Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Expedition Planned To Recover Remains Of WWII Aviators Buried Under Ice For 73 Years

 

In 1942, German U-boats were all over the North Atlantic. To avoid getting attacked, and to get supplies to the troops in Europe, the United States flew planes on a cold, remote route that hugged the top of the globe. They’d fly to Canada, then to Iceland, across Greenland, and if they were lucky, they’d eventually reach Great Britain.

Mountaineer Nick Bratton lives in Seattle, but has been to Greenland.

“And the weather in Greenland is very unpredictable. And over the course of flying these hundreds and hundreds of planes through Greenland, a lot of them crashed,” said Bratton.

During the war, two of the people who were tasked with rescuing the survivors of these crashes were Coast Guard Lieutenant John Pritchard, a pilot; and Petty Officer Benjamin Bottoms, who was a radio man.

The Final Mission

Credit Nick Russill via Creative Commons / Flickr
/
Flickr
The east coast of Greenland

On November 29, 1942, Pritchard and Bottoms set out to find the survivors of a fallen B-17.  Nine men were stranded on a glacier on the east side of Greenland, in the middle of nowhere.

From their Coast Guard cutter, Pritchard and Bottoms launched an amphibious plane called a Grumman Duck.

“They landed this plane that was designed to land on water; they landed it on the glacier. This had never been done before,” said Bratton. “Then they hiked several miles across a crevasse field, found the B-17, pulled a couple guys off of it who were the most injured, walked back to their bi-plane, took off from the glacier, and returned to the ship. These men were saved.”

After that, Pritchard and Bottoms took off again. On this second trip, they landed safely and retrieved the communications officer from the B-17, Corporal Loren Howarth.

This time, they were racing against the weather. As they returned to the ship, a whiteout closed in and Pritchard became completely disoriented.

“He couldn't distinguish ice from sky and crashed into the glacier with his radio man, Benjamin Bottoms aboard, and the man from the B-17,” said Bratton. “Those men were lost, never to be seen again.”

A New Mission

Nick Bratton, and three others, hope to find these missing men when they head to Greenland next June.

There have been three attempts over the last several years to find the plane and its crew. Bratton’s extensive climbing experience is what got him invited to be a part of a search in 2012, which was led by the company he worked for at the time called North South Polar.

Credit Lou Sapienza / U.S. Coast Guard
/
U.S. Coast Guard
An expedition team of U.S. Coast Guard service members and North South Polar, Inc. scientists and explorers transport an ice melting machine over a crevasse near Koge Bay, Greenland, Aug. 29, 2012.

“In the 2012 mission, our team actually gained photographic evidence of a piece of wreckage of the plane, [but] this was … as another storm was closing in and we were being evacuated by Air Greenland helicopters. It was very much down to the wire,” said Bratton. “We have photographic evidence of some pieces of the wreckage that we are very confident is part of the plane we are looking for.”

Bratton said the initial motivation for being involved was the allure of the adventure.

“[But] over time having become involved, I became personally invested in it,” he said. “We want to bring these men home—find them and return them—for the closure and peace that will come to their family members,”  said Bratton.

‘You Have To Go Out…’

Coast Guard pilot John Pritchard was 28 years old when he died. At the time, he left behind his parents, two brothers and a little sister named Nancy. Even though he was nine years older than Nancy, the two were very close.

“I remember one time he said, ‘Now Nancy’— I was 16 or 17 years old—and he said, ‘I think you should know about liquor; you should ask for rum and Coca-Cola,’” remembers Nancy Pritchard, now 92 years old. “I was a teenager; it was mild drink, rather than a martini. I just think it was a way an older brother would talk to a younger sister who was nine years younger than he. He was concerned about my knowing what was right and what was wrong.”

Credit Petty Officer 2nd Class Jetta H. Disco / U.S. Coast Guard
/
U.S. Coast Guard
Bil Thuma, from left, and Luciano Sapienza of North South Polar Inc., Cmdr. Jim Blow and Nancy Pritchard Morgan, go over charts and images of the crash site of a WWII era Coast Guard J2F-4 Grumman Duck aircraft and crew are reportedly located in Greenland, during a mission brief in Trenton, N.J., Aug. 21, 2012.

Today, Pritchard lives in Annapolis Maryland. She clearly remembers that day, 73 years ago, when she was in college and got a call from her mother, telling her the news that her brother was missing.

“I was stunned,” said Pritchard. “I remember walking around the block a couple of times, wondering, ‘Okay, well maybe he was just missing.’ and then you take [it] day-to-day and live and hope that you’ll hear something.”

When she learned what her brother did before he died—that it was his idea to go for it—to land the plane on the glacier—to do something that had never been done before—to save people’s lives—she said that was the John she knew.

“He just lived up to the motto, ‘You have to go out, but you don't have to come back.’ Now, that’s a true motto,” she said. “The Coast Guard doesn't like to use it anymore, but believe me, a lot of personnel were just dedicated to that motto.”

Preparing For Another Attempt

As Bratton and his partners plan for their expedition next year, their strategy is to be fast and light. They are bringing radar equipment to see what’s under the ice and a manual drill to bore a hole so a camera can be dropped down to take pictures if they find anything.

The weather in June is a little more predictable, but there is never really a safe time on the ice in Greenland.

“We could be hiking and hear running water but not see anything. And we might walk right over a river channel, essentially a tube of water beneath the ice,” said Bratton.” There are polar bears roaming the east coast of Greenland to contend with.”

Nancy Pritchard said if her brother’s remains are found, he will be laid to rest at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut.

“I trust that those who are in charge will do their best to keep everyone safe and find this little duck that’s in the Greenland ice cap. That’s the one prayer and wish before I leave this earth,” said Pritchard.

According to the U.S. Department of Defense, since World War II, 88,000 service members have gone missing or are unaccounted for.

About one-third of them are considered recoverable. The Department of Defense has begun efforts to bring home the remains of at least 200 of these fallen soldiers every year.

Jennifer Wing is a former KNKX reporter and producer who worked on the show Sound Effect and Transmission podcast.