The crash site itself

Saturday, 18 June 2011 23:55

The crash occurred at approximately 4 am of November 1st 1946 when the B-17 ran head-on into the top of the Aiguille des Glaciers some 12,000 feet above sea level. This rocky pyramid on the south-western shoulder of Mont Blanc marks the border between Italy and France and is covered by two glaci

ers – the Estelette, on the Italian side, and the Glacier des Glaciers on the French side. As its bulk diminishes with altitude, it would appear that the crew never saw it, otherwise evasive action could have been taken. This suggests that both the aircraft and the mountaintop were in clouds.

Edoardo Pennard, a boy living in Courmayeur at the time alleges that he heard the crash and saw the flames but also states that the bad weather and heavy snowfalls made it impossible to climb the glacier until many days later. When a search party finally reached the glacier, it was under deep snow and no sign of the crash was then visible.

During the 1970’s, some 30 years after the accident, it was Pennard himself who discovered one of the propellers for the first time during an excursion, lodged between some rocks about 60 metres from the top of the Aiguille.