P-38 frem fra isen

Maskinen gjør lykke på Oshkosh, og det er ikke rart. Vi her på berget har fått en god dose P-38 gjennom Red Bull`s fantastiske maskin. Det vi ser her er en maskin restaurert til orginal stand.

WWII P-38, rescued from ice, draws crowd at EAA

Aviation enthusiasts crowd around a World War II era P-38F Lightning named "Glacier Girl" at the EAA AirVenture at Whitman Regional Airport in Oshkosh. Forced to land on a glacier in Greenland in 1942, it sat for 50 years before it was recovered from beneath 260 feet of ice.

Oshkosh - Twenty years ago a bunch of airplane parts displayed at the EAA fly-in drew huge crowds eager to look at something believed lost forever.

The parts had been clawed from the Greenland ice, wiped clean and painstakingly carried to Oshkosh, where their incredible story of redemption struck a chord with aviation enthusiasts.

Dubbed "Glacier Girl," the P-38F Lightning had crash-landed on Greenland in 1942 with five other P-38s and two B-17s. It never fired a shot during World War II.

Over the decades ice claimed the aircraft until a crew of aircraft restorers found it 268 feet below the surface, where they burrowed down, dissembled it and carried the pieces back to daylight.

On Monday the twin-tailed, olive drab plane so critical to the U.S. air war effort was the center of attention as EAA AirVenture started its weeklong run.

"It's been a really good airplane," said Steve Hinton, the first to fly "Glacier Girl" when it made its second maiden flight, in 2002. "We have a love-hate relationship with P-38s because they're a lot of work, but it's also very rewarding."

At an aviation convention that draws more than 10,000 planes, ranging from antique biplanes and World War II bombers to ultralights and the latest jets, some rare aircraft feature a unique back story.

Aside from "Glacier Girl," AirVenture visitors can also see a Junkers JU 52 tri- motor visiting Oshkosh for the first time and an A-36A Invader fighter bomber, one of only three known to be left in the world.

Only 500 A-36A Invader aircraft were built - mostly as a dive bomber for ground attacks in North Africa and Italy. On Monday afternoon a steady stream of visitors walking through "Mustang Alley" in the warbirds area stopped to check out the A-36A, wondering whether it was a P-51 Mustang.

"It's getting a lot of response," said Vince Santorelly of New Smyrna Beach, Fla., who helped restore the plane for its owner, the Collings Foundation. "They're like, is it the predecessor to the P-51? Well, not exactly."

This A-36A survived along with the other two known aircraft because they stayed in America for use as trainers. Of the three, two are in flying condition. Restoration of the A-36A visiting Oshkosh this week took seven years and finished shortly before it was flown to AirVenture.

Though the surviving A-36A planes would have been simply painted olive green as training aircraft, the restorers painted this one with a red nose, yellow symbols on the side signifying kills and the name "Baby Carmen" in honor of an A-36A Invader flown in World War II.

"Its claim to fame was it flew more than 200 combat missions before it needed a new engine," said Santorelly as he sat in the shade underneath the plane's wing.

The Junkers JU 52 on display at AirVenture and also flying in the afternoon air shows looks like a corrugated tin shack with three motors on the front, much like the Ford Tri-Motor plane. But its non-flashy appearance belies its importance in German aviation history. Designed by Hugo Junkers and first flown in 1932, by the late '30s the JU 52 was flying three-quarters of all German air passenger flights.

The JU 52 visiting Oshkosh on a tour of North America was built in 1939 and transferred shortly after it rolled off the assembly line to Switzerland, where it was used for sightseeing flights.

The P-38 dubbed "Glacier Girl" spent most of its life encased in ice. Lockheed manufactured more than 10,000 P-38 Lightning aircraft in the 1930s and '40s, but nearly all of the planes that survived the war were destroyed or were quickly made obsolete by faster fighter planes.

That made the six P-38s left behind in Greenland by their crews, who encountered bad weather and ditched them on the glacier when they ran low on fuel, very valuable - so valuable that aircraft enthusiasts spent much of the 1980s searching for them. They had no idea the planes were buried like bugs frozen in amber.

"We believed the tails were sticking up out of the ice and we figured we'd brush off the snow and put some gas in the tanks," said Richard Taylor, founder of Greenland Expedition Society.

Instead, searchers and restorers found themselves digging a really big hole in the ice and using high pressure hoses to carve out an ice cave where they found the P-38, its guns still loaded with ammunition. It took 14 weeks to pull up parts - some of which were flown directly to Oshkosh for the fly-in two decades ago - and then 10 more years to restore the P-38.

Now it's back in Oshkosh, flying in some of the warbird shows and posing for pictures snapped by aviation enthusiasts eager to meet a legend.

If you go

What: EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2012

When: Continues through Sunday. Gates open at 7 a.m. each day. Exhibit buildings open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Air shows are held each afternoon. A night air show is scheduled to start about 8:15 p.m. Saturday, followed by fireworks.

How much: Daily rates for non-EAA members are $41 for adults; $21 for students 6-18; and free for children 5 and younger. Parking is $9.

For more information: Go to www.airventure.org.