Frozen in Time (22 page)

T
HE FINAL TWO
days before departure are a whirlwind of last-minute purchases, loading, and preparations, with team members renewing friendships or getting to know one another. The day before the C-130 arrives, WeeGee rents a truck to transfer our gear from Steve’s house to Trenton-Mercer Airport.

As WeeGee and I drive to the rental lot, we exchange life stories and WeeGee asks about the book I’m writing. When I explain that I’m telling the historic story and also describing this expedition, a sly smile crosses his face.

“So Mitch,” he asks, “how does it end?”

“No idea, WeeGee. You tell me.”

The exchange becomes a routine between us, sometimes spoken several times a day, particularly when our prospects seem the most bleak.

E
ARLY ON AUGUST
21, 2012, one day later than planned, we drive in convoy to the Ronson Aviation hangar at the Trenton-Mercer Airport. I’m in front with Bil, Jaana, and Nick in my car; WeeGee and John drive the truck; Frank and Michelle ride in Frank’s car; and Lou and Ryan bring up the rear. Steve is off somewhere trying to find the radar, and Alberto is meeting us at the airport. I take a wrong turn out of the hotel parking lot and get razzed by my teammates, a bad omen.

A half hour after we arrive at the airport, I see a vision in a lilac pantsuit: Nancy Pritchard Morgan Krause, the sister of pilot John Pritchard, here with her husband, Bill, to see us off. Lou invited her several days ago, so she and Bill drove up from their home in Annapolis.

As Nancy hugs me hello, I notice a bruise on her forehead and a bandage on her arm. She whispers that she fell a day earlier when checking into their hotel; later she admits that she passed out, possibly from the heat, and hit her head. “They wanted me to stay in the hospital,” she says. “But I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t miss this.”

Her eyes grow misty when Lou shows her the flag with her brother’s name on it. Bill stands close by her side to keep her steady. One after another, North South Polar team members introduce themselves and have their photos taken with her. Nancy quizzes each one about his or her role, then thanks everyone for trying to find her big brother.

“He loved what he was doing,” she says, “and he was an outgoing, friendly person. He would do anything to help people.” Several times Nancy repeats the story of how devastated she felt when she learned that John was lost. Afterward, Nick Bratton writes in his journal, “We are contractors to the Coast Guard, but our real client is Nancy.”

Nancy and Bill are driven by golf cart onto the runway, where the Coast Guard C-130 is waiting for its crew to load our gear. Nearly one hundred feet long, with four propeller engines hanging beneath its wings and a yawning cargo bay open beneath its tail, the gleaming white-and-orange plane is our ticket to Greenland.

Along with its crew, the C-130 disgorges the Coast Guard team joining us on the ice. All five members seem like natural additions to Lou’s real-life cast of a Bruce-Willis-saves-the-world movie. The leader is Commander Jim Blow, fulfilling his role as the service’s point man on the mission. Next is Lieutenant Commander Rob Tucker, tall and good-humored, a pilot who works with Blow in the Office of Aviation Forces. Documenting the mission will be Petty Officer Second Class Jetta Disco, a cheerful bundle of energy from the service’s New York public affairs office. Our medical officer will be Captain Kenneth “Doc” Harman, a flight surgeon, antique boat restorer, and raconteur with experience in trouble spots around the world. The Coast Guard also has brought along Terri Lisman, a geophysicist from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. An accomplished swing dancer and home-brewing enthusiast, Terri will be the government’s own radar expert on the ice.

BEFORE THE C-130 LEAVES FOR GREENLAND, (FROM LEFT) W. R. “BIL” THUMA, LOU SAPIENZA, JIM BLOW, AND NANCY PRITCHARD MORGAN KRAUSE REVIEW THE MISSION PLAN AND THE MAPS OF KOGE BAY.
(U.S. COAST GUARD PHOTOGRAPH BY JETTA DISCO.)

When Nancy sees Jim Blow, she wraps him in a hug and describes what the Duck Hunt means to her: “You think of the plane and the bodies there, alone. If you bring them back, they’re home. It’s closure.” Lou strolls over, and he and Jim outline the mission plan, using an oversize laminated map of the Koge Bay glacier to show Nancy where we hope to search.

As the heat rises and Nancy tires, Lou organizes an impromptu ceremony in the shadow of the C-130. Nancy’s husband, Bill, presents Lou with a gift: “I’m sure everything is going to be a success, but I brought you a tool to pull it together if things threaten to fall apart.” He hands Lou a rubber band, and everyone laughs.

Nancy bestows a final blessing on the now-complete Duck Hunt team, a dozen of us with North South Polar and five with the Coast Guard: “God go with you, and bring you home safely and successfully.”

As Nancy and Bill prepare to leave, Steve arrives, having somehow pried Jaana’s ground-penetrating radar equipment away from UPS and the U.S. Customs Service. We find seats in the C-130, with our Pelican cases, personal gear, and other supplies strapped in the cargo bay behind us. A Coast Guard crewman hands out earplugs for the seven-hour trip, and the Duck Hunt takes flight.

19

DUMBO ON ICE

JANUARY–FEBRUARY 1943

T
HE NEW YEAR
started as poorly as the old year ended for the three men in the snow cave under the wing at the PN9E. Unrelenting storms spat snowflakes as sharp as needles and kept them hunkered deep in their sleeping bags. On what they calculated was January 2, pilot Armand Monteverde awoke in the dark feeling heavy pressure against his body. He struck a match and saw snow pouring in through a small hole in the windward wall. Enough snow had already accumulated to make him fear being buried alive.

A wind-whipped blizzard carved more holes in the wall, through which fine, stinging flakes rushed in. The winds came from the north, building speed and strength across hundreds of miles of featureless ice. Monteverde woke Clint Best and Paul Spina, and together they used what they had at hand to plug the holes. But it was like fighting the tide with a bucket. The snowdrifts grew higher around them, and the constant battering threatened to collapse the north wall of their shelter.

For the first time in the two months since the crash, Monteverde, Best, and Spina abandoned hope. They’d been down before, but never as far down as this. They knew that winter storms in Greenland could blow for days without pause. If this storm was one of those, there was no point spending their last precious energy on a fight they couldn’t win. They shook hands and prayed together, then prepared for the end.

The trio moved into the entrance tunnel in the cave’s south wall and spread out their sleeping bags. Exhausted and defeated, Best climbed into his bag and fell fast asleep. Monteverde’s sleeping bag was half frozen, but he got in anyway. Numb with resignation that he was about to die, the shivering pilot closed his eyes and surrendered to fate. Spina lay awake. For hours he replayed his life in his mind’s eye, from his childhood in rural New York to what he expected would be his miserable end as a human icicle in Greenland.

Time slipped by in the dark. The wind snuck under the plane’s wing and lifted it from the ice wall, opening the PN9E shelter to the elements and allowing snow to pour in. Spina woke his companions, but they agreed there was nothing to do but pray. After a while, they noticed that less snow was accumulating in one corner, so they moved their sleeping bags there and tried to sleep.

Hours passed and all became quiet. The storm blew itself out without burying them alive.

The three men awoke, surprised to find deep snow covering everything except the corner where they’d crammed together. They made coffee and went to work rebuilding and reinforcing the north wall. They melted snow in milk cans and poured the water on the rebuilt wall, so it would freeze solid. They reinforced it with boards from supply crates. When they were finished, the wall was stronger and thicker than ever, and even the fiercest storms wouldn’t penetrate. They left several small holes at the top of the wall, to let in light during the day. At night, they filled those “windows” with plugs made from rags and trash, to block the wind. At Spina’s suggestion, they left much of the accumulated snow inside their cave, so they wouldn’t have to go outside all winter to gather it for cooking and drinking.

As the days dragged by, the glacier on which the trio lived continued its crawl toward the sea, spawning new crevasses as its forward edge sought rebirth as icebergs. Storms and windblown snow built fresh bridges over the deep gashes, so each time the men went outside to fetch new supplies, they knew that any step could be their last. Their rebuilt quarters were only marginally safer. The PN9E’s tail section had already been swallowed, and nothing could prevent a new crevasse from opening beneath them. All three felt tremors as the ground shifted, but they didn’t talk about it. There was no point.

O
N FEBRUARY 5, 1943,
the weather on the east coast of Greenland was as good as it gets in winter. By Harry Spencer’s estimate, it had snowed a whopping eighteen feet at the Motorsled Camp since they’d been there. But this was a rare day with clear skies. A scout plane flew overhead and reported to Colonel Balchen that at eight o’clock in the morning the winds were calm, the sky was blue, and the ground temperature was about 10 degrees below zero. Greenland’s version of balmy.

Balchen told his rescue teams to get ready. But just as he ordered the PBY Catalina crews to climb aboard their planes, a messenger handed him a troubling radio dispatch from General Henry Harley “Hap” Arnold, commanding general of the U.S. Army Air Forces. It read, “Factory indicates forward bulkhead of PBY too weak for landing on snow.” The forward bulkhead, Balchen knew, was a wall near the nose of the plane. If it buckled under pressure from a belly-down landing, the PBY would suffer a structural collapse, destroying it and possibly the men and dogs inside. Arnold’s note had one question: “What are you[r] plans?”

Balchen scribbled a reply: “Going ahead as contemplated.” He explained later: “We have had no time to make a test landing, but I figure that if anything is going to happen it will happen anyway, test landing or not.”

T
HREE PLANES TOOK
off that morning from Bluie East Two. Pappy Turner’s B-17 led the way and the two PBYs followed close behind. Because they were on a rescue mission, on this day the PBYs would properly be called Dumbos. When they were over the Motorsled Camp, Turner radioed down to Harry Spencer on the walkie-talkie to discuss ground conditions. Turner worried that the winds were too strong for a PBY to land, but Spencer assured him that it was safe.

At the controls of the lead PBY, Navy Lieutenant Barney Dunlop took one long run over the landing area that Spencer had marked with stakes. On the ground, Spencer and Tetley watched from outside their ice cave as the plane’s nose seemed to dip. Unwashed and unshaven, their heavy beards coated with snow, they looked like a pair of prehistoric icemen hunting a flying dinosaur. When he saw the plane’s nose drop, Tetley feared that the PBY was in peril. But Spencer realized that the plane was hidden behind a small rise and was coming in for a landing.

Earlier, when reviewing the plan with Dunlop, Balchen had explained that the landing area was mostly flat, so he suggested that Dunlop bring the plane down at normal speed, “like a power stall letdown on a glassy sea.” The technique, Balchen hoped, would keep the PBY’s nose high, preventing it from burrowing into the snow. With a gradual rate of descent and a steady hand on the control wheel, Balchen believed, the plane would almost land itself.

Now, just as they’d planned, Dunlop flew at an air speed of about eighty knots, or ninety-two miles per hour. As Turner’s B-17 and the backup PBY circled overhead, Dunlop brought his Dumbo down with the wheels retracted and the wing floats down. The twenty-odd seconds it would take to go from the sky to the ice cap would be just long enough for Balchen to recall the PBY manufacturer’s warning about potentially catastrophic weakness in the forward bulkhead.

The plane’s altitude above the glacier dropped to zero, and the PBY’s rounded hull grazed the snow. Dunlop cut the throttles. The propellers sprayed sparkling clouds of frosty mist. The full weight of the plane settled onto Greenland, and the bulkhead held strong. Dumbo was on ice.

Balchen’s plan had worked, at least so far, and Dunlop’s flying skills had proved first-rate. By the time the plane stopped, its keel had carved an eighteen-inch-deep scar across Greenland’s face.

As he watched, wrung out from all he’d been through, Harry Spencer experienced a strange absence of feeling. Happiness about the Dumbo’s arrival mixed with sadness for all the men lost, and the two emotions canceled each other out. This was the eighty-eighth day since his bomber had crashed. In that time, two crewmates, Loren Howarth and Clarence Wedel, had been killed, along with three men who’d set out to rescue them: John Pritchard, Benjamin Bottoms, and Max Demorest. He knew that the five men in the C-53 that he’d hoped to find remained lost and were presumed dead. Spencer himself had survived a hundred-foot fall into a crevasse, and he’d watched helplessly as O’Hara had lost his feet. Now, the sight of the PBY pulling to a stop to carry him homeward was almost too much to process.

Tetley’s emotions were less conflicted. He felt as though he’d willed the plane to a safe landing. Standing alongside Spencer, he felt soothed by what he called “a beautiful sight.”

The crew poured out of the plane and hustled to the hole to help O’Hara. With Dr. Sweetzer by his side, Balchen described finding the young navigator in his sleeping bag, able to manage a wan smile. O’Hara had lost half his normal body weight of 180 pounds, leaving him as “light as a bundle of rags,” Balchen said. Balchen would recall carrying O’Hara aboard the plane, but Spencer said they used a specially built stretcher-sled. They were too busy for much chatter, but one piece of information the rescuers shared with Spencer and Tetley was that the three men left behind at the PN9E were apparently still alive.

A
BOUT FIFTEEN MINUTES
elapsed between the landing and Dunlop’s return to the cockpit to prepare for takeoff. When everyone was in place, he leaned on the throttles. The engines revved and the propellers spun, but the plane wouldn’t move. Dunlop tried again, with the same result. In the brief time since landing, the Dumbo had frozen to the ice. Greenland wasn’t done with them yet.

Balchen ordered the able-bodied men off the plane and onto the ends of the wings. They jumped up and down, and after a while they broke the ice and freed the plane. But it froze again to the glacier before they could climb back inside. On a second try, Balchen positioned the men on the ground at the PBY’s two wing floats. On his signal, they rocked the plane like a seesaw while Dunlop advanced the throttles. After almost two hours of effort, the glacier released its grip.

BARNEY DUNLOP’S PBY DUMBO AFTER A BELLY-DOWN LANDING ON THE ICE CAP.
(U.S. ARMY PHOTOGRAPH BY BERNT BALCHEN.)

Dunlop taxied in a wide circle, knowing that if he stopped the plane would freeze again to the surface. The ice-busting crew ran alongside the Dumbo, racing to reach a rounded protrusion on the side of the fuselage aptly called a “blister.” The blister had a door in it, and from inside radioman Harold Larsen reached through it. Outside, the men on the ground fought the powerful wash created by the propellers. They ran toward the blister, each one jumping at the last minute with his arms outstretched. Larson caught one after another and pulled them inside like parachutists in reverse.

Dunlop took off without incident, and the brief flight was uneventful. When the PBY landed at Bluie East Two, Sweetzer rushed O’Hara to the medical ward for the first of what would be several long hospital stays. In the months ahead, surgeons at Walter Reed Army Medical Center would complete the job begun by gangrene: they amputated what remained of both of O’Hara’s legs below the knees.

Spencer and Tetley arrived at the base in remarkably good shape, suffering mainly from fatigue, exposure, and weight gain. Spencer had become so hefty that he split his pants during the rescue. They spent two days in the medical ward, during which they donned new uniforms, shaved their beards, and prepared to fly home to the United States for long leaves.

With that, Harry Spencer and Bill O’Hara joined Al Tucciarone and Woody Puryear as members of the PN9E crew to escape Greenland’s grasp. The tally of the original nine-man B-17 crew was four rescued, two dead, and three still waiting.

A
T THE
PN9E camp, Monteverde, Spina, and Best were on the verge of giving up again.

The stove Tetley left behind had burned out before the end of January. The last three B-17 crash survivors returned to the more primitive cooking method of lighting the bomber’s leftover fuel in the bombsight case. They only had leaded gas, which gave off noxious vapors, so they usually used it outdoors.

Meanwhile, Pappy Turner’s crew finally received a walkie-talkie they could drop to the PN9E. Nearby was a handwritten note: “Hello boys, Get on the Walkie-Talkie we’re dropping with this right now. Let’s talk!” Below was a drawing of the device, with detailed instructions. The note signed off: “We won’t quit until you’re with us.”

The walkie-talkie broke in the fall, but the men fixed it by cannibalizing parts from the useless one that Tetley had left behind. When they connected, Turner’s crew told them about the plans to use PBY Catalinas in a rescue attempt. In a later conversation, Turner told the men at the PN9E that their crewmates were off the ice.