B-29 - Frozen in time
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colin2296fs

Original Poster:

123 posts

222 months

Friday 29th March 2013
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don't know if this is a repost or not but i thought i would share just in case,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1u4YBwjQTds

it's about a B-29 that had an emergency landing 50 years ago in the arctic somewhere and got left, until someone decided to stick new engines in it and fly it back, always seemed doomed to me but hay-ho

Huntsman

8,900 posts

268 months

Friday 29th March 2013
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I was gutted at the end when it went up in flames.

Roberty

1,180 posts

190 months

Friday 29th March 2013
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Such a shame

Stedman

7,335 posts

210 months

Friday 29th March 2013
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A great watch - thank you. The two 'twists' are quite sad.

Simpo Two

89,817 posts

283 months

Friday 29th March 2013
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Huntsman said:
I was gutted at the end when it went up in flames.
Not as much as the B-29 was...

colin2296fs

Original Poster:

123 posts

222 months

Friday 29th March 2013
quotequote all
Stedman said:
A great watch - thank you. The two 'twists' are quite sad.
it's the first time I've sat through all the usual fake American build up/high drama type program format to get not one but two nut kicks at the end

Edited by colin2296fs on Friday 29th March 20:27

AnotherClarkey

3,698 posts

207 months

Friday 29th March 2013
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At least the fire took it while it was still on the ground.

ecsrobin

18,368 posts

183 months

Saturday 30th March 2013
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Wow, quite a find.

hman

7,497 posts

212 months

Saturday 30th March 2013
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Sad story, really don't think anyone would have predicted the turn of events.

Eric Mc

124,182 posts

283 months

Saturday 30th March 2013
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It's a documentary I can't really bear to watch. Rarely have I seen such a cack-handed attempt to recover a warbird.

fatboy69

9,424 posts

205 months

Saturday 30th March 2013
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I watched that a couple of years ago on the Discovery channel iirc. Cringeworthy & obvious to anyone that they would, eventually, fk it up!

When you see the speed that they move the plane across the ice to the 'runway' it looks like an accident waiting to happen.

More care should have been taken although personally I think that the plane should have been left where it was.

I wonder what the families of the original crew thought when they heard what those buffoons had done..........

TheLastPost

1,150 posts

159 months

Saturday 30th March 2013
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fatboy69 said:
I wonder what the families of the original crew thought when they heard what those buffoons had done...
Why would they care? The crew were rescued, so it's not like the aircraft was a war grave or anything?

I'm not sure I'd call Darryl Greenamyer a 'buffoon'.

Edited by TheLastPost on Saturday 30th March 10:24

dr_gn

16,623 posts

202 months

Saturday 30th March 2013
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What strange comments. Did anyone watching for the first time honestly think to themselves "Wow, I hope the APU fuel tank in the rear fuseage doesn't come loose"?

Where is the precedent for simultaneously restoring to airworthy condition (and then successfully recovering it by flying it away) an aircraft of this size and complexity from one of the most remote and inhospitable places on the planet?

Seems a bit silly to criticise the attempt; after all they came very close to pulling it off. Luckily the APU tank mountings failed when they did.



dr_gn

16,623 posts

202 months

Saturday 30th March 2013
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TheLastPost said:
fatboy69 said:
I wonder what the families of the original crew thought when they heard what those buffoons had done...
Why would they care? The crew were rescued, so it's not like the aircraft was a war grave or anything?

I'm not sure I'd call Darryl Greenamyer a 'buffoon'.

Edited by TheLastPost on Saturday 30th March 10:24
Sadly, armchair criticism is a very popular pastime...

Simpo Two

89,817 posts

283 months

Saturday 30th March 2013
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TheLastPost said:
Why would they care? The crew were rescued, so it's not like the aircraft was a war grave or anything?
Imagine your father or grandfather had served on, say, a Lancaster. Miraculously it is found intact - I think you would be (or should be) slightly irked if someone accidentally burned it to a crisp.

What bugged me was not so much that the fire started - after all accidents happen - but that they were unable to deal with it.

dr_gn

16,623 posts

202 months

Saturday 30th March 2013
quotequote all
Simpo Two said:
TheLastPost said:
Why would they care? The crew were rescued, so it's not like the aircraft was a war grave or anything?
Imagine your father or grandfather had served on, say, a Lancaster. Miraculously it is found intact - I think you would be (or should be) slightly irked if someone accidentally burned it to a crisp.

What bugged me was not so much that the fire started - after all accidents happen - but that they were unable to deal with it.
Personally, if I knew that I would never, ever get to see it in the location it was found, I'd give my backing to anyone with the balls and money to try and recover it to a place I could see it. In the case of the B-29, it was in a place pretty much nobody would have got to see it, just as it is now (presumably at the bottom of a lake/sea), so no real harm done. It's not like it was the only B-29 left in the world.

You could say it could have been left for a "better" recovery attempt, but which "unknown unknown" might also have scuppered that attempt?

TheLastPost

1,150 posts

159 months

Saturday 30th March 2013
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Simpo Two said:
Imagine your father or grandfather had served on, say, a Lancaster. Miraculously it is found intact - I think you would be (or should be) slightly irked if someone accidentally burned it to a crisp.
confused

I'd be slightly disappointed that a fine and historic piece of engineering, with links to my family, was destroyed rather than recovered to be put on public display, but that disappointment would be tempered by the fact that it was just bad luck for a team who had gone to a lot of trouble and expense in an attempt to prevent it mouldering away in the Arctic forever.

I don't think I'd be wailing and tearing my hair out, or anything.

My father spent most of his career working in a power station (Skelton Grange, near Leeds). We all went down to watch when they blew up the cooling towers as part of the demolition. I don't recall anybody being particularly distraught.

Eric Mc

124,182 posts

283 months

Saturday 30th March 2013
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Back in the 1960s a C-47 was successfully recovered having spent the winter encased in snow and ice. Admittedly, it was only flown out after a year of being abandoned on the ice but it was successfully done.

TheLastPost

1,150 posts

159 months

Saturday 30th March 2013
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Eric Mc said:
Back in the 1960s a C-47 was successfully recovered having spent the winter encased in snow and ice. Admittedly, it was only flown out after a year of being abandoned on the ice but it was successfully done.
Unless that aircraft also caught fire, but was saved because someone had the foresight to import full fire fighting equipment prior to the attempted recovery and/or undertake exhaustive checks of every single component prior to engine start, I'd suggest that has fairly limited relevance, beyond being evidence that this type of recovery was viable?

Personally, I'd have thought it would have been safer to dismantle the aircraft in-situ and fly the sections out for rebuild at a properly equipped engineering facility, but then I'm in no position to second-guess a guy who has test-piloted the Blackbird, set several air speed records and rebuilt a Starfighter from junk (and had access to the sort of engineering contacts that go along with this experience). Presumably there were good logistical or financial reasons that they chose the route they did.

Condi

19,166 posts

189 months

Saturday 30th March 2013
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He who never made a mistake never made anything.

They did the best they could, tried to achieve something which was difficult and very nearly pulled it off. Had that single component not failed then they might have been able to fly it back and we would all be lauding them as fantastic mavericks who saved an old warbird from certain 'death'. As it was they spent a lot of time and money on restoring it only for the plan to go wrong at the end.