Which P-38 spent 50 years under Greenland's ice before flying again?

In July 1942, as part of Operation Bolero, eight P-38s were to be ferried by air from the United States to England. The route involved several stopovers: the second was a rudimentary airstrip in Greenland known as Bluie West One, and the third was Keflavik, in Iceland. Two of the Lightnings had to turn back because of technical problems. On the way to Iceland, the navigators aboard the B-17s escorting the fighters lost their bearings due to bad weather and radio failures, and the group, later known as the Lost Squadron, was forced to turn back toward Greenland without enough fuel left to reach any airfield.

The six remaining aircraft landed without incident on the Greenland ice cap, around 150 km southwest of the settlement known today as Tasiilaq. None of the crew members were injured, and the US Navy rescued all of them just a few days later. The aircraft themselves, however, were simply left behind on the ice.

In 1992, one of the P-38s was finally recovered, fifty years after it had gone down. Named Glacier Girl, it is the oldest-built P-38 still in existence today, and after a complete, ground-up restoration it returned to the air a full ten years after its recovery. Today it appears regularly at air shows, mostly in the United States. The other five Lightnings were, as of 2006, still buried some 100 meters beneath the surface of the ice. The fact that Glacier Girl ever flew again highlights just how few aircraft of this kind were ultimately saved: at the end of the war, P-38s stationed in distant theatres were routinely bulldozed into piles and simply abandoned or scrapped on the spot.