[toomanybeersies]

It's amazing how much damage a plane can take and still be worth repairing.

During WWII, a flight of P-38 Lightnings and B-17s made an emergency landing on the Greenland ice. After being buried under almost 300 feet of ice for 50 years, one of the P-38s was pulled up and restored to full flying condition [1]

There's countless stories of old warbirds being pulled out of swamps and lakes and being flown again.

Interestingly, warbird restoration became a bit of an industry in New Zealand during the 90's, in part due to a bloke called Tim Wallis [2], who made his fortune in 60s and 70s from live deer recovery (basically grabbing wild deer from a helicopter) and later on deer farming.

He ended up crashing a Spitfire in 1996 (he also crashed a helicopter and broke his back 20 years earlier), which left him unable to walk for some time and permanently unable to fly, unlike the Spitfire which was restored over almost 20 years and is now in flying condition again.

Tragically, a few years back, he lost two sons in separate helicopter crashes a few months apart. Helicopter pilots in New Zealand don't have a long life expectancy. If you've ever seen them flying, it's no surprise [3]. There's old pilots, and there's bold pilots, but there aren't any old, bold pilots...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacier_Girl

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Wallis

[3] https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/airborne-1980

[nwallin]

See also the Cornfield Bomber, an F-106 Delta Dart, which is a mach 2.3 interceptor. The pilot was doing a training flight, entered a flat spin, and ejected. The pilotless, out of control aircraft proceeded to stop its spin, entered straight and level flight, and landed intact in a nearby wheat (not corn) field. The farmer called the authorities about what he should do about it- the engine was still running. The Air Force told him to simply let it run out of fuel, which it did a few hours later. The Air Force recovered the aircraft, repaired it, and returned it to service. It retired with the rest of the F-106s 10-20 years later in the mid '80s. It's on display today at Wright Patterson AFB.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornfield_Bomber

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6329703 (2 comments, 8 years ago)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7963421 (no comments, 7 years ago)

[pavel_lishin]

> There's countless stories of old warbirds being pulled out of swamps and lakes and being flown again.

I guess that makes certain Star Wars scenes a bit more believable.