Three Down

In long flights over the desolate Arctic, the Army's big Alaska-based B-29s were writing a new textbook on polar flying. Last week they scribbled a new chapter in a hurry.

Somewhere over Greenland the giant Kee Bird lost its bearings, plunged down to a crash landing on a frozen lake. For three days the eleven-man crew sat it out, tapping out signals on a gasoline-powered radio. When a C-54 skimmed in for the rescue it was so cold that the pilot, Lieutenant Bobbie Joe Cavnar, never dared stop his engines.

By the time his rocket flasks had boosted the overloaded transport--with all the Kee Bird's crew--into the air, another Superfort was in trouble, 2,000 miles away. A last message placed it over Alaska's famed Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. Then it vanished, with a crew of 13.

Out went the rescue planes again--Superforts and tiny amphibians. But before the crash had been located, a rescuing B-29 blazed up from an engine fire near Naknak. Unable to check the flames, the crew bailed out. All but one were promptly picked up by civilian search planes.

This week, with three down and two rescued, the Army was still looking for the wreckage and crew of Number Two.

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