During World War II, however, the United States and the Soviet Union had been allies, even cooperating in the Arctic. Photo: Randy WickĪt the time of the crash, the Cold War was still ramping up and the United States’ project of Arctic militarization had yet to reach its zenith. If not recovered in time, the stories held in the scattered remains will fall to the bottom of the lake, from which retrieval is unlikely.Īs Colony Glacier melts, wreckage from the crash will ultimately sink to the bottom of Lake George, pictured here. With each year of warming - and melting - the wreckage inches closer to Lake George, into which the glacier feeds. As climate change accelerates the retreat of Colony Glacier, however, the window for collecting remains and artifacts shrinks. All but nine service members aboard the flight have thus far been identified. Since then, military personnel have conducted annual searches with the ultimate goal of returning remains to surviving family members. Efforts to recover remains only began in 2012, when a military training mission in the region noticed a lone yellow life raft atop the ice. Over time, the wreckage tumbled in slow motion down the mountain, eventually freezing within the nearby Colony Glacier. In addition to eight feet of fresh snow covering the wreckage, the impact of the crash is thought to have triggered an avalanche that further entombed the debris. The plane was assessed to have flown into Mount Gannett at full speed, making impact at an elevation of 8,000 feet.
Six days passed before the weather permitted a search team to survey the site of the crash. Less than 60 miles from its destination, the plane crashed into the side of Mount Gannett and left no survivors.
However, the flight was equipped only with a radio beacon receiver, barometric altimeter to gauge altitude, and a stopwatch as a means to find the runway. Under instrument flight conditions, characterized by poor weather, pilots must navigate without outside visual references. According to Robert Orlove, a master aviation mechanic and cousin of GlacierHub editor Ben Orlove, landing at a nearby diversion airport was impossible, forcing the pilot to resort to an instrument approach to Anchorage. On the day of the crash, weather near Anchorage was severe, with dense fog and swirling snow obscuring visibility. military service members aboard the flight never made it to Elmendorf. Nicknamed “ Old Shaky” for its tendency to vibrate during flight, the enormous Douglas C-124 Globemaster II departed from McChord Air Force Base in Tacoma, Washington early on November 22, 1952. A Douglas C-124 Globemaster II, the same model plane that crashed into Mount Gannett in 1952, flies over San Francisco Bay.
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