B29 Kee Bird

If you try to accomplish something, sometimes you succeed, sometimes you don’t.
If you don’t try, you never succeed.

Earlier thread on this here…
http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?93056-Current-status-of-the-quot-Kee-Bird-quot-B-29-Superfortress

The APU was original B-29 equipment. It had to be installed and had to be running to power the hydraulic motor that runs the brakes. It would have to be running for taxi, take off and landing. Starting the engines can be done with a ground unit but it makes no difference. They would have had to use the APU anyhow. The problem, and where the mistake was made, was the failure of the APU fuel pump. Unable to use the regular APU gas tank, somebody suspended a fuel can over the APU and ran a fuel line down to the APU. Bouncing around on the ice during taxi caused the gas can to fall onto the hot APU (it had to be running, no way around it) and the fire started. The rest is history.

Are you aware there was two versions of the Kee Bird Documentary ? and the one currently shown was edited to include the 2nd attempt and failure
I have seen both and that would give the impression that Darryl had underestimated the job BUT here was the original scenario
The original was called the Treasure of the Humboldt Glacier
The team had a Huey Helicopter as well as the Caribou !, the Huey was going to do the shuttle run with under slung loads leaving the Caribou free for the Big stuff But they had technical issues with the Huey which took them over a week to try and fix but in the end the Huey was abandoned,

By the time the Caribou Kee Bird II finally got to the site they were already 2 weeks late in the program.

The Caribou then had to not only fly the planned large items i.e. engines & bulldozer, but all the kit the Huey was going to be shuttling between the site and Thule Air force Base.
So again this caused the delays in the program (when you see B29 Frozen in Time this has been condensed so it looks like the chaps, arrive on time and are working slow n steady but in reality their window of opportunity was closing fast !)
Again in the original when Rick Kreig (Chief Engineer) went sick there was no one with his experience able to fill the breech so effectively all work stopped on the B29 for a number of days to give Rick some rest, Ultimately the Caribou threw a cylinder and it was game over.

The original film finished with the Caribou landing on 1 engine at Thule and the footnote that Rick had sadly died.
The following year after it was reported in Flypast the Kee Bird had been destroyed.

The ‘Edited’ version B29 Frozen in Time was shown on the TV. Its not clear why Darryl had come back early to attempt the take off on Ice the B29 was 90% ready to fly and one would assume the new team would arrive after the snow had gone in the ‘summer’.

At the end of the day the B29 sat on the Glacier for 40 years, the USAF had no use for it, to chop and ship out I don’t think was an option so Darryl and the chaps had a dream and they went a long way to fulfilling the dream.

But the APU was a big mistake it was installed on that second mission to provide electrical power to start the engines as they didn’t have a operational Ground Power Unit ! and as we saw the APU broke loose and burst into flames, I don’t doubt if they waited to the summer, no APU and the 4000ft of runways they would have made it
Regards
Mike

Not here for pointing fingers, but to provide a book tip. ‘Hunting Warbirds’ by Carl Hoffman offers very good insight in the operation, written by an outsider who went along to Greenland.

I have seen this several times.

Finally came to the conclusion that Darryl Greenameyer was an egotistical idiot. He underestimated the task involved, he tried to do it on the cheap and cost peoples lives in doing so.

The project could have been tackled in so many different ways – the way he did it would have been the last option on the list.

Terrible waste.

Arc

I use this for the last case study when I teach Human Factors for Aircraft Maintenance!!

There are so many lessons to learn from it and I hope by doing so I am paying a bit back to
the guy who worked himself to death.

Very sad outcome – both for the AMT and a rare aircraft!!

Truc

So near yet so far. I felt really sorry for the mechanic that died.

It is a great little film if you know where to press ‘stop’…worth watching just to see the caribou footage and also for those with any engineering experience to chuckle at the guy hanging off the 10’ bar and saying ‘click’ as they torque up the B29 prop nut !

I wish I hadn’t. I knew the outcome, but some may have not seen it before.

I don’t suppose I shall ever watch that again.

Misery heaped upon tragedy, I have not the inclination or the stamina to re-visit.