page_title: Kee Bird
section_title: Recovery and Restoration Attempt and Fate
hierarchical_section_title: Kee Bird / Recovery and Restoration Attempt and Fate
caption_attribution_description: English: The image above shows the Kee Bird, a wrecked B-29 Superfortress that made an emergency landing on a northwest Greenland ice sheet in 1947. The image was acquired on May 1, 2014, by the Digital Mapping System (DMS), an instrument attached to NASA’s P-3 Orion airplane for the Operation IceBridge campaign.
context_page_description: The Kee Bird was a United States Army Air Forces Boeing B-29 Superfortress, serial 45-21768, of the 46th Reconnaissance Squadron, that became marooned after making an emergency landing in northwest Greenland during a secret Cold War spying mission on 21 February 1947. While the entire crew was safely evacuated after spending three days in the isolated Arctic tundra, the aircraft itself was left at the landing site. It lay there undisturbed until 1994, when a privately funded mission was launched to repair and return it. During the attempted recovery, a fire broke out, resulting in the destruction and loss of the airframe on the ground.
context_section_description: In July 1994, a team of aircraft restorers operating as Kee Bird Limited Liability Co. was led by Darryl Greenamyer to the emergency landing site.  The aircraft had made a successful landing on the frozen lake and had remained relatively intact at the site ever since. The USAF had also surrendered any claim to the B-29. It was believed that the plane could be put into flying condition, flown out of the site, and ferried to Thule AB, Greenland where further repairs could be made before flying back to the United States.
  Using a 1962 De Havilland Caribou as a shuttle plane, the team departed the U.S. Armed Services base at Thule and flew in tools and equipment to the Kee Bird. Over the summer months, the team transported four re-manufactured engines, four new propellers, an engine hoist, and new tires, as well as a small bulldozer, to the remote site. The team successfully replaced the engines and propellers, mounted the new tires, and resurfaced the aircraft's control surfaces. As the winter snows began to fall, the Chief Engineer, Rick Kriege, fell ill and was transported to a hospital in Iqaluit, Canada, where he died from a blood clot two weeks later. Although the plane was nearly ready to fly, Greenamyer's team was compelled by weather to leave the site.
  In May 1995, Greenamyer returned with additional personnel. The repairs were completed and the aircraft prepared to take off from the frozen lake on 21 May 1995.  A crude runway was carved out of the snow on the ice using the small bulldozer that had been ferried into the site.  The new engines were successfully started for the takeoff attempt.  As Darryl Greenamyer was taxiing the aircraft onto the frozen lake, the jury-rigged fuel tank of the B-29's "putt-putt" auxiliary power unit began to leak gasoline into the rear fuselage. Fire broke out and quickly spread to the rest of the aircraft.  The cockpit crew escaped unharmed, but cook/mechanic Bob Vanderveen, who was visually monitoring the engines from the rear of the aircraft, suffered smoke inhalation and flash burns.
  Despite attempts to extinguish it from outside the plane, the fire raged and spread through the fuselage.  The aircraft was largely destroyed on the ground, with the Kee Bird's fuselage being almost completely destroyed.  When the lake thawed in the spring, it was feared that the wreckage (with nearly intact wing panels and engines) would sink to the bottom.
  As of 2014, the aircraft sat, broken, crumpled, and burnt in shreds on an ice shelf on the surface.
caption: NASA photo of the remnants of the Kee Bird, 1 May 2014
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