The rescue by Loftleiðir Icelandic of a US ski aircraft stranded on the glacier Vatnajökull in 1951. At a time when Loftleiðir, Iceland’s fledgling airline was struggling to remain afloat in the middle of the 20th century, a group of the company’s leading figures achieved the feat of travelling high onto the country’s largest glacier to recover up a DC-3 aircraft that the US Air Force had been forced to abandon a year before.
The aircraft turned out to be practically undamaged and the Loftleiðir team were able to fly it back to Reykjavík. The DC-3 was subsequently sold to an overseas airline and provided the company with much-needed finance at this turbulent time in its history. This book recounts the story of the recovery expedition in words and pictures, making use of the diaries of Alfreð Elíasson and Árni Kjartansson’s outstanding photographs.
The expedition to the glacier took a whole month and this is a tale of daring and endurance. Loftleiðir’s pilots had flown over the glacier while the aircraft was still visible on the surface, enabling them to establish roughly its position. But at the site, they had to dig seven metres through the snow to reach Jökull (Glacier), as the DC-3 was christened. This venture onto the glacier was a unique achievement in the history of aviation, and is well known among those with an interest in flight around the world.