Operation Bolero II
89-year-old World War II pilot flies along as one of the “Lost Squadron” planes attempts to complete its mission after 65 years. Operation Bolero On July 15, 1942, Second Lieutenant Brad McManus was part of a squadron of six P-38 Lightning fighter aircraft escorting two B-17 bombers to Great Britain in support of the war effort. Part of a mission known as Operation Bolero, the aircraft were to fly a route along the east coast of Canada with stops in Greenland, Iceland and Scotland before their final destination in Great Britain. Bad weather and low fuel forced the aircraft to make an emergency landing on the Greenland icecap. None of the airmen were seriously injured and all were recovered safely nine days later.
“They told us back at Goose Bay before the flight no one had ever landed on the Greenland icecap, but if an emergency arose, you believed you could do it,” commented McManus. “It was as smooth as concrete and of course the minute the nose gear came down into the ice it sheared and the plane went over”. Speaking about how they slept in the B-17’s, McManus said, “when you land eight airplanes on the ice and there’s no help available, the planes look mighty comfortable”. The crew took oxygen bottles and turned them into space heaters. “There was no defeatism, no discouragement; the sun was shining on the icecap. We were down (safety on the ground), we could have been in the North Atlantic,”said McManus.
The airmen were extracted from the icecap by dogsled to a waiting Coast Guard vessel. “The dog teams appeared on the horizon,” said McManus. “We had allowed ourselves to think we were going to ride out on the dog teams. Well, it turns out they were not much bigger than Chihuahuas. So we walked out and it was a long, hard walk”. McManus eventually returned to the war with the 364th Fighter Group and flew 85 missions including 13 trips to Berlin. McManus is a retired real estate developer from Phoenixville, PA. Recovery & Restoration Efforts The Lost Squadron sat frozen until 1993, when an expedition to the icecap successfully retrieved one of the P-38’s after 14 weeks on the ice. The recovery effort was made more difficult by the fact that the plane was now covered by 268 feet of ice and the glacier had moved the aircraft one mile from the original landing site. The P-38 was disassembled into 11 pieces and brought to the surface.
Financed by Kentucky millionaire Roy Shoffner, restoration of the aircraft took nearly ten years and $7 million. Eighty percent of the aircraft is original, although every part needed some work after spending fifty years being crushed beneath 268 feet of ice. Of the 10,000 P-38’s built during the war, only about 35 are known to exist today. The restored aircraft, named Glacier Girl, is just one of three P-38’s still in flying condition. Operation Bolero II Shoffner’s goal was to one day complete the original Operation Bolero mission in the restored aircraft as a tribute to the World War II airmen. Shoffner passed away recently and the aircraft was purchased by Texan Rod Lewis, who shares Shoffner’s goal of completing the mission. That goal became a reality starting Friday, June 22, when Glacier Girl, accompanied by a restored TF-51 Mustang fighter and two modern chase planes, began her journey retracing the original flight path. Dubbed Operation Bolero II, the group aims to fly the original route, this time aided by modern weather forecasting and GPS navigation. Malvern resident Ed Shipley, an air show performer and one of just ten civilian pilots involved with the Air Force Heritage Flight program, is piloting the TF-51 on the historic Journey. “We have to be extremely careful with the weather. We don’t want to re-create the flight completely,” he commented. California pilot and air show performer Steve Hinton will fly Glacier Girl. Involved with the restoration at the Fighter Factory in Chino, California, Hinton is only the fourth person to fly this aircraft and the only one to fly it since its restoration. The P-38 had 75 hours on it at the time of the landing on the icecap, and has an additional 145 hours since its restoration.
The TF-51 Mustang is fitted with a satellite tracking system to allow real time tracking of the aircraft on www.airshowbuzz.com, an internet site founded by Shipley and Jim Beasley, a West Chester attorney and air show pilot. The mission is expected to conclude on July 15th in Duxford, England. As the planes departed Teterboro Airport Friday afternoon, McManus and his wife Lois, whom he met during the war in London, followed along for the first fifty miles in a Piper Cheyenne flown by Beasley. Asked how he felt about the flight, McManus commented, “I feel very strongly emotionally, it’s a great day, a historic moment really, in aviation History.”
Shipley summed up the mission: “The reason we’re doing it is not about us, it’s not about the adventure, it’s about honoring those people who went before. It’s honoring those great patriots of the second world war.” Not So Fast: On Thursday, June 28, the group had made it as far as Goose Bay, NL, Canada. Departing for the first stop in Greenland and just 30 miles outside of Goose Bay, Glacier Girl pilot Hinton noticed coolant venting from the right engine overpressure valve. The planes returned to base. Closer inspection at the hangar revealed the likely cause; “Allison engines occasionally crack the cylinder liner and this is the symptom,” commented Hinton shortly after landing.
In the interest of safety, the group decided to call off the trip to Duxford for Glacier Girl this year. “There’s always next year,” Hinton said. Shipley will continue on in Miss Velma. Noted Beasley, “This plane just doesn’t want to get past Greenland.”
By Robert Cherry, www.robertcherryphotography.com