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Alaskan Restoration Adventure

Gemini Sparkle

Key Takeaways:

  • Vintage aircraft collector Greg Herrick is determined to salvage a rare 1930 Sikorsky S-39C flying boat from an Alaskan lake, where it has rested since a 1958 crash.
  • Initial costly salvage attempts in 2000 and 2001 failed, first due to the plane being deeply buried in silt, and later due to unusually warm weather making the lake ice too soft for equipment.
  • Despite having already invested over $425,000 and acknowledging the endeavor is "beyond the point of reason," Herrick is planning a third attempt next spring with a specialized team and equipment, driven by his passion to restore and fly the aircraft.
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||| |—|—| | | | Greg Herrick, an avid vintage aircraft collector and founder of the Aviation Book Company, is pursuing the next great airplane for his collection-a 1930 Sikorsky S-39C flying boat. There’s just one hitch: it’s sitting on the bottom of a lake in Alaska.

When he began his quest for an S-39, Herrick found three of the airplanes, one in a museum, one in an unsalvageable heap and one that originally belonged to Victor Lenhart, who crashed it in Twin Lakes, Alaska, in 1958. But the National Park Service, which had been surveying the area at the time of the crash, rescued Lenhart and managed to scribble down the bearings of where the Sikorsky sank. In 1998, Lenhart and Herrick returned to the crash site.

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