@storytimedavidcollins2897

3 months ago

Yes
I physically touched The Glassier Girl when she was at an air show with Chino Airports Planes of Fame Museum.
The craziest thing is while 98 % of the P-38 Lightning was still down at the very bottom with crews down in the ice still cutting her out of the ice and trying to disassemble her so that the pieces could be recovered and hopefully reassembled, some Jack Ass’s got the 30mm cannon out of the nose and brought it up to the surface with the ammunition and fired it several times causing the ice to crack going down the holes from the concussion blast 💥 from the cannon.
Which scared the guys down in the bottom to fear getting crushed or trapped alive if there was a cave in.
Don’t get me wrong, I definitely am a 2nd amendment supporter and an avid gun collector, but that was just stupid. That was not the time.

The costs as I remember,

A guy spent 10 years melting holes down through the ice with the exhaust from his pickup truck before he found one of the B-17’s that was part of this flight too.

Then they melted down a hole to it and found out that the weight of the ice had crashed the fuselage down to badly, but with photos from the day 1942 they were able to figure out where this P-38 was.

Then they melted down to it disassembled it and brought it up.

Ten years of restoration and the cost of that was around $12 million dollars to restore it to flying condition.

It was up for sale many years ago during the bankrupt Obama administration years and it sold for $4.2 million dollars.

So don’t ever think that you’re going to make money from old wrecked airplanes unless they were carrying gold or diamonds. (Missing DC-3 from December 8th 1941).

But then again demand and supply/ availability could always make it worth it to restore another one of these P-38’s or one of the B-17’s that are still down there. ?

Thanks to everyone who reads this for their entrance in Airplanes.

🇺

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