Frozen in Time Read online

  WITHIN MINUTES OF takeoff, the Duck and the three men aboard were in trouble, too. The storm had arrived faster than Pritchard expected, and the window for a safe return to the waiting Northland in Comanche Bay had closed.

  Roughly nine minutes into the flight, when the Duck should have been about halfway back to the ship, Pritchard called the Northland for a weather report. From the little radio room a deck below the bridge, the ship’s communications officer began to reply. But before he could finish, Pritchard cut him off, yelling, “MOs, MOs—quick!”

  The urgent call could mean only one thing: Pritchard was lost, disoriented in the fog and storm, flying at perhaps ninety knots, or about one hundred miles per hour. Pritchard was flying in milk. By calling for magnetic orientation, he was desperately seeking a course to the Northland. Without it, the Duck was in danger of slamming into the water or the ice cap. Pritchard was the airborne equivalent of a sailor searching for a beacon to guide him past a reef.

  The Northland’s radio operator hammered his transmitter key, sending the signal for MOs—five dashes in succession, da-da-da-da-da—on a prearranged frequency. He repeated the signal again and again—da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da—but received no reply. The Northland was trying to tell Pritchard and Bottoms that the course was 115 degrees true, a heading over the ice-covered landscape to the waiting ship. But the radio calls to the Duck remained unanswered, and the little plane never emerged from the fog.

  The crew of the Northland knew that Pritchard, Bottoms, and Howarth were in danger, or worse, but they refused to write them off. Maybe Pritchard had turned back toward the PN9E to land on the ice cap. Maybe, Northland crew members told themselves, he’d landed somewhere else safely but his radio had been damaged. Or maybe the Duck had set down on the water and was floating in Koge Bay. Perhaps the Duck’s radio signal was blocked by the storm, and that’s why no one could reach them.

  AFTER STRUGGLING TO use Howarth’s patched-together radio, Don Tetley told the Northland the bad news at the crash site: “Demorest and one motor sledge in crevasse. Unable to get help to him. Please send help immediately. . . . No word from Northland plane.”

  In reply, the ship told Tetley that the Duck hadn’t returned to the Northland, either.

  News of the plane’s disappearance fell hard on the PN9E crew, most of all O’Hara and Spina. That morning, before the Duck left with Howarth, the other crewmen had helped to dress the two most seriously injured men, expecting that they’d be next to leave. With the Duck nowhere to be found, and with one motorsled gone, O’Hara and Spina seemed to be running out of ways to leave the glacier for medical care. Maybe running out of time altogether.

  Still, the men on the ice and on the Northland retained hope that Pritchard, Bottoms, and Howarth were alive, and that they’d landed somewhere between the PN9E and the ship. Until there was proof one way or another, the Duck’s crew and the PN9E’s radioman were missing, not dead.

  During the next few days, Greenland Patrol commander “Iceberg” Smith exchanged a series of messages with the Northland in which he expressed concern for the lost Duck and told the ship to leave Comanche Bay “if by remaining, ship and personnel are endangered.” The PN9E rescue was supposed to take about three days, and it had already stretched longer. Each day the Northland waited, the threat of ice capturing the ship in Comanche Bay increased. A follow-up message from Smith delivered the point more sharply: “Emphasize that remaining to continue rescue operations must be secondary to the safety of Northland.” The ship was his primary workhorse along the coast, and he couldn’t afford to lose it. And yet, despite his doubts, nowhere in the radio messages did Smith question the decisions by the ship’s top officers or by pilot John Pritchard.

  A WEEK AFTER the Duck’s last flight, an American B-17 flew over the Koge Bay glacier. Its pilot, Captain Kenneth Turner, reported a sad but unsurprising discovery: “Grumman [Duck] located. No sign of life. Badly wrecked.”

  The broken remains of the plane were about three miles from the water, Turner said, although later sightings claimed that he overestimated the actual distance. No one would question Turner’s heartbreaking description of what he saw. The Duck’s tail pointed skyward and its wings were broken off. Its fuselage was intact, but “front part of ship demolished.”

  The evidence pointed to a nose-first dive. Still, investigators, Coast Guard officials, and armchair historians would speculate for decades about what happened. Above all, they’d argue whether Pritchard had tried to turn back to his takeoff area when he ran into the fog, or if he’d continued heading for home, toward the Northland. The latter seemed more likely to most, as the navigator for Turner’s B-17, Herbert Kurz, created a map that showed the downed Duck pointing in the direction of Comanche Bay.

  However it happened, the sighting by Turner and his B-17 crew established that Pritchard, Bottoms, and Howarth were gone and the Duck was destroyed.

  In the end, Tetley’s initial radio message—“Demorest and one motor sledge in crevasse. . . . No word from Northland plane”—disclosed the failure of two rescue methods, by air and by motorsled. More important, it reported the deaths of four American heroes, all of whom had died after volunteering to help fellow servicemen.

  In the weeks that followed, a Coast Guard team from the Northland attempted to reach the little plane. Yet from the very first, there was no hope that the three men had survived. Still, one overly optimistic message from the Northland five days after the crash requested that the Duck be dropped a cache of supplies and tools, including a new battery, sixty gallons of fuel, eighteen spark plugs, and several wrenches that would be needed to prepare the engine for takeoff. The message also requested three sleeping bags, animal hides, coffee, food, and spirits.

  In reality, after Turner spotted the Duck, all the efforts to reach the plane were motivated by a desire to recover the three men’s remains, to honor their sacrifices, and to grant peace to their families. But storms, billowing snow, and uncertainty about precisely where to look forced the searchers to abandon the effort. Pritchard, Bottoms, and Howarth were left where they fell.

  In March 1943 Colonel Bernt Balchen also flew over the wrecked Duck, afterward drawing a rough map of its location, with an X marking the plane’s spot. The result was a sketch that looked like a pirate’s treasure map. Although the map was accurate in several important respects, Balchen invented several geographical features and omitted others. Complicating any future search for the Duck and its men, Balchen’s errors compounded flawed longitude and latitude data reported by Turner’s B-17 crew. Some of those errors were later corrected, but the combined effect was to create confusion and false leads about the Duck’s resting place. That problem would reverberate for decades, as a steady accumulation of snow and ice buried Pritchard, Bottoms, Howarth, and the Duck.

  AFTER THREE MILITARY plane crashes in November 1942 in which all men aboard initially survived—McDowell’s C-53, Monteverde’s PN9E, and the Canadian A-20—Greenland had struck back. In less than two hours on the morning of November 29, 1942, a Coast Guard pilot, a Coast Guard radioman, an Army Air Corps radioman, and an army lieutenant motorsled driver were killed trying to save others.

  That death toll soon rose, as the search for McDowell’s C-53 crew was abandoned a month after their crash. “Concentrated search was discontinued,” the official report declared, “because it was believed that the crew could not maintain life more than thirty days with the short rations they had on board, and during which time extremely cold weather prevailed. It is believed the crew perished. Aircraft is considered a total loss due to the inaccessibility of the Ice Cap, should it ever be located.” Official declaration of their deaths would come on November 5, 1943.

  THE MAP COLONEL BERNT BALCHEN DREW IN HIS NOTEBOOK AFTER FLYING OVER THE WRECKED DUCK AND THE KOGE BAY AREA. (U.S. COAST GUARD IMAGE.)

  Frozen in time in November 1942 were Lieutenant John A. Pritchard Jr., Sergeant Benjamin Bottoms, and Corporal Loren “Lolly” Howarth of the Duck; C
aptain Homer McDowell, Lieutenant William Springer, Staff Sergeant Eugene Manahan, Corporal William Everett, and Private Thurman Johannessen of the C-53; and motorsled rescuer Lieutenant Max Demorest.

  As Greenland’s god-awful winter approached, seven men remained trapped on the ice: Armand Monteverde, Harry Spencer, William “Bill” O’Hara, Alfred “Clint” Best, Paul Spina, and Clarence Wedel from the PN9E, and their new companion, motorsled driver Don Tetley.

  In a battle against nature, fought at the far edge of a war among men, Greenland had regained the upper hand.

  POSTHUMOUSLY, JOHN PRITCHARD and Benjamin Bottoms each received the Distinguished Flying Cross. Both also were recommended for the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military decoration, but the award was never made.

  Pritchard’s Distinguished Flying Cross citation honored him “for heroism and extraordinary achievement while participating in aerial flights as pilot of a plane which rescued Army fliers stranded on the Greenland Ice Cap, on 28 and 29 November 1942. . . . By his courage, skill and fearless devotion to duty, Lieutenant Pritchard upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.” The medal was presented to his parents in a ceremony at their Congregational church in Los Angeles, with music by Rudy Vallee and the Coast Guard Band. For the loss of her firstborn child in heroic circumstances, Virginia Pritchard was honored as the “California Mother of the Year” for 1944.

  Ben Bottoms’s Distinguished Flying Cross citation read, “He rendered valuable assistance to the pilot on the two flights to the Ice Cap, maintained excellent contact by radio between his plane and their ship, and assisted the pilot in rendering aid to the injured and stranded fliers.”

  For repairing the radio at the risk of his own life, and for trying to help Max Demorest when he fell into the crevasse, Loren Howarth received the Legion of Merit, the sixth-highest military award, for “exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services and achievements.”

  WORD OF THE Duck’s crash reached Al Tucciarone and Woody Puryear while they were recovering aboard the Northland. Several weeks after his rescue, Tucciarone gave military investigators a sworn account of the PN9E crash and its aftermath. At the end, he veered from formal chronology and wrote, “I want to stress that I owe my life to Howarth, Pritchard, and his radioman, Bottoms.” Thinking about the men still awaiting rescue on the ice, Tucciarone wrote, “I can only hope and pray that those other unfortunate fellows get away from that ‘Death Hole’ as lucky as Sergeant Puryear and myself. May God bless them.”

  From his hospital bed, where he’d remain for more than two months, Puryear wrote to Pritchard’s and Bottoms’s families to offer thanks and condolences.

  To Bottoms’s parents, he wrote, “I am one of the boys whose life was saved through the heroic efforts of your son, Benjamin A. Bottoms, and Lieutenant John A. Pritchard. Two braver men I have never seen. I knew your son for only a short while and had never seen him until the day of the rescue. He was more than willing to go to the limit to save our lives, even though endangering his own.”

  After receiving a similar letter from Puryear, Virginia Pritchard wrote back, “I breathed a little prayer of thankfulness when I learned you were back in this country and able to wire. We know how very ill you were from hunger and exposure. We have no hope whatever that our son still lives, but until the final chapter is written, we have faith that somehow a miracle will bring him back.”

  Virginia Pritchard died in 1976 with that prayer for a miracle unfulfilled.

  13

  TAPS

  JANUARY 2012

  WALKING THE CORRIDORS of Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington, Lou looks more excited than nervous, a prizefighter heading toward the ring. Alongside him is John Long, who retired from the Coast Guard in 2011 but remains deeply involved in Duck Hunt research. Long is an ideal cornerman: steady, reserved, a font of knowledge about Duck sightings. The size of a longshoreman, the former master chief petty officer flew to Washington from his home in northern Michigan to lend his support and expertise. They walk shoulder to shoulder into the boardroom.

  The seats around the table are filled with many of the same men and women from the October meeting at the DPMO offices, along with a half-dozen new faces from the Coast Guard and other agencies. Leading the DPMO delegation again is Lieutenant Colonel James McDonough, a friendly but no-nonsense soldier.

  Coast Guard Commander Jim Blow kicks things off with a positive spin: “It’s really good to get all the players in one room to see what we as a group can do to pull the pieces together to get on site and effect a location and a recovery.”

  Blow hands off to Lou, who’s loaded for duck this time. He distributes a nineteen-page memo that’s thick with data suggesting that he knows where on the ice to dig for the plane, along with day-by-day plans for the mission. Lou guides the room through a PowerPoint presentation, confidently fielding questions and explaining a thicket of technical information. He describes primary and secondary locations where modern radar and sonar findings overlap with historical sightings, including Bernt Balchen’s detailed, if geographically imprecise, hand-drawn “Treasure Map” from 1943.

  McDonough wonders how much of the Koge Bay glacier Lou intends to search. “What dimensions are we talking about?” he asks.

  Lou: “One and three-quarters of a mile by three-quarters of a mile, tops.”

  Next McDonough jabs Lou about whether anomalies labeled “Points of Interest” on a radar readout are definitely metal objects. Or, he wonders, are they natural variations within a glacier made by a rock, a crevasse, or even water?

  Lou counters: “Metal comes back differently than rock.”

  Lou explains that, despite his confidence in the available data, he hopes to confirm the findings with additional high-tech devices, one that hangs beneath a helicopter and another that drags behind a snowmobile. “We have the technology to find it,” Lou says. “We have a very limited area in which to look. We will find it.”

  McDonough asks: “So, you think you can find the aircraft in three days on the ice?”

  Lou’s on a roll. He snaps back: “Weather permitting, yes.”

  The give-and-take moves to what Lou might do with the plane after carving it from the ice. “We’re not wreck hunters,” he says. This is a point of pride with him, and he puffs his chest a bit. “We’re not interested in recovering the plane to sell it.”

  Lou says he respects the Coast Guard’s policy that the service retains possession of all downed planes and shipwrecks. His only desire would be for the Duck to be restored and displayed for posterity. This, of course, is exactly what retired captain Tom King wanted in the first place, to keep it off eBay and away from private warbird collectors and souvenir vultures.

  McDonough says DPMO would have no objection to that plan. “The plane is not the priority,” he says. “Our primary interest is in the remains. What I’m wondering is, will the bodies be encased in ice?”

  Lou: “If snow has gotten into the Duck, yes, they’re probably encased in ice.”

  McDonough: “Could you bring it up without disturbing the remains?”

  Lou: “That’s possible.”

  He explains how Glacier Girl was brought to the surface twenty years earlier, and tells McDonough that this would be easier because the Duck should be located at less than one-fifth the depth. A friendly discussion follows about the best ways to recover, preserve, and transport human remains. The difference in tone from the October meeting is stark.

  I start to believe that Lou is winning. I imagine McDonough raising Lou’s arm in triumph and presenting him with an oversize check while cameras flash. But then the bell rings for the next round.

  McDonough asks: “Lou, do you have an underwriter at the moment?”

  For the first time, Lou pauses to catch his breath. “No,” he says flatly. “That’s what we’re working on.” What he means is, That’s why we’re here.

  McDonough bores into the budget that Lou incl
uded in his briefing package, asking about how large a team he would bring, whether he’d have a medical officer for emergencies, how he’d get supplies to the campsite, even whether he’d feed his team with military meals-ready-to-eat, MREs, or commercially purchased freeze-dried foods. Lou tries not to show it, but the meeting has gone more than two hours, and the unrelenting questions have a desiccating effect on him. His answers come more slowly.

  McDonough circles back to the question of money and drops the hammer. “To be honest with you,” he says, “a lot of us were under the assumption that you had found private funding to get out onto the ice.”

  Lou tries to regroup. He explains that he’s been seeking support from corporate and media sponsors and private individuals, though none are firmly on board. This is the source of McDonough’s misunderstanding: During the weeks leading up to the meeting, Lou sent group e-mails with glowing reports of sponsorship discussions he’s had with wealthy World War II history buffs and others. McDonough interpreted the e-mails to mean that Lou had landed a big fish.

  Jim Blow steps in, trying to help Lou: “When do you think you’ll have something back from the private funders?”

  Lou is reeling. He can’t see that Blow is trying to help, and he answers flippantly: “That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, I guess.”

  McDonough is ready to end it with a knockout. He wants no further misunderstandings or, apparently, further meetings: “I think it’s very admirable what you’ve done,” he says. “I want to compliment you. But funding is always the long pole in the tent. . . . I don’t believe there’s any funding available on our end, certainly not this fiscal year, to support an investigation on the ice.

  “In a perfect world, we’d go after everyone we can get,” McDonough adds. “But the reality is, the money isn’t there.”

  As an aside, he offers a small ray of hope: if Lou can somehow get to Greenland, and if he can confirm beyond any doubt that he’s found the Duck and its occupants, the Defense Department would be obliged to get involved.