This was an incredibly sad edition of NOVA. These men tried to rescue a 50-year-old B29 bomber back to the mainland, and in the process their mechanic died and the plane ended up catching fire and sank to the bottom of a frozen lake. This was totally not what I expected, and I found it more poignant than what any other "science" show has presented. Did anyone else feel the same way?
shareAs viewers, we were pulled along by the hope that the mission would succeed. However, that was not to be. It has been so long since I saw this episode, which first aired 29 July 1997, that I have forgotten most of the details of it. The man who died was Rick Kriege, the chief engineer on the project. He died -- two weeks after leaving the site of the B-29 in Greenland -- from a blood clot brought on by overwork in cold weather. Of the three links below, the first is the word by word transcript of the NOVA episode.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2303b29.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kee_Bird
http://www.rb-29.net/HTML/03RelatedStories/03.03shortstories/03.03.09c ontss.htm
B-29 Frozen in Time was first broadcast on 30 January, 1996.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/listseason/23.html
Brite and Fresh like a winter day. And try the mint sauce if you dare! No tootsie rolls.
It was an excellent episode. However, I couldnt help but be pissed off at these guys who were in over their heads and ended up destroying the plane instead.
shareDarryl Greenamyer is an outstanding pilot with an exceptional career. I think he still holds the world speed record for a piston powered aircraft (Golden Bear) and the world absolute speed record (Red Baron F-104). Further, I think his crew was as good as any that could be put together.
Meanwhile, note the records that Mr. Greenamyer set. He risked arrest and imprisonment over the Red Baron F-104 on top of the millions he would have been out-of-pocket had the airplane been confiscated. He was not "risk averse." Fighting the calendar to get 'Kee Bird' off of the glacier in the narrow Summer window, he and his crew got careless and overlooked an obviously bad decision. I think that they must have recognized the risk when they used an open fuel can as the improvised gas tank for the APU. Mr. Greenamyer commented on it in interviews that he suffers guilt every time he looks back on that solution to their challenge.
"In over their heads," is an extremely arrogant comment, though I admit that I thought "How could they make such a (sorry) stupid decision." But, I have been in similar moments when I was extremely eager, even highly anxious to complete a project and lost sight of near term risks in pursuit of the final outcome. I never got bit as hard by the "woulda, shoulda, coulda" bug as Mr. Greenamyer and his crew. So, I am sympathetic and understanding.
Without risk taking, great things wouldn't be accomplished. Columbus, the Moon landings, etc.
Darryl Greenamyer's calculated risk made sense to retrieve this plane. You can plan, but you can't plan the outcome.