Frozen in Time

Starred review from March 11, 2013
In this harrowing true-life adventure, journalist Zuckoff (Lost in Shangri-La) follows the crew of an American B-17 bomber that crash-landed in 1942—while searching for another downed plane—on a vast glacier in the Greenland ice cap, one of the most isolated and inhospitable places on earth. With little food or cold-weather gear and an assortment of nasty injuries, the nine airmen found themselves trapped in a field of hidden, ever-shifting crevasses that threatened to swallow up their plane and made hiking even a few yards a mortal danger. Zuckoff juxtaposes their months-long battle against hurricane-blizzards, starvation, frost-bite, gangrene and madness with equally perilous rescue attempts by sled teams and military aviators flying through gales and white-outs. (His tense first-hand account of a 2012 expedition to locate the remains of one of those rescue flights buried in 30-foot-deep ice frames the story.) Zuckoff’s gripping narrative unfolds with immediacy and verve as men in fetid snow caves and sputtering aircraft pit their dogged camaraderie and desperate, white-knuckle improvisations against the fury of an Arctic winter. Photos.

December 1, 2012

The author of the best-selling Lost in Shangri-La recounts the November 1942 crash of a U.S. cargo plane into the Greenland Ice Cap, the loss of the B-17 sent to find it, and the loss of a Grumman Duck amphibious plane that had managed to rescue one B-17 crew member. The remaining crew endured 148 days of Arctic winter before finally being rescued. With a 200,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2013
An intrepid journalist joins a real-life Arctic search team seeking details about "three American military planes that crashed in Greenland during World War II." Zuckoff's (Journalism/Boston Univ.; Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II, 2011, etc.) complex narrative involves the fates of three downed missions to Greenland in late 1942, juxtaposed with the events of the modern-day search effort, led by an exploration company in August 2012 and joined by the author. As a result of the many competing strands and characters, some confusion in the details ensues--though maps and a cast of characters are included to help orient readers. The original lost cargo plane, which contained five American servicemen, was part of the wartime Operation BOLERO's so-called Snowball Route from the U.S. to Britain; on November 5, 1942, it crashed on an ice cap near the southeast coast of Greenland. Due to terrible winter storms, the plane's radio messages grew increasingly weak, making it impossible to locate the plane for the subsequent B-17 bomber that took off days later on a rescue mission. Carrying nine crew members, the B-17 hit a whiteout and crashed into a glacier. The broken-off tail section remained intact, allowing the survivors to take shelter, but one man had already fallen through an ice bridge, another grew delusional and another had his feet frozen. In order to rescue this batch, a Grumman "Duck" plane was launched, carrying pilot John Pritchard and radioman Benjamin Bottoms; despite rescuing some of the survivors, the Duck vanished in a storm, remaining unclaimed until Lou Sapienza's expedition of 2012. Much of the blow-by-blow narrative concerns the plight of the crews, as well as the elaborate outfitting for the Duck Hunt. An exhaustively layered but exciting account involving characters of enormous courage and stamina.

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Starred review from April 15, 2013

Zuckoff (journalism, Boston Univ.; Lost in Shangri-La) has written a kind of chilly companion to his previous best-selling book on a World War II aviation disaster. During that war the strategic air route between North America and Britain had a stop in Greenland, renowned for presenting atrocious flying conditions. In November 1942, three military planes crashed on the ice cap, leaving 17 fliers huddling in the wreckage. Over the next five months, various hazardous rescue efforts were undertaken by air and ground teams. Eventually ten men were saved. Zuckoff carefully relates the terrible physiological and psychological strains that almost broke the hope and souls of those involved. He joined the recent expedition that sought to find the crashed Coast Guard amphibious plane that saved two of the men and interweaves that story with the wartime tale of stubborn frozen survival. VERDICT This tale of true heroism, human ingenuity, and sacrifice by ordinary people in the face of a bitter enemy is for anyone interested not only in World War II aviation or modern scientific techniques for locating missing aircraft, but in popular histories of real adventure. [See Prepub Alerts, 11/19/12.]--Daniel Blewett, Coll. of DuPage Lib., Glen Ellyn, IL

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2013
It sounds so implausible that you think it must be fiction: in 1942, a U.S. military cargo plane crashed in Greenland; soon after, a B-17 bomber, assigned to the rescue mission, also crashed; and, not much longer after that, a Coast Guard rescue plane carrying one of the B-17 survivors disappeared in a storm. Facts, not fiction. Nearly seven decades later, Lou Sapienza, a commercial photographer who documented an earlier effort to find lost WWII planes, put together an expedition to Greenland aimed at finding out what happened to that Coast Guard plane. Author Zuckoff tagged along, chronicling the adventures of the colorful Sapienza while also telling us, through flashbacks, the story of the survivors of the B-17 crash and their months-long ordeal to stay alive while awaiting rescue. Zuckoff, who also wrote 2011's Lost in Shangri-La (about a different but equally compelling WWII crash-and-rescue story), juggles the modern-day and historical stories adroitly, making us feel as though we are right there with the crash survivors, fighting against the bitter cold.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)