Crash Site Recovery

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Lore & Background

The C-124 departed McChord Air Base in Washington state en route to Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage, Alaska, with a crew of 11 and 41 Army and Air Force men. Around 4pm, a distress call was received by the pilot of a Northwest Orient Airlines passenger aircraft. The reception was very poor, but the Northwest captain made out the sentence: "As long as we have to land, we might as well land here." Weather near Elmendorf was severe with heavy clouds, dense fog, and swirling snow. The C-124 was flying without visual references, using just altitude, a radio beacon, and a stopwatch. There was no further communication and it failed to arrive as scheduled. The wreckage was found on November 28, 1952, on the south side of Mount Gannett by Terris Moore from the Fairbanks Civil Air Patrol and Lieutenant Thomas Sullivan from the 10th Air Rescue Squadron. They spotted the tail section sticking out of the snow at about 8,100 feet, close to the summit. Moore told journalists the C-124 "obviously was flying at full speed" and appeared to have slid down the cliffs and exploded. Moore surmised the pilot had narrowly missed other peaks during his approach: "From this I conclude he was on instrument, flying blind, and probably crashed without any warning whatsoever to him directly into the southerly face of Mt. Gannett."

In Their Own Story

On June 9, 2012, the crew of an Alaska Army National Guard helicopter on a training mission noticed a large yellow survival raft on the surface of the Colony Glacier above Inner Lake George. The site was nearly 14 miles from the 1952 crash location. The National Guard sent a team on foot and retrieved items identified as being from the crashed C-124. On June 13, 2012, Deputy Chief Rick Stone, J-2 Intelligence Directorate at the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, was assigned to investigate. On June 28, 2012, the US military announced the discovery of the wreckage. After discovery, Operation Colony Glacier was established for recovery of remains and personal effects. The initial recovery was taken over by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command. On June 18, 2014, after two seasons of operations, the Department of Defense announced that remains of 17 victims had been identified and would be returned to families. By 2019, the number increased to 40. At the conclusion of the 2022 effort, ten years after recovery began, remains of 41 service members had been retrieved and identified. As of June 2025, that number was 49. On January 7, 2026, the U.S. Department of War announced that all 52 service members' remains had been identified.

Reader's Guide

The recovery operation, Operation Colony Glacier, has continued on an annual basis, led by Alaskan Command. The annual effort occurs during a small time window each summer. The debris field was identified miles from the crash site in 2012, and since then, recovery efforts have been conducted each year. The 2012 rediscovery of the remains at the foot of Colony Glacier, where it enters Lake George, suggests the actual crash location was a little further north on the Mount Gannett ice field, sufficient for debris to be carried 12 miles down the north-flowing Colony Glacier over 60 years. Moore reported finding blood on a blanket and noted the "sickly-sweet smell of death" at the site. Sullivan noted recovery would be very difficult as the glacier was already covered by fresh snow eight feet deep. Near the remains, drifted snow was piled up to hundreds of feet. The crash had also triggered avalanches that further buried the remains. Because of the difficult conditions, the recovery effort was terminated after a week and victims' families were told they would have no remains to bury. The debris was then covered by snow and ice, lost for the next 60 years until the 2012 discovery.

Did You Know?

• The C-124 crash on Mount Gannett was only the second fatal accident for the C-124, and was by far the worst at the time.
• Terris Moore, who spotted the wreckage, was a mountaineer and pilot as well as president of the University of Alaska.
• The debris was carried 12 miles down the north-flowing Colony Glacier over 60 years before being rediscovered in 2012.
• On January 7, 2026, the U.S. Department of War announced that all 52 service members' remains had been identified.
• The 1952 crash was the fourth-worst accident involving a Douglas C-124 overall.