Author(s): Mitchell Zuckoff

Military/War

On November 5, 1942, a U.S. cargo plane on a routine flight slammed into the Greenland Ice Cap. Four days later, the B-17 assigned to the search-and-rescue mission became lost in a blinding storm and also crashed. Miraculously, all nine men on the B-17 survived. With the weather worsening, the U.S. military launched a daring rescue mission, sending a Grumman Duck amphibious plane to find the men. After picking up one member of the B-17 crew, the Duck flew into a severe storm, and the plane and the three men aboard vanished. In this thrilling, true-life adventure, Mitchell Zuckoff offers a spellbinding account of these harrowing crashes and the fate of the survivors and their would-be saviors. Full of evocative detail, "Frozen in Time" brings their extraordinary ordeal vividly into focus-a fight to stay alive and sane through 148 days of a brutal Arctic winter. Zuckoff takes us deep into the most hostile environment on earth and into the snow caves and tail section of the broken B-17, where the soldiers took refuge from subzero temperatures, hurricane-force winds, and vicious blizzards. He places us at the center of a group of valiant men kept alive by sporadic military food drops until an expedition headed by famed Arctic explorer Bernt Balchen brought them to safety. But that is only part of the story that unfolds in "Frozen in Time". Moving forward to today, Zuckoff recounts the efforts of the Coast Guard and North South Polar Inc., led by an indefatigable dreamer named Lou Sapienza, who worked for years to solve the mystery of the Duck's last flight and recover the remains of its crew. Drawing on intensive research and a firsthand account of the dramatic and dangerous 2012 expedition, "Frozen in Time" is a breathtaking blend of mystery, adventure, heroism, and survival. It is also a poignant reminder of the sacrifices of our military personnel and their families - and a tribute to the important, perilous, and often overlooked work of the US Coast Guard.