Frozen in Time

by Mitchell Zuckoff

  AFTER THE RADIO distress calls from McDowell’s C-53, the temporary crew of the B-17 PN9E got word that instead of going to England, they’d remain in Greenland and join the search for the missing cargo plane. The war would wait, but freezing American airmen wouldn’t.

  The B-17’s pilot, a low-key lieutenant from California named Armand Monteverde, spread word of the new assignment among his ferrying crew: Lieutenant Harry Spencer, the copilot; Lieutenant William “Bill” O’Hara, the navigator; Private Paul Spina, the engineer; Private Alexander “Al” Tucciarone, the assistant engineer; and Corporal Loren “Lolly” Howarth, the radio operator.

  This was their first foreign mission after several cushy months of delivering planes around the United States, mostly to bases in the Midwest. To celebrate their maiden overseas trip, the crew posed for a photo outside the plane and had their copies signed by commanding officers in the Air Transport Command. Painted on the plane’s side, above where the men stood, was a fitting slogan for a bomber: “Do unto others before they do unto you. . . .” The photo had a serious purpose, too; some ferrying crews crashed in the ocean en route to Europe. A friend of one PN9E crew member joked about that risk, telling him, “Goodbye, sea food.”

  THE ORIGINAL SIX-MEMBER CREW OF THE PN9E: (BACK ROW, FROM LEFT) NAVIGATOR WILLIAM “BILL” O’HARA, PILOT ARMAND MONTEVERDE, AND COPILOT HARRY SPENCER; (FRONT ROW, FROM LEFT) ASSISTANT ENGINEER ALEXANDER “AL” TUCCIARONE, RADIOMAN LOREN “LOLLY” HOWARTH, AND ENGINEER PAUL SPINA. (COURTESY OF PETER TUCCIARONE.)

  Also aboard the PN9E was Private Clarence Wedel, a thirty-five-year-old mechanic from Canton, Kansas. Wedel, whose name rhymed with “needle,” had hitched a ride in Goose Bay, on his way to a posting in Scotland. Now that the PN9E would be searching for the missing C-53, Wedel would be an extra pair of eyes.

  On November 6, the first day of the hunt for McDowell’s lost plane, the crew of the PN9E saw nothing but the unbroken white canvas of the ice cap. To Paul Spina, the engineer, it was a beautiful sight. “For miles and miles, all you could see was a level sheet of ice with not one object to blot out its whiteness,” the twenty-six-year-old native of upstate New York wrote in his journal. “Along the edges were glaciers floating down to the sea to form icebergs. Later we learned to call them ‘iceberg factories.’ ” After several hours, the PN9E returned to Bluie West One, where the crew learned that other search planes had no luck, either.

  The next day, foul weather grounded all the search planes. The day after that, rescue planners assigned the PN9E to a newly mapped search box that included the spot where the C-53’s flares appeared to have been fired. The area was defined by a jagged stretch of east-west coastline with three inlets, or fjords, carved by glaciers into Greenland’s bedrock. The area was known as Koge Bugt, or Koge Bay, after a bay near Copenhagen where the Danes had drubbed the Swedes in a 1677 naval battle. The Danish pronunciation stumped the American airmen, so they made it sound like a town in the Midwest, pronouncing it “koh-gee.”

  Koge Bay is a big bite out of the Greenland coastline, some thirty miles across and fifty-five miles long. Several rocky islands dot the bay, including one called Jens Munks O, a miniature Greenland complete with its own little ice cap. Glaciers pour like lemmings into the waters of the bay, filling it with enormous, sculptured icebergs. Each of the three fjords in Koge Bay had its own name, but the largest and most westerly of the three was called simply the Koge Bay fjord. Native Greenlanders called it Pikiutdlek, or “place where, when we first arrived, there was a bird’s nest.” In Greenland, birds are uncommon enough to merit special note.

  On November 8, three days after McDowell’s C-53 went down, the PN9E took flight toward Koge Bay, but bad weather at low altitudes made it impossible to see the ice cap below. Less than two hours into the flight, the B-17’s number-four engine lost oil pressure, so pilot Armand Monteverde and copilot Harry Spencer turned back to Bluie West One for repairs and to spend the night. When they landed, they learned that they’d get another chance: McDowell’s plane was still missing.

  THE NEXT DAY, November 9, 1942, the PN9E drew the same assigned search area. As the crew warmed the engines and prepared for takeoff, two men walked over and introduced themselves as Tech Sergeant Alfred “Clint” Best and Staff Sergeant Lloyd “Woody” Puryear. Best and Puryear worked in the communications department at the base, and they had the day off. They were friends with several men aboard McDowell’s C-53, and they wanted to volunteer as searchers. Best also confessed that he wanted to experience a Flying Fortress firsthand. Monteverde welcomed them aboard, and the two volunteers squeezed into the B-17’s transparent nose to serve as forward spotters.

  With the six-man ferrying crew, plus Wedel, Best, and Puryear, the PN9E was ready for another search flight over the ice cap. As the nine men sat in the plane awaiting clearance for takeoff, they learned that another radio message had been received from the C-53, but it was too faint to comprehend or for rescuers to lock on to its position. The men aboard the PN9E understood: the cargo plane’s batteries were nearly dead, and the crew might soon be, too.

  The six original PN9E crew members made a bet among themselves: whoever spotted the lost plane would win dinner and drinks, paid for by the other five when they reached England. Wedel, Best, and Puryear were left out because they weren’t expected to be around long enough to collect.

  AS THEY TAXIED the plane for takeoff, Monteverde and Spencer received a radio call from base operations telling them to pull off the runway. Another search plane needed to land because of engine trouble. Spencer was a friend of the other plane’s pilot, so he razzed him over the radio. The pilot shot back that he welcomed the abuse: while Spencer would be flying in the cold, he’d be tucked into a “nice, warm sack.” Spencer laughed it off, but that phrase would stick in the PN9E crew’s collective memory.

  The PN9E took flight and headed east across the frozen island. The spotters called out whenever they saw something black against the ice. But each time, on a second or third pass, they’d realize it was an outcropping of rock. About two hours into the flight, the big bomber reached the edge of Koge Bay. They approached from the sea, but again the area was beset by lousy weather. A blizzard blew snow across the surface ice, and swirling winds tossed the B-17 like a rowboat in the ocean. Paul Spina, the engineer, went into the cockpit to ask Monteverde, whom he called “Lieutenant Monty,” why they weren’t turning back. Monteverde told him they planned to do so as soon as he could find a hole in the weather.

  Spina went to the radio room behind the cockpit and told radioman Loren “Lolly” Howarth to call Bluie West One to say they were returning. Bill O’Hara, the navigator, was sitting in the radio room, smoking a cigarette. Also crammed into the small compartment were assistant engineer Al Tucciarone and passenger/spotter Clarence Wedel. With nowhere left to sit, Spina removed his flight jacket and flying boots, bundled them into a pillow, and lay down on the floor.

  Monteverde and Spencer tried to get weather reports from Ice Cap Station and Beach Head Station. They couldn’t reach either outpost by radio, so they were on their own.

  Their assigned search box included an area of the ice cap that stretched about thirty miles north of Koge Bay. They headed in that direction, hoping that they’d be able to circle around the weather and find clear skies. The top layer of bad weather was at about seven thousand feet. They could have tried to fly above it, but their job was to search for a downed plane with five men in peril. That meant keeping their altitude as low as possible while they were in their search box.

  Trouble arrived quickly. The route that Monteverde chose to escape the storm instead steered them into a cruel trap of nature. When they reached the end of Koge Bay fjord, Monteverde and Spencer looked through the windshield of the PN9E and saw that everything outside was the same frightening shade of whitish gray. They couldn’t tell where the sky ended and the ice cap began.

  Harry Spencer thought he saw a horizontal line of blue sky in the distance, and he hoped t
hat they could fly under the overcast to reach it. But the blue line vanished; it was an illusion, a false horizon, created by reflections cast by ice crystals whipped through the sky by an approaching storm.

  When the true horizon disappears in the Arctic haze, a pilot might as well be blind. Pilots fortunate enough to survive the phenomenon describe the experience as “flying in milk.” It’s so common in Greenland that the effect even happens on the ground. Once on a hazy day, Monteverde straightened up too fast after bending over at the waist. Surrounded by whiteness, with no way to distinguish between earth and sky, Monteverde felt as though he were floating inside a giant cotton ball. He lost his balance and fell over backward, laughing at the absurdity of it. But it wasn’t funny in the pilot’s seat of a bomber with eight other men aboard.

  Adding to their plight, Monteverde and Spencer couldn’t trust their instruments. The B-17’s altimeter measured the plane’s altitude above sea level, not above ground level. If the ground beneath their wings rose sharply, as it often did near the Greenland coast, the altimeter would be no help.

  Monteverde and Spencer knew they had to act fast. One option would be to turn the PN9E back toward the water. But they were in the airmen’s equivalent of a polar bear’s den: any movement might wake the beast. With no idea of their altitude, the B-17 might be only a few feet above the ice cap. If Monteverde banked too hard to make the turn, he might dip the wing far enough to make contact with the ground, destroying their plane and putting them in mortal danger. Another option was to pull back hard on the control stick to gain altitude, but that wasn’t much better. The big bomber would need time for that, and there was no telling how much room they had dead ahead—the glacier might rise faster than a B-17 could. A third option, the least attractive, would be to continue ahead and hope for the best, risking a nose-first rendezvous with the ice cap.

  Monteverde and Spencer faced the classic definition of a dilemma: a wrenching choice among several lousy options—turn, climb, or do nothing. Monteverde gripped the control wheel and made his choice.

  4

  THE DUCK HUNTER

  OCTOBER 2011

  WALKING DOUBLE-TIME THROUGH baggage claim at Reagan National Airport in Washington, Lou Sapienza is frazzled. Normally upbeat, Lou frisks himself like a man who’s misplaced a winning lottery ticket. He can’t find the address of a building in Alexandria, Virginia, where we’re supposed to meet a team of military and government officials who Lou believes hold the key to a glorious quest.

  As the president of an exploration company devoted to recovering lost military aircraft and fallen servicemen, Lou is here to propose a navigational feat about a million times more difficult than finding a suburban office building. That is, locating a small airplane and three men entombed in ice for seven decades somewhere in Greenland. His inability to find the meeting address doesn’t inspire confidence.

  Lou and I met three months ago, after I learned from an acquaintance that we had a shared interest in three American military planes lost in Greenland during World War II. When we sat down to talk, I told Lou that I was writing about the past, but I couldn’t finish the story without following his planned expedition.

  “If I’m gonna work with a writer,” Lou said then, “why shouldn’t I work with the guy who wrote that great book about mountain climbing—what’s his name? Jon Krakauer?”

  “You’re right,” I said. “You should work with Krakauer. Into Thin Air is a great book. But Krakauer isn’t here. I’m here.”

  Lou smiled, and that was that.

  Today I’m supposed to be along for the ride, a silent observer recording what happens, good or bad, when Lou requests government funding. And yet I’m determined to go with Lou to Greenland, and I’d hate to see the hopes of three heroes’ families, Lou’s dream, and my book plans collapse because of a missed meeting. I tear a sheet of paper from my notebook and give Lou the address.

  We hustle outside the airport to hail a cab. As we approach our destination, I realize that Lou’s waiting for me to pay the fare. I reach into my wallet and wonder if I should have found him Krakauer’s phone number.

  WE’RE USHERED INTO a nondescript conference room at the U.S. Department of Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office, or DPMO. Established in 1993, DPMO’s job is “to limit the loss or capture of Americans who are serving abroad, and to bring home those who are captured or killed while serving our country.”

  For someone seeking help, guidance, and financial support to find a missing World War II plane and three lost airmen, a visit to DPMO is mandatory. Lou has yet to bring home anyone killed or missing in action, but he’s been describing his plans to folks at DPMO and similar agencies for years by phone, e-mail, and personal contacts. He’s finally earned a full-blown meeting, to pitch what he has in mind.

  Waiting for us is a cast worthy of a television drama series: two army lieutenant colonels, two government historians, a forensic anthropologist, and three Coast Guard officers. One of the Coasties is a commander, one is a lieutenant commander, and the third is a senior chief petty officer. Call the TV show CSI: MIA. President Obama’s photo watches over the table from a far wall, and the American flag and a black-and-white POW/MIA banner stand nearby.

  The meeting starts immediately. Lou seems nervous, caffeinated, or both. He’s fifty-nine years old and six feet tall, a large man with a big presence. He has no interest in sports yet carries himself with the rolling gait of a former athlete. He has thick features that suit him, lively blue-gray eyes behind metal-rim glasses, and wavy silver hair that’s long enough to curl onto the top of his collar. Lou’s voice is loud, with an adenoidal New Jersey accent. He’s garrulous and affable, his default posture somewhere between undaunted and windmill-tilting.

  LOU SAPIENZA IN GREENLAND IN 2010. (COURTESY OF LOU SAPIENZA.)

  Seated at the head of an oblong table, Lou looks ill at ease in a blue blazer and a red tie. Still, surrounded by uniforms and suits, he’s glad that he decided against his first choice of meeting-wear: a khaki explorer’s shirt, complete with epaulets, last in style when Stanley went to Africa. “I thought it might be a bit much,” he whispered to me earlier.

  Lou thanks everyone for coming and passes out folders with DVDs, photos, maps, and documents about his New York–based exploration company, North South Polar Inc., and his nonprofit organization, the Fallen American Veterans Foundation. The folders include colorful embroidered patches four inches in diameter that celebrate Lou’s dreamed-of mission. Woven with green, gold, blue, and white thread, the patches feature a sketch of the Grumman Duck in profile, the dates 1942 and 2012, and a red X on a map of Greenland. The military men at the table, their uniforms bristling with ribbons and stripes for battles already fought, missions already accomplished, seem unlikely to affix Lou’s patches onto their sleeves.

  Lou explains that he is seeking DPMO’s blessing and financial support to find Grumman Duck serial number V1640, excavate it from thirty to fifty feet of ice, and bring home whatever remains of the plane and its occupants. While he’s at it, Lou says, he’d like support to find a second plane also presumed to be under Greenland’s ice. That plane, a C-53 cargo carrier with five men aboard, went down twenty-four days before the Duck, a crash that indirectly set the Duck on its fateful path. Also, although the chances seem slim, Lou wouldn’t rule out finding a third plane: a B-17 bomber that crashed while searching for the C-53 cargo plane.

  Lou doesn’t realize it, but it’s clear to me that his audience needs a scorecard to keep track. The simplest way would be to explain the crashes chronologically and in relation to one another. Something like this: Lou hopes to find a C-53 cargo plane that crashed on November 5, 1942, with five men aboard; a B-17 bomber, which was sent to search for the missing cargo plane, that crashed four days later with nine men aboard; and, most of all, a Grumman Duck that crashed on November 29, 1942, with three men aboard, one of whom was a crewman on the B-17. Lou also might have explained that ten American servicemen remain u
naccounted for: five from the C-53; the two-man crew of the Duck; two members of the B-17 crew, one of whom was aboard the Duck when it crashed; and one from a failed rescue mission by motorsled.

  Deepening the confusion, Lou wanders to other ideas and dreams, ignoring questions from skeptics around the table. As Lou’s presentation meanders onward, his audience grows distracted. Several exchange furtive glances, while others keep their heads down and shuffle through the information packages. Lou sallies forth.

  Leading the meeting for DPMO is Lieutenant Colonel James McDonough of the U.S. Army; he is soft-spoken but all business, his tiny bristles of hair at full attention, his muscular frame snug in a desert camouflage uniform. McDonough repeatedly tries to steer Lou back on track and to lower his expectations.

  “I applaud your effort,” McDonough says. But money is limited, the POW/MIA caseload is daunting, and the goal is to clear cases—that is, to find bodies—quickly, efficiently, and economically. It’s evident that McDonough considers Lou’s plan to be the opposite: slow, inefficient, and expensive.

  McDonough is being realistic out of necessity. More than eighty-three thousand U.S. military personnel are “unaccounted for,” an overwhelming majority from World War II. Most will never be found—particularly those lost at sea—so the government prefers to shoot fish in barrels rather than chase wild geese, or Ducks, as the case may be.

  McDonough tells Lou, “The ones that are easiest to crack usually take priority over the others.” One reason is that time is of the essence. DPMO tries to repatriate the remains of missing soldiers, seamen, and airmen while immediate family members are still alive to see them laid to rest.

  As a wall clock loudly ticks, hovering over the discussion is the question of money. With military budgets stretched by wars and slimmed by spending cuts, the phrase du jour in the MIA world is “ratio of cost to recoveries.” Because of complicated logistics and difficult climate and terrain in Greenland, Lou’s unfunded budget exceeds $1 million. McDonough says that might cover thirty searches of European farms and forests, where plenty of World War II–era soldiers and airmen remain unaccounted for. In other words, the price tag alone makes the odds against Lou at least thirty-to-one with this crowd.