Article and Photograph by, Theresa Koch

The Lady of the Lake they call her. It is a strange feeling indeed to walk upon this old weather reconnaissance model aircraft submerged in the water out in the middle of the forest. It makes one wonder as to why she sits out here in this pond in the Alaskan wilderness. So I did a little research and this is the story of "THE LADY OF THE LAKE"!

The Lady was of the last of the WB-29 left here at Eielson A.F.B. after being stripped of all her useful parts that were needed to keep the rest of the fleet flying at the time. Between the 1950’s-1960’s it seems that spare parts were non-existent, so the plane was dropped from their inventory.

Someone thought they should use the lady for open water extraction training at the time in a small pond just a ways off the end of the runway. This was and excellent idea since most off the missions flown at that time out of Eielson were either over the North Pole or the North Pacific.

The lady was hauled out to the pond and set up in her current location. Where aircraft’s used it several times before the cold winters here interrupted training until the spring months arrived. The following spring, the water level in the pond increased to the point where no one could get into the plane, so they just abandoned the lady leaving her where she lay. And this is where she remains to this day.

Over the many years the water has taken over, now only a small portion of the aircraft remains visible. This is quite the popular site for visitors to Eielson’s airforce base I myself have walked out across the frozen pond in the winter to stand upon this aircraft. The “LADY” is located on Transmitter road just before one approaches the Alaskan railroads tracks. There she rests in the Alaskan wilderness for all to see.