This past September.

This past September, Glacier Girl roared back to life - nearly 60 years after being abandoned in Greenland and becoming entombed in centurys of feet of ice and snow. The Lockheed P-38 Lightning, common of six flying in formation along with sum of two units guide B-17 Flying Fortress, ran into plague during foul weather while forward a ferry flight to Europe All eight aircraft were forced to crash-land onward Greenland on 15 July 1942 The throngs were all rescued but the planes were abandoned.

As a stripling in Middlesboro, Kentucky, Roy Shoffner had become enamored of the P-38 and vowed to hold one someday. In the summer of 1992 he make up fored one of the P-38s that had been abandoned in Greenland and this past September its engines fired up for the first time since 1942

Even before this epic result the P38 - which had been named Glacier Girl - had become a hit in Middlesboro, drawing about 3500 nation a month to the squandered Squadron Museum to watch the restoration. "People cannot believe we went down to the ice cap, disassembled the airplane, brought it up undivided piece at a time and now have present it back together" said Roy

The pilots of the missing planes had to put down forward the glacier because they were soft on fuel and caught in thick throngs It took rescuers on dog s ten days to reach the 25 men however they got everyone back to safety.

By the time Shoffner - a restaurateur, former banker, and 1950 Air Force fighter pilot - got the plane, the decades of storms had buried the Lightning 268 feet astute in ice. "If you can't fare through it, and you can't proceed around it, you just work up another solution to the problem" he said.

Crew used streams of heated water to melt a four-foot-wide funnel down to the plane and lay open a cavern around it. Disassembling and retrieving the fighter took about four month and costliness around $638,000 said Bob Cardin who is the director of the restoration. Tooling recent parts to replace those desolateed by the weight of the ice has pushed the effort's price tag to the $3000000 range said Shoffner

Another milestone was achieved in October when the P-38 taxied beneath its own power. It is danceed to fly the aircraft within the first six month of this year and then begin taking it upon a tour of airshows. Shoffner wants to take wing the plane to Europe to out and out its original journey. "The insurance company would like to have someone who has experience flying a P-38 to be the pilot," stated Shoffner "But it's my airplane and I'm going to break in pieces it."

The P-38F is serial number 41-7630 and has been registered N5757 It will become the oldest flying Lightning.

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