A team of military searchers, anthropologists and mountaineers is once again trying to turn back the clock on the crash of a C-124 Globemaster cargo plane that slammed into a mountainside above Southcentral Alaska's Colony Glacier in 1952.
Everyone aboard the aircraft died in the crash. Most were on their way to duty stations across the state, in the midst of the Cold War. But the glacier that swallowed the wreckage in the wake of the crash has recently been giving up its grim possessions.
The wreckage, first spotted six days after the plane went down on Nov. 22, 1952, was quickly hidden by the shifting glacier, located about 50 miles east of Anchorage. At the time, military officials deemed the area too dangerous for any recovery efforts. Decades went by, and 60 years later, in 2012, an Alaska Army National Guard helicopter pilot spotted the debris, brought to the surface by the glacier's constant movement.