{"id":54312,"date":"2026-11-15T07:03:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-15T12:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/?p=54312"},"modified":"2026-11-15T05:20:12","modified_gmt":"2026-11-15T10:20:12","slug":"army-soldiers-hauled-a-radio-off-alaskas-bomber-glacier-nearly-69-years-after-a-crashed-bombers-crew-used-it-to-send-their-final-call-for-help-and-they-first-spotted-it-in-a-hikers-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/army-soldiers-hauled-a-radio-off-alaskas-bomber-glacier-nearly-69-years-after-a-crashed-bombers-crew-used-it-to-send-their-final-call-for-help-and-they-first-spotted-it-in-a-hikers-video\/54312\/","title":{"rendered":"Army soldiers hauled a radio off Alaska’s Bomber Glacier nearly 69 years after a crashed bomber’s crew used it to send their final call for help, and they first spotted it in a hiker’s video"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Soldiers of the Army’s 59th Signal Battalion have brought back a BC-348-Q radio from the wreck of a TB-29 bomber on Bomber Glacier, Alaska. The Army told the story on November 14, a day before the 69th anniversary of the crash. The radio had sat in the ice since November 15, 1957.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the 311th Signal Command, the bomber’s crew used that radio to send their final message asking for help. Rescuers saved the survivors but left the set behind with the rest of the wreckage, where it stayed for nearly 69 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Six dead, four rescued in 1957<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The TB-29 was an Air Force bomber coming back from a routine training mission. It was heading for Elmendorf Air Force Base, now part of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, when it flew into a glacier in the Alaskan wilderness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ten men were aboard, and six of them died in the crash. Rescue crews brought out the four survivors. The wreck stayed buried in snow and ice for years, and the glacier itself later took the name Bomber Glacier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even today the site is hard to reach. The Army describes the wreckage as sitting behind a rock wall more than 6,000 feet (1,830 meters) high, in one of the roughest mountain areas of the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A radio in a hiker’s video<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The radio was a BC-348-Q built by Wells-Gardner for the Signal Corps, the branch of the Army that handles communications. Early in 2026, Captain Steven Sparks spotted it in a hiker’s personal video blog about the crashed plane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sparks commands the Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment of the 59th Signal Battalion, a unit known as the WAMCATS. He saw the set as a piece of Signal Corps history and spent months arranging a recovery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He worked with Alaska State Parks, ranger offices, the State Historian Society and the Matanuska Historic Society. All of them approved removing the radio from the state park, the Army says. The Signal Corps also ran the 1946 experiment that bounced radar off the Moon<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nine soldiers, 2,000 feet up<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

On the morning of August 10, 2026, nine soldiers set out for the glacier. With Sparks went Major Theodore Mansfield, Staff Sergeants Isaac Arnett, Marion Byrd and Jay Welch, Sergeants Stephen Engler and Skylor Maynard, and Privates First Class Connor Morgan and Colton Gotham.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first mile alone climbed 1,200 feet (366 meters). Then came 2 miles of bouldering across rough glacier runoff. After 4 more miles and another 700 feet of gain, the team set up base camp at Upper Reed Lake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From there, a 2,000-foot (610-meter) vertical climb stood between them and the summit. It took three hours of scrambling and high-angle bouldering to reach the top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

200 feet from the fuselage<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Beyond the peak lay a glacier about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) wide, with the bomber on its far side. The soldiers used climbing rope to lower their gear and themselves onto the ice, then crossed to the wreck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They found the radio about 200 feet (61 meters) north of the main fuselage. An Army photo shows a soldier holding the set on the glacier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A soldier with the 59th Signal Battalion holds the BC-348-Q Signal Corps radio on Bomber Glacier, Alaska, on Aug. 10, 2026. (Photo: U.S. Army \/ Staff Sgt. Nicolas Cholula)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The heavy set went onto a wild game sled. The team dragged it back across the glacier and up a slick blue-ice slope of about 60 degrees. Then they hoisted it over the lip of the mountain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Soldiers
Soldiers pull an orange sled across Bomber Glacier, Alaska, during Operation Frozen Recovery in August 2026. (Photo: U.S. Army \/ Staff Sgt. Nicolas Cholula)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Soldiers took turns carrying it down to base camp. They arrived at sunset, just as heavy fog cut visibility to zero.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Black Hawk below the fog<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

On August 11, the group hiked 1 mile from camp and set up a landing zone at 4,400 feet (1,341 meters) above sea level. The 207th Aviation Regiment of the Alaska Army National Guard sent a helicopter to pick them up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With thick, low fog over the mountains, the UH-60L Black Hawk flew nap-of-the-earth, hugging the terrain under the cloud ceiling, to reach the landing zone. It loaded the soldiers and the radio and flew them back to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alaska’s ice has carried surprises before, from a 2,500-pound glacier block flown out by helicopter in 1977<\/a> to the landslide that sent a tsunami up Tracy Arm fjord<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The radio’s next home goes unnamed<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Army account stops at the return to the base. It does not say where the radio will be kept or shown, or whether anyone will try to restore it. Its condition after decades on the glacier is not described either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nor does it name the crew members of 1957 or explain why the bomber hit the glacier. Sparks wrote the account of Operation Frozen Recovery<\/a> for the 311th Signal Command. It went up on DVIDS on November 14, with photos of the recovery<\/a> by Staff Sergeant Nicolas Cholula.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo: U.S. Army \/ Staff Sgt. Nicolas Cholula<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Soldiers of the Army’s 59th Signal Battalion have brought back a BC-348-Q radio from the wreck of a TB-29 bomber … <\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":54309,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"eco_video_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending-news","resize-featured-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54313,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54312\/revisions\/54313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}