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How Many Days for You... (Part 7)
- Thread starter cooleo
- Start date
disneygirl1
Well-Known Member
97 days till Disney and this time tomorrow I will be boarding a plane to Vegas Baby!!! YAY!!!
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englanddg
One Little Spark...
On Feb 20, 1947, the Kee Bird left on it's 7th recon mission from Ladd Field (just outside of Fairbanks, AK). Their mission was to take around 20 hours, and consisted of a looping flyover of the Geographic North Pole. Due to the low position of the sun, the land was dark, and visibility low. At 0756 on Feb 21 At 24k feet, the crew broke radio silence to report the poor flying conditions, and two minutes later again broke radio silence to report they had encountered a storm, and flight conditions became worse.
The plane and it's 11 person crew had gotten lost over Greenland, and ran out of fuel. They downed their plane on what turned out to be a frozen lake. Search and Rescue had already been planned after the first report of trouble with the flight, but it was another 3 days before they were rescued.
The crew, under orders, had already destroyed or damaged many of the top secret devices and intelligence on the aircraft, and the Kee Bird was considered abandoned by the Air Force and dropped from inventory. Left to the elements in Greenland's ice and snow.
In 1994, 47 years later, a group of flight enthusiasts formed a company called the Kee Bird Liability Company, and funded an expedition to the crash site to assess if the Kee Bird could be restored to flying order. They decided that it could. Later that year, repairs began in brutal arctic conditions.
The repairs took nearly a year to complete, but looked promising. The new engines were successfully tested, and flight controls (with new and refurbished parts) were responding well. A bulldozer was used to create a temporary runway, and the Kee Bird powered up it's engines for an attempted take off flight.
All was looking grand, until the aircraft started to taxi. However, the auxiliary power unit's fuel tank (which had been hastily jury-rigged during restoration) sprung a leak into the rear fuselage. A fire broke out and quickly engulfed the aircraft. All crew escaped unharmed, but this was the end of the restoration movement.
As of 2008, the aircraft still sits, broken, on the ice shelf. Here is the location on Google Maps - http://goo.gl/maps/3Blcf
So, history lesson over for the day! (if it made you yawn, sorry...that's what the scroll wheel is for though!)
What does this have to do with how many days? Well, the Kee Bird was a B-29 Superfortress.
I have 29 days to go.
The plane and it's 11 person crew had gotten lost over Greenland, and ran out of fuel. They downed their plane on what turned out to be a frozen lake. Search and Rescue had already been planned after the first report of trouble with the flight, but it was another 3 days before they were rescued.
The crew, under orders, had already destroyed or damaged many of the top secret devices and intelligence on the aircraft, and the Kee Bird was considered abandoned by the Air Force and dropped from inventory. Left to the elements in Greenland's ice and snow.
In 1994, 47 years later, a group of flight enthusiasts formed a company called the Kee Bird Liability Company, and funded an expedition to the crash site to assess if the Kee Bird could be restored to flying order. They decided that it could. Later that year, repairs began in brutal arctic conditions.
The repairs took nearly a year to complete, but looked promising. The new engines were successfully tested, and flight controls (with new and refurbished parts) were responding well. A bulldozer was used to create a temporary runway, and the Kee Bird powered up it's engines for an attempted take off flight.
All was looking grand, until the aircraft started to taxi. However, the auxiliary power unit's fuel tank (which had been hastily jury-rigged during restoration) sprung a leak into the rear fuselage. A fire broke out and quickly engulfed the aircraft. All crew escaped unharmed, but this was the end of the restoration movement.
As of 2008, the aircraft still sits, broken, on the ice shelf. Here is the location on Google Maps - http://goo.gl/maps/3Blcf
So, history lesson over for the day! (if it made you yawn, sorry...that's what the scroll wheel is for though!)
What does this have to do with how many days? Well, the Kee Bird was a B-29 Superfortress.
I have 29 days to go.
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HouCuseChickie
Well-Known Member
Woohoo...into the 50s...
*Edit- just realized I was posting in the older thread. Wondered why so many countdowns had changed so drastically. Oooops.
*Edit- just realized I was posting in the older thread. Wondered why so many countdowns had changed so drastically. Oooops.
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