10:00 AM | *Nearly 69 years after a military plane crash in Alaska efforts continue to recover the wreckage and human remains in a race against the clock*

Colony Glacier as seen through the window of an Alaska Army National Guard UH-60 Black Hawk on Saturday, June 16, 2018 (Loren Holmes/Anchorage Daily News)

Overview

For 60 years, the Colony Glacier of Alaska hid the remains of 52 servicemen in a frozen grave after an Air Force plane crashed into the side of a mountain during bad weather.  The military transport plane was on route to Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage when it crashed into Mount Gannett on November 22nd, 1952 in the Chugach Mountain Range about 40 miles east of Anchorage.  The wreckage of the plane and the remains of the 52 servicemen slid into the glacier next to the mountain. Recovery efforts never got into high gear that year as Alaska’s unforgiving winter came on quickly and by later the following year, the glacier and new deep snow pack had claimed the aircraft and its passengers.  

It was not until 60 years later in June 2012 that the wreckage was spotted about 12 miles from the original crash site by members of the Army National Guard during a routine training mission. Since then crews have returned every summer to try to recover the remains and personal effects during a small window of opportunity of about one month when it is relatively safe to do so on the glacier. This painstaking effort is in a race against time, however, as the relentlessly north-flowing Colony Glacier continues to advance relatively quickly and it won’t be long before the plane wreckage and passenger remains are pushed into nearby Inner Lake George - and perhaps lost forever to history.

Colony Glacier relentlessly advances towards nearby Inner Lake George and has pushed the debris field several miles during the past 69 years (map courtesy USGS)

The crash in 1952 and the immediate unsuccessful recovery attempts

The Colony Glacier is a sixty square mile mass of ice and snow situated on the south flank of Mount Gannett. The ice fields that feed Colony Glacier are unnamed and make up most of the surface area of the glacier. The terminus of the glacier is in Inner Lake George about 13 miles southwest of Mount Gannett.

Colony Glacier as seen from a window of a Black Hawk helicopter on Wednesday, June 21, 2017. Courtesy Gary Black/News-Miner

An Air Force C-124A military transport airplane known as the Globemaster was on route to Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage, Alaska on Nov. 22, 1952, with service members from all branches when it crashed into Mount Gannett and slid into an ice field above the Colony Glacier. The plane was miles off course when it crashed on that fateful day due largely to bad weather and thick clouds and rather unreliable instrumentation which was much less sophisticated than today’s technology. 

This reproduced image was appended to the official “Report of an Air Force Major Aircraft Accident Involving C-124A No. 51-107A”.  The upper circle is annotated “Point of Contact”, the three lower circles are annotated “Wreckage”.  The impact point was assumed based on the point where an avalanche seemed to have emanated.  The date on the photograph reflects the date of the accident - not the date the picture was taken. The photograph was taken at an altitude of about 9,500 feet looking from a point approximately three to five miles east of the crash site.  Courtesy US Air Force; book entitled “Letters from the Globemaster Families: The Lost C-124 of Mount Gannett, Alaska") 

The force of the crash and subsequent fuel explosion obliterated the airplane and actually triggered a massive avalanche. The combination of the avalanche and quickly accumulating heavy snowfall greatly inhibited the chances for any successful recovery attempt in the days immediately following the crash. To make matters worse, Alaska was only a territory in 1952 – not to become a state for several more years - and the US Geological Survey (USGS) had not yet even completed a comprehensive set of topographic maps for the area.  The Air Force’s second and final recovery attempt took place during the following summer of 1953, but it too was largely unsuccessful with only some mail visible on the snow top and recovered.  In fact, by early August of 1953 when there was an early season snowstorm, it was estimated that the plane’s wreckage and the remains of the 52 servicemen had already been buried under 50 feet of snow and feared to be lost forever.

A C-124A Globemaster is unloaded on an airfield in Korea during the Korean War. (Credit U.S. Air Force) 

Wreckage is sighted 60 years later and new recovery efforts begin

On June 9, 2012, debris (large yellow canister) was spotted by an Alaska Army National Guard Black Hawk helicopter pilot on a routine training flight near the terminus of Colony Glacier depositing into Inner Lake George. At first, officials thought the debris was from a plane crash that hadn't yet been reported, but a ground recovery mission confirmed that it was actually from the Globemaster. Over the six decades since the 1952 plane crash, the wreckage had traveled about 12 miles down Colony Glacier (averaging about a meter per day), and is now less than a 2000 yards from the toe or leading edge of the glacier which empties into Inner Lake George. 

Alaska-based military members who participated in a search for human remains and personal items from the 1952 crash of a C-124 Globemaster view some of the items that were found, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2021, at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska. The plane slammed into a mountain, killing 52 on board, the plane and its crew have since become part of Colony Glacier. The military has conducted annual summer recovery efforts, finding human remains and personal items on the glacier. (Photo courtesy AP/Mark Thiessen; Anchorage Daily News)

Since the discovery in 2012, the military has returned each June to identify any new areas of wreckage exposed by the constantly moving glacier.  The window to work safely on the Colony Glacier must be perfectly sandwiched between the snowpack clearing in early June and warming temperatures by mid-July that can cause an increase in large, sudden and dangerous glacial cracks called crevasses opening across the recovery area. Work typically starts in early to mid-June and is wrapped up for the year by early July. In this roughly one-month window, painstaking work is undertaken by a small crew assembled from within Alaska military organizations.  They carefully hack at the glacier with ice picks and comb it with trowels, often on their knees, looking for the tiniest pieces of debris. They have found such things as uniforms, dog tags, wallets, lighters and even three gold wedding rings.  In addition, over the past several years, human remains of 43 of the 52 people on board have been found, identified and returned to family members; 9 are still missing. In the annual somber search in June 2021, 460 bags of remains and nearly 100 bags of personal effects were recovered according to the Anchorage Daily News.  The remains and personal effects were in good condition, likely due to the glacier and “being preserved pretty well in the ice” according an Air Force commander for the mission.  Among the personal items found this year on the glacier were two playing cars, a pair of shoes, and a map of the Anchorage area from 1944. 

This photo was taken in June 2015 and shows the toe or leading edge of Colony Glacier and Inner Lake George.  The somber effort to recover the human remains from 52 service members who died when their airplane smashed into an Alaskan mountain more than 60 years ago continues each summer since the re-discovery in June 2012 (Photo courtesy AP/Mark Thiessen).

Race against the clock

While this recovery effort has to be done in a methodical and meticulous fashion, there is a clear recognition that time is running out to recover the plane wreckage and human remains as Colony Glacier continues to advance towards the glacier’s base in Inner Lake George – now about 200 meters away.  One estimate puts the available time at only a few more years before the debris field calves into the lake - and perhaps lost forever.

Spectacular close-up Video of Colony Glacier and Inner Lake George.

Meteorologist Paul Dorian
Valley Forge, PA