Now, in a new study in the journal
Frontiers in Earth Science
, researchers at ETH Zurich’s Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology (VAW) are coming to the conclusion that this might well be some time yet. Based on model calculations of ice flow, they estimate that the rest of the aircraft will resurface on the glacier between 2027 and 2035 – not where the wreckage has been found so far, however, but approximately one kilometre higher up.
“It is unlikely that the fuselage will reappear where the other parts emerged. This would require a much faster ice flow than expected over the last few decades,” explains Loris Compagno, who carried out the model calculation for his Master’s thesis.
Traces of the salvage operation
The researchers have come up with a plausible explanation for the distance between the past and the predicted recovery sites. “Using our model, we reconstructed where the previously discovered parts may have been located in 1947,” says Guillaume Jouvet, a researcher at the VAW. “Our calculations reveal that they probably found their way into the glacier at the spot where the Army had set up a landing strip for the recovery planes.”
Perhaps the parts that have resurfaced so far were simply too heavy for the relatively small rescue aircraft deployed for the very first salvage operation of its kind. “The engine alone weighed half a tonne,” says Compagno, who discovered the salvage operation in the course of his historical research. “That is presumably why these parts were just dumped near the landing strip.”
