WB-29 44-62214 "Lady of the Lake"

Boeing WB-29 44-62214 "Lady of the Lake" Eielson AFB, Alaska.

History:
B-29 Superfortress 44-62214 entered service with the United States Army Air Force in 1944, one of almost 4,000 of Boeing’s state of the art World War Two heavy bombers to roll off the production line. The Superfortress was later converted to a long-range weather reconnaissance aircraft, redesignated WB-29. Secretly she flew between Alaska and Japan, detecting evidence of Soviet nuclear testing in 1949. Lady of the Lake was the aircraft that detected the first evidence of Soviet atomic testing in 1949 – despite the US belief at the time that the Red Army was decades behind in nuclear weapons technology. But after she was damaged beyond economical repair in a ground accident 1954, 44-62214 became a hangar queen and was cannibalised for parts.

There’s no known record of the aircraft being towed from storage at Eielson AFB to its watery grave nearby, but it’s likely that the move took place in 1955 or 1956. Of course, the result is the same: the last surviving example of a WB-29 model Superfortress, which detected a landmark Cold War event, abandoned in a flooded Alaskan gravel pit.


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FAIRBANKS — A recent survey of Eielson Air Force Base’s Lady of the Lake confirmed that the aircraft had a noteworthy history in the air before it was abandoned to its gravel pit lake grave.

Work by about a dozen divers from Eielson and Fort Wainwright confirmed earlier this month that when she was airworthy, the Lady of the Lake was the specific aircraft that detected evidence of Soviet atomic testing in 1949, the first aircraft to do this.

Most residents and visitors to Eielson Air Force Base know the Lady of the Lake as a specter of a plane. It’s a B-29 Superfortress built during WWII that’s mostly submerged in a small lake off Transmitter Road. All that’s visible from the surface is one wing, the lattice front of the fuselage and a portion of the vertical stabilizer. The latter feature is covered in contemporary bullet holes and bumper stickers.

Because it’s a landmark the aircraft has attracted numerous stories, some of them true, Eielson base historian Jack Waid said.

Before this month’s survey, Waid had heard anecdotally that the Lady of the Lake was aircraft 44-62214, the aircraft that was the first to detect Soviet testing.

“There was only hearsay, there was only people saying ‘yes,’” Waid said.

An alternate theory was the Lady of the Lake was a KB-29 re-fueler with a less interesting service record, he said.

Upon entering the aircraft this month, divers found what Waid considers conclusive proof of the plane’s identity. Divers recovered a radio-operator’s table that had been written on with wax pencil and preserved below the surface of the water. The writing included a skull and crossbones drawing and names of different crew members. Most importantly it included the serial number: 44-62214.

While this month’s survey helps confirm the identity of the The Lady of the Lake, the details of how it ended up in the lake remain sketchy.

The plane was one of almost 4,000 B-29’s built during and shortly after World War II. It’s the same type of aircraft as the Enola Gay, which dropped an American atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

After the war, the Lady of the Lake was one of a subset of B-29s reconfigured as WB-29s with a joint mission of flying through storms to collect weather data and searching for evidence of Soviet nuclear testing.

It was assigned to the 58th Weather Reconnaissance Squadron at Eielson Air Force Base, and in 1949 it was flying between Alaska and Japan when it detected radioactive fallout from “Joe 1,” the Soviet’s Union’s first nuclear weapon test. The mission surprised U.S. leaders who thought the Soviets were years behind in nuclear technology.

The Lady of the Lake didn’t crash in the gravel pit lake. The conventional wisdom was it was intentionally placed there for water rescue training. Waid estimates it was probably placed sometime between 1954 and 1956 when the WB-29 became obsolete. But the document trail on that is frustratingly empty.

“I have the base papers (newspapers) from the time period, and there’s nothing. There’s nothing that talks about this move of a very large aircraft, which is very surprising,” Waid said.

This month’s dive did find an “A-frame apparatus” that appears to have been a tool for water rescue training, he said.

It took about year to prepare for this month’s dive. Waid’s hoping it will lead to further survey work on the aircraft. He has high expectations.

“I have a feeling she may very well be a time capsule full of information. My thought was if they’ll throw a B-29 in an abandoned gravel pit, what will they have put in her bomb bays?”

Waid is looking for oral history about the Lady of the Lake, especially from anyone who may have historical photos of the aircraft or its transfer to the gravel pit. He invites people to call him at