Frozen Faster than Imagined

One amazing thing about the planes’ discovery is the fact that they were found buried over 80 meters deep in the ice, a depth of accumulation no one had imagined before them being found. The common scientific wisdom of the day was that ice core dating methods showed that ice accumulation supposedly happened at much lower rates than that would allow for.

Buried Twice as Fast?

As if the experts weren’t wrong enough, we’ll go on to show they got the planes’ burial rate wrong too. It took place much faster than the expected rate based on their depth. The planes were abandoned roughly 40 years before they were rediscovered. When they were found, they were 80 meters under ice and snow, indicating a rate of 2 meters per year, approximately.

Why do I say this? The following testimony is referred to twice in The Lost Squadron book, which indicates they may have been buried in half that time: “The airport manager [from Pond Inlet on Baffin Island] said they had been visible on the surface as recently as the early sixties.”1 And the second was even more specific: “They had heard reports that the planes had been seen from the air as recently as 1961.”2

If the communication to Epps and Taylor during their research about the last time the planes were observed on the surface is accurate, the Lost Squadron was still visible (to some degree) in 1961. This would mean their 80+ meter burial and the accumulation of layered ice entombing them would have needed to take place at a rate approaching or exceeding 4 meters per year.

This would mean their 80+ meter burial and the accumulation of layered ice entombing them would have needed to take place at a rate approaching or exceeding 4 meters per year.

This, of course, flies in the face of the Greenland study I mentioned in Part 1, touting estimated average rates of 1 meter of ice accumulation per year. This accrual rate also contradicts the Siberian study I mentioned that estimated an average of 857 years per meter in that environment!

A slow, steady, consistent, yearly accumulation being the norm is also problematic because the previous 20 years (prior to 1961) had not yielded any significant buildup of ice whatsoever as the planes wouldn’t have been visible.

Now, some might argue that the 1961 sighting was an error because the idea of such rapid accumulation within a short period is simply unthinkable. This could very well be. But of course, that’s what everyone thought about the planes being buried to that depth in the original 40-year or so time frame until they saw the evidence for themselves.

The Evidence Continues to Build

However, there are two further accounts given in The Lost Squadron that support the idea that rapid accumulation could and did occur that quickly. The first comes from the 1983 expedition that had discovered the location of the planes by a radar device called an Icescope but was unable to ascertain the exact depth they were buried.

The mission was abandoned because the searchers realized the planes were buried quite deeply, and they didn’t have the required equipment to attempt to excavate them. The plane’s locations were marked on the surface above them so future expeditions could locate them more easily: “Before they left the ice cap, Rajani marked the location of each P-38 with empty fuel drums and erected a twenty-foot metal tower over one of the B-17s.”3

However, when another group arrived only two years later, they were in for a surprise.

The HART expedition landed on the ice cap on September 11, 1985. . . . Finding the tower, they agreed, was their first objective, since it was supposed to be located over a B-17, the largest target. . . . Nine days later . . . Cox sliced into the snow and hit the tip of the tower at a depth of six inches.4

From that quotation, we see documented proof that snow accumulated at a rate of approximately 3 meters per year. For those wondering if this was just puffy powder, note that the fellow used a chain saw to dig into the surface, and one can see pictures of men digging out the tower from hardened ice in the book. Everyone agrees that ice layers get compressed over time and assumes it happens slowly, but rapid deposition of snow into ice in a very short time has been confirmed.

The second account showing rapid deposition of snow and ice occurred just one year later, when the next expedition came to find the planes. Having removed the metal tower over the B-17 during their investigation, the former group had replaced it with another marker: “Epps had learned that a twenty-foot wooden post had been left standing over one of the B-17s. On the evening of the second day, Taylor found it. It was sticking six inches above the ice cap.”5

Although its discoverer reasoned the post must have been anchored into the ground perhaps half its height, “Taylor didn’t want to think what it would mean if even ten feet of snow had fallen annually over more than forty years.”6

Here, we can clearly see that what the recoverers of Glacier Girl presupposed prior to the investigation was far different from reality. Their presuppositions were based on the general knowledge of slow and steady concepts promoted by the scientific community.

“Slow and Steady” Assumptions Fail

Scientists previously assumed that snow and ice accumulated annually at consistent, slow, and steady rates. Similarly, scientists describe sedimentary rock layers being formed at a rate of one or two layers per year and then extrapolate that to give various dates of massive layers being deposited over thousands and even millions of years.

Just like the Lost Squadron has demonstrated ice core dating to be wildly inaccurate, specific events and evidence in modern geology have shown that the idea of finely layered rock deposited over hundreds of thousands of years is faulty as well.

The idea of catastrophism (i.e., large, catastrophic flood-like events) occurring in earth history was highly mocked in the past, especially against Bible-believing scientists who were arguing for rapid rock deposition occurring at the time of Noah’s flood rather than over millions of years.

However, when Mt. St. Helens blew its top in 1980, the pyroclastic flow generated from one of the eruptions provided an example of 16 feet of finely layered, sedimentary rock having formed in only three hours. These rock layers demonstrated that solid rock can form in the right conditions very rapidly indeed.

Fossilized trees, found upright through what geologists estimate as hundreds of thousands of years of slowly deposited rock, also demonstrated that these trees must have been buried very quickly indeed.

Even long-age-believing geologists like Derek Ager have admitted as much.

We cannot escape the conclusion that sedimentation was at times very rapid indeed. . . . If one estimates the total thickness of the British Coal Measures as about 1000 m, laid down in about 10 million years, then, assuming a constant rate of sedimentation, it would have taken 100,000 years to bury a tree 10 m high, which is ridiculous.7

These examples have resulted in a massive overhaul in the field of geology by some. Many modern geologists now frequently argue for rapid deposition of rock layers occurring in the past, a huge contrast to the old slow and steady paradigm.

Of course, this also extends to the idea of how fossils must have formed: If rock can form quickly, then fossils buried with them must form rapidly as well. Quick fossil formation has also been admitted now because scientists observed it happening within hours.

Fossilization is a process that can take anything from a few hours to millions of years. . . . The amount of time that it takes for a bone to become completely permineralized is highly variable. If the groundwater is heavily laden with minerals in solution, the process can happen rapidly.8

Despite these paradigm-breaking scientific discoveries, commonly held presuppositions, based on what they learned and absorbed in their education and combined with popular media, tend to shape people’s beliefs in many areas of life as well.

Assumptions in Fact and Fiction

To illustrate these presuppositions, let me diverge from our discussion of the Lost Squadron to talk about another example: none other than the Sentinel of Liberty himself, the fictional, legendary comic book hero, Captain America. (For those of you rolling your eyes right now, I promise you there’s a tie in here—just be patient). For those unfamiliar, the Captain America character first appeared in comics in 1941, the year before the Lost Squadron was ditched on the ice in Greenland.

Now, the similarities between these two WW2 legends (one real, one fictional) extend even further. When the brilliant comic book creator and writer Stan Lee decided he wanted to include Captain America in the lineup of The Avengers in 1964, he had to explain how the character could have been preserved for so long.

The explanation? The Avengers found the star-spangled man frozen in a block of ice and retrieved it, and the hero was revived to fight another day! A version of this scene (albeit in a modified form) was included in the Captain America movie released in 2011.

In the opening scene, government agents looking for the aircraft that Captain America was forced to ditch into the Arctic in WW2 discover the plane sticking out of the ice. After cutting a hole through the hull, they descend into it and discover the colorful hero’s body, thaw him out, and bring him back to life for future adventures.

OK, so the parallel is the two fighters from WW2, trapped in ice, later discovered, retrieved, and revived to fight another day. Got it. But what else? The presuppositions. In both cases, none of the characters (whether factual or fictional) expected the aircraft involved to be buried anywhere near 80 meters into the ice!

As a matter of fact, in the Captain America movie, one of the government agents asks why the huge aircraft hadn’t been seen before, and the character he’s speaking to makes the throwaway comment that the surface of the ice is always changing. Yes, the surface is changing, but there is no indication that anyone believed the plane would have been completely buried tens of meters down in less than a hundred years.

Of course, the true and factual legend of the Lost Squadron had been known for about 30 years by the time the Captain America movie was written and came out, but paradigms in science and culture often change very slowly. Even in fiction.

Rapid Burial Objections Debunked

The discovery of the Lost Squadron being buried so deeply was disconcerting to many, especially Bible skeptics and those who promote the concept of long ages and the story of evolution. These skeptics have proposed that the planes were perhaps not buried by the deposition of snow and ice, but rather, the planes sunk to the depth they did by slowly melting through it. To further prove this argument, students are sometimes shown an experiment where a weighted wire is sunk through a block of ice, and as the water refreezes, the cut will “heal.”

One can see experiments like this demonstrated on various websites and YouTube videos, such as The Wonder of Science website, where they describe the experiment this way: “In this experiment . . . a copper wire and fishing string are attached to weights and placed over a block of ice. An increase in pressure causes the ices to melt below the wire and freeze after.”9

The problem with this comparison is the environment of the experiment. The experiment is conducted at room temperature, which allows the wire to conduct heat from the air. The combination of air temperature and the weighted wire explains why the ice is sliced.

The same experiment done in a freezer would not yield the same result because the wire would become as cold as everything else in that environment. This is analogous to the Lost Squadron planes because as soon as they were covered to any significant degree, they would not conduct any heat whatsoever.

The planes were found in the same formation and pronation they had been abandoned in, demonstrating they had indeed been buried by, rather than sunk into, the ice.

Another clue that demonstrates this type of “sinking” mechanism was not involved in their burial is the planes were found in their natural landing position. Planes are designed with their front ends heavier than their back end. If the planes were to have sunk through the ice, they should have been found in a nosedive position, which is what happens when a plane loses power while flying.

Yet the planes were found in the same formation and pronation they had been abandoned in, demonstrating they had indeed been buried by, rather than sunk into, the ice.

Join us for Part 3 where we’ll discuss why even strong evidence such as this is no silver bullet in the arguments surrounding the origins debate. However, we’ll demonstrate how biblical creation has a far better explanation for related topics such as the ice age and how ice cores could have formed very rapidly rather than the long age, evolutionary interpretation.