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B-29 on glacier


mr_lits
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Recently went on a mountaineering adventure up here in Alaska. In the heart of the Talkeetna mountains lies the wreckage of a B29 on what has become aptly known as the Bomber Glacier. The wreckage is smeared across a mile long debris field ending in the fuselage and wings. The front of the plane lies several hundred yard up glacier to the site highest point. Remarkably the plane is still recognizable after 50 years of rotting in the elements. As you proceed towards the wreckage you begin by passing a wheel and then an engine and mangled prop and by the time you get to the mass of the plane it is evident the force of the impact to have strewn debris that far and wide.

 

A bit of history on the plane and its demise. 15 Nov 1957: A TB-29, 44-70039, assigned to the 5040th Radar Evaluation Flight, 5040th Consolidation Maintenance Group, Elmendorf AFB, crashed 39 miles southeast of Talkeetna at around 1822. The crew had taken off from Elmendorf AFB at 0954 under instrument flight rules on a flight path to the Aircraft Control and Warning radar stations at Campion near Galena and

then Murphy Dome north of Fairbanks. It was on a ground radar calibration mission. The flight covered 1,800 nautical miles with an estimated ten hours in the air. The training bomber carried fourteen hours worth of fuel and a crew of eight plus an instructor pilot. It was on the final leg of an approach to Elmendorf AFB when the crash occurred.

 

 

and a couple of other links to more photos:

http://www.airliners.net/photo/USA---Air/Boeing-B-29-Superfortress/1326044/L/?width=1024&height=694&sok=&photo_nr=1&prev_id=&next_id=1324303

http://www.airliners.net/photo/USA---Air/Boeing-B-29-Superfortress/1323697/L/?width=1024&height=780&sok=&photo_nr=9&prev_id=1324273&next_id=1323654

post-112555-0-70260000-1417927824.jpg

post-112555-0-31763200-1417927829.jpg

post-112555-0-60495600-1417927835.jpg

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I think I'd have a hard time taking anything from a crash like that. Honestly, whether it is true or not, the story of Lady B. Goode always stuck with me. SUpposedly, one of the crews that found her needed parts, and there were some usable pieces in the wreck. They crashed and burned too. Cue twilight zone theme.

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For the Lady Be Good: A C-54, which had several autosyn transmitters from the Lady Be Good installed, had to throw cargo overboard to land safely because of propeller difficulties. A C-47 that received a radio receiver crashed into the Mediterranean. A U.S. Army de Havilland Canada DHC-3 Otter with an armrest from the bomber crashed in the Gulf of Sidra. Only a few traces of the plane washed ashore and one of these was the armrest from the Lady Be Good.

 

Mark sends

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  • 9 years later...
Vahe Demirjian
On 12/6/2014 at 9:10 PM, Navybean said:

Cool pics, did the crew survive? I am assuming the wreckage has been picked over for souvenirs?

Of the ten crewmembers aboard the TB-29 with serial number 44-70039, six perished and the other four survived.

 

There's no way the wreckage has been picked up for souvenirs because adverse weather conditions have made retrieval of the wreckage difficult. I found this weblink containing photos of the crashed TB-29 taken by a mountaineer climbing up the glacier in Talkeetna Mountains in search of the remains of that crashed plane:

https://www.outono.net/elentir/2022/12/16/the-bomber-glacier-the-wreckage-of-a-b-29-on-a-remote-mountain-of-alaska/

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