let those idiots do that???? Such a priceless machine in incompetent hands. Dear God!
I don't know what I feel more sad about...the fact that such a beautiful priceless machine is lost, or the fact that people will even do that. It was obviously liable to fail at some time in a first flight after so many years without proper maintenance...it was just very, very lucky that no one was killed.

Ohhhhhh, the lack of humanity!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fooooooooooooooooooooooooooools!

Someone did die during this recovery mission (and his family could argue that he was killed, but that is a personal issue) and he was my father Rick Kriege. There was also a lot of prep work done starting with a mission to find the Kee Bird in 1993; rebuilding all four engines and the avionic controls (I learned how to solder in the spring of 1994 while helping my father with the controls); and if you have ever seen B-29 Frozen in Time you should know the rest of the story.

[Treetop64]

I'm still at a loss as to how these guys came up with the idea that they should actually start it up and attempt to fly the aircraft. What an incredibly delusional and irresponsible thing to do.

Originally Posted by Treetop64

I'm still at a loss as to how these guys came up with the idea that they should actually start it up and attempt to fly the aircraft. What an incredibly delusional and irresponsible thing to do.

There's really no reason to think the plane couldn't have made the flight. (I'm an aircraft mechanic and I've worked on a couple of B-29s, neither flying ). It had fresh engines and props, the turbo systems were basically deactivated and new control surfaces. What it boiled down to was they were flying it out that day or they had to leave it and dig it out the following summer. They were out of money, let alone over budget, so the decision was made to fly it out that day. They said they wanted 5000 ft (typical manual call out) of cleared ice even though the plane was stripped down (even the gear doors were off as they weren't going to retract the gear) and light on fuel. They only managed to get about 3500 ft cleared before they had to go and there was a slight wind blowing (I don't think they ever said how much) towards the lake (from their shore). It was decided they would takeoff into the wind requiring a turnaround on uncleared ice in the middle of the lake, which required some speed so they wouldn't get stuck. Like all other WW2 combat planes the nosewheel wasn't steerable, complicating the turnaround. Then the apu fuel tank/line came loose ...

Greenamyer hinted that in his "test run" downwind on the runway that the plane seemed to want to fly before he hit the brakes. That's the irony of the disaster. Looking at the flight manual (which lists takeoff weights only down to 90000 lbs, empty stock is 74500 lbs) it seems to me that, even with a tailwind of 15 mph, 3500 ft would have been enough for the aircraft in it's configuration (not on the charts, obviously) to get airborne (but we have no idea what power settings he was using due to engine and fuel constrictions, if any) ... and Greenamyer would have been a hero. To make the 5000 ft requirement hard it looks to me (interpolating the chart backwards as it only accounts for headwind) it seems they would have had to have a 40 mph tailwind (coincidentally making 3500 ft a requirement for heading into the wind). Looking at pics of the burning wreck there just doesn't seem to be that kind of wind at all. He just should have given it the gun straight away.

Oh, and as late as 2011 the aircraft hadn't sunk into the lake and yet no one had done anything to recover the wings or engines/props ... it seems to always come back to the money.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/5687592301/

Oh, and the Caribou that was used (N124DG) is sitting derelict again (it really hasn't been in any decent shape since the early '80s) ... poor thing.

[stugumby]

Dosnt a flyable aircraft have to have a registration and airworthyness certificate or something similar? Ownership,insurance all the regulatory rigamarole etc??

Saw this a couple of years ago and was struck by the zeal and enthusiasm but a seemingly total lack of proper resources/logistics etc, more of a bush pilot type of operation. if it would have worked and they flew it out who would have confiscated it upon landing, the faa, a foreign govt such as greenland etc? Norad on alert, fighters scrambled, who knows. But anywho a lot of talent misdirected or improperly applied thats for sure. Just like the burma spitfire project it seems.

[Treetop64]

Originally Posted by zipper

There's really no reason to think the plane couldn't have made the flight.

That would be agreeable if the machine was attended to properly and thoroughly, with sufficient resources. Problem is, it wasn't. As skilled as they were, these guys simply did not have the resources required to do a proper job in such a difficult environment, and they knew it from the start, but despite compounding risks they tried forcing it anyway. This may be acceptable if you're trying to get an old PT boat to run, but not for a large, complex aircraft that has been sitting idle for a half-century in a hostile environment. As tragic as it turned out, they were very fortunate things ended up the way they did, with the aircraft still on the ground.

You don't have to be a certified aircraft mechanic to see that the likelihood of an unhappy ending was high. Common sense had to prevail at some point...

[MaxGunz]

Originally Posted by major_setback

..such a disappointment, such a waste!!
Who let those idiots do that????

Money let them do that, just like every other big useless waste.