[Frode Lindgjerdet] I think we got something here.
-You see something? -[Frode] Yeah.
-[Josh Gates] What do you see? -It looks like wreckage.
[David Morris] More than 2,600 built for the Royal Navy,
but not a single one exists today.
We are at the start point of a massive project to rebuild the Barracudas.
You need to find tens of thousands of components from crashed planes...
-Yes. -...and then reassemble them.
That's right.
-That's it. You're nuts. You're officially crazy. -[chuckles]
[Archie Liggat] A guy who had been a maintenance worker here during the war,
he witnessed Barracudas being buried on the airfield.
Being buried?
So there might actually be something here?
Oh, no, there's definitely something here.
Sheet aluminum, definitely potentially aircraft material.
Metal! Right there!
-[Frode] Yeah, metal. -That's metal for sure!
This is the paint scheme on a British plane.
This is definitely aviation.
-This is a plane. -Yeah.
Ha-ha! Unbelievable.
[Josh] For Great Britain, World War II arrives by air.
The lethal German Luftwaffe
conducts relentless bombing campaigns on the island nation
as their navy stalks the waters that surround it.
To bring the fight to the Nazis,
the Brits design a new generation of planes,
including a revolutionary aircraft called the Barracuda,
the first ever all-metal carrier-based torpedo bomber.
The Barracuda has a deadly bite,
capable of carrying a game-changing 1,600-pound bomb.
The plane's greatest victory comes in April 1944,
against the Nazis' version of the Death Star,
the fiercely armored battleship Tirpitz.
It's in a daring attack, a squadron of Barracudas
managed to cripple the dreaded ship,
clearing the way for the Allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day.
After the war, as the world soars into the jet age,
most of the era's historic planes
are decommissioned and sent to museums.
But in the chaos of cleaning up the continent,
the Barracuda is overlooked.
Out of 2,600 Barracudas manufactured,
not a single plane survives today,
The bomber that helped save Europe went extinct.
At this moment, however,
a team of aviation specialists is trying to do something
that many think is impossible:
to reconstruct an entire Barracuda
using only its original parts,
right down to the very last rivet.
If they can pull it off,
they will have saved an aviation treasure,
the only one of its kind.
But to complete the world's hardest jigsaw puzzle,
they'll need to uncover long buried secrets
and scavenge ultra-rare crash sites from Scotland
to the Arctic Circle.
So join me on a mission like no other,
to raise a legendary phoenix from the ashes
and bring a hero of World War II back to life.
[Josh] The past is all around us...
Oh, this is crazy.
...a world of mystery...
-This is a plane. Ha-ha! -Yeah.
...danger...
We are about to be underwater.
Whoa!
...and adventure.
It's just straight down!
[exclaiming in fright]
I travel to the far corners of the Earth
to uncover where legends end...
[screams, laughs]
...and history begins.
Okay, let's punch it.
I'm Josh Gates,
and this is Expedition Unknown.
We are back in the United Kingdom,
non-EU edition,
and it is just as glorious as I remember it.
Rolling green fields,
a threat of rain at any moment
and, of course, very, very narrow roads.
[exclaims]
Just cut these hedges back, for the love of Churchill.
The quest to resurrect the Barracuda
begins in Somerset, England.
During the Second World War,
this beautiful countryside was home to a crucial Royal Navy base.
Today, the Navy has left, but in its old hangars stands the Fleet Air Arm Museum.
The number of priceless aircraft in here is astonishing.
It's hard to believe there could be anything missing from this collection.
But there is.
Here to tell me about a special project to bring a lost legend back to life
is curator David Morris.
-Josh, good to meet you. -Good to meet you as well.
What an awesome museum.
Let's start with that. This place is cool.
It's the biggest collection of historic naval aircraft in Europe.
We've got 103 aircraft in the collection in total...
-And a Concorde. -And a Concorde.
And while this Concorde is very cool,
it's not the plane I've come here to see.
-You wanna see the Barracuda? -I want to see the Barracuda.
You wanna see the Barracuda. Well, we're standing next to the Barracuda.
Wait. Where is the Barracuda? This is it?
This is the Barracuda. This is the Barracuda.
This is our latest project.
The Barracuda Live: The Big Rebuild.
We are at the start point of a massive project
to rebuild an aircraft which doesn't exist anywhere else in the world.
This just doesn't make sense to me
that there isn't a single one of these planes left in the world.
More than 2,600 built for the Royal Navy during World War II,
more than any other Naval type of aircraft,
but not a single one exists today,
either shot down, crashed or scrapped immediately after the war.
So the other thing to me that's mind blowing,
or if I'm being less diplomatic, crazy...
-[chuckles] -...is that you're attempting this at all.
How many individual components
would you guess were in a Barracuda?
It's got to be tens of thousands.
-Tens of thousands? -Tens of thousands.
And you need to find each and every one of those
from crashed planes...
Yup.
...and then reassemble them?
-That's right. -That's it, you're nuts.
-[chuckles] -You're officially crazy.
And if that doesn't sound hard enough, get this.
The original blueprints for the plane are also lost,
meaning engineers have to write
their own instruction manual as they rebuild.
And these are real pieces from real Barracudas?
Real pieces from real Barracudas.
-At the moment... -[chuckles]
...that is probably the best version
of a Barracuda I can show you.
[Josh] Let's scale up the model.
Meet the Fairey Aviation Barracuda,
a carrier-based three-man bomber
with a 40-foot wingspan and matching length.
The Barracuda also had numerous unique design features,
including a high wing and prominent tail elevators,
as well as an observer cabin
for the bombardier below the tail.
To be instantly identified by friendly aircraft,
the Barracuda featured not a Union Jack,
but this distinctive display of British colors.
More importantly,
the plane was powerful enough to carry heavy ordinance,
bombs weighing up to 1,600 pounds.
And it takes part in a fairly legendary operation in World War II, right?
It was used in a number of theaters of war,
not least the attack on the German battleship Tirpitz in northern Norway.
So this is a real hero of World War II?
It is. An unsung hero.
Now it just needs to be revived.
Show me how you're doing it.
-Please come this way. -Come on.
[Josh] David brings me to the workshop
where the team spends painstaking hours
salvaging the pieces they'll need
to put the Barracuda puzzle back together.
Josh, meet Will and Tony.
-Hey. -Hello.
Will, nice to meet you.
-Tony. -Hi.
-Nice to meet you, Josh. -How's it going?
What do we got going on here?
So we're disassembling this rear fuselage
from a Barracuda that crashed in Scotland.
[Josh] The Barracuda they're working with crashed in 1944,
but with some hard work,
many of its pieces can be put to good use.
The whole thing's gonna have to come apart,
and that's so that we can find...
-Every rivet? -Every rivet, every part,
so that we can find all the little tiny bits and pieces
that we can reuse in the build.
I mean, there are thousands upon thousands of rivets on the skin of this plane.
-[David chuckles] -[William] Yep.
All right. Well, don't let me hold you up.
You've got a lot of rivets to punch here.
Please.
Once the parts that can be saved have been identified,
they need to be restored before being marked for reassembly,
delicate work that happens in a machine
that the team here lovingly refers to as the Blaster,
which they let me take a crack at.
Just be ready when it goes.
Ooh, yeah. Okay.
It's like a power washer
if your goal is to take the siding clean off your house.
An abrasive aluminum oxide grit
is propelled at the metal at about 80 pounds per square inch.
Needless to say, It's important to watch your fingers.
Eat your heart out, Mike Rowe.
You've found your new career now.
This is it. I'm never leaving here.
Why do you think I'm here?
[chuckles]
Open the door.
And there's your blasted piece.
Look at that.
Like new.
The team here has plenty of work ahead,
but they have painstakingly restored a Barracuda's engine,
an immense piece of machinery known as a Merlin,
which I helped them wheel into position at the front of the plane.
-It's starting to look like a plane. -It is.
Now, in terms of parts,
do you have more than what I've seen in the workshop here?
We've got a lot more.
-You've got a lot more? -A lot more.
What's a lot?
As to the other tens of thousands of parts
in the world's most challenging Lego set,
David leads me to the nearby reserve hangar.
David, this place is a wreck.
[both chuckle]
I mean, it is a literal wreck.
This is outrageous. Is this all from Barracudas?
This is Barracuda wreckage that we're working from for the project.
Okay. If you were to take all of this material
and fuse it all back together,
could you reconstruct a Barracuda?
-No. -No.
It doesn't give us enough material to do a Barracuda.
What are the big ticket items you're missing to finish this project?
[David] Wing parts and tailplane parts.
[Josh] To find those, they need more Barracudas,
and they've been hard at work
in researching where to locate them.
We have a lead at the moment on one
that could actually be a Barracuda wreck
that we would dearly like to explore further.
I'd be happy to go look at it for you.
That sounds great, but that's easier said than done.
It's in a challenging place?
Very much so.
Perfect.
For David's team, this is clearly a labor of love
as they honor an unsung hero of World War II.
Me? I've just been drafted.
While David continues to supervise the rebuild,
I'm being dispatched to hunt for a Barracuda,
eight hours to the north, in St. Andrews, Scotland.
St. Andrews is an idyllic seaside town
that's world famous as the ancestral home of the sport of golf.
And for the sake of our ratings, I will not be golfing.
It ain't pretty.
Instead, I drive outside of town
and pull over near a lonely ruin
standing in the middle of empty farmland.
Here to explain how this is going to help
our search for Barracuda parts,
is a true aviation expert,
former Royal Air Force jet pilot Archie Liggat.
-Archie! -Josh.
-Beautiful weather. -Oh, fantastic.
Welcome to Scotland. [chuckling]
Yeah, exactly. What else would you expect?
All right, Archie, why have you marched me
all the way out here in this field? Where are we?
Well, Josh, this may look like just farmland,
but once upon a time, this was a big, busy airbase.
You can see an old control tower behind us.
-[Josh] This was a control tower? -Control tower here.
So back in 1946, this place would have been reverberating
with the noise of big aero engines.
So what was this place?
Well, this place was initially Royal Air Force Dunino...
Okay. And there would have been Barracudas out here?
Oh, definitely Barracudas here.
Many types of aircraft here.
-Yeah? -Yeah, but mostly Barracudas.
So why are we here?
What's this story that there might be something here?
-Back in the 1980s... -Uh-huh.
...I met a guy called Johnny Paul,
who had been a maintenance worker here during the war.
-Okay. -And Johnny confided to me
that he witnessed Barracudas being buried on the airfield.
-Being buried? -Being buried. Yeah.
[Josh] This airfield was once teeming with Barracudas,
but after the war, the Navy decommissioned and disassembled them,
discreetly burying the parts
along with other military surplus,
on the grounds of the airfield.
And maintenance worker Jonny Paul witnessed everything.
And did anybody notice him watching that?
-Oh, he did. He was arrested, yeah. -He was arrested?
He was arrested by the military police
and told he must never tell anyone about this.
-Wow. -Yeah.
So where did he tell you it was buried?
It happened right close to a cluster of maintenance hangars.
Okay. So how do we figure out where that was?
Well, it's not gonna be easy,
but I think the best way would be from the air.
-From above? -I think so.
You got a plane around here somewhere?
-We got a helicopter. -That'll do.
Our ride is waiting nearby
to give us a bird's-eye view of Dunino Airfield.
Let's rock and roll.
The pilot gets light on the skids and we lift off,
determined to scour this forgotten terrain for a buried Barracuda.
Hundreds of feet above farmland outside St. Andrews, Scotland,
pilot Archie Liggat and I are looking for evidence of a burial.
At the end of World War II,
a maintenance worker named Johnny Paul
claimed to witness the disposal
of several legendary British bombers known as Barracudas
after they were decommissioned.
Not one Barracuda survives today,
so resurrecting one would mean
saving a priceless aviation treasure.
[Josh speaking]
[Archie speaking]
[Josh speaking]
[Archie speaking]
[Josh speaking]
[Archie speaking]
[Josh] With our historic bearings established,
we fly to the area described by the former maintenance worker.
At the edge of the old airfield,
Archie notices some very unusual topography.
[Josh speaking]
[Archie speaking]
[Josh] We return to earth near the mysterious bump.
To find out what's underground,
I've called in an old friend, who happens to be a local,
geophysicist Dickie Bates.
Dickie Bates.
Oh, Josh.
[Josh chuckles] How are you, man?
-Great, Josh. Great to see you. -Aw, good to see you.
-Good man. -This is Archie Liggat.
-Hello, Archie, how you doing? -How are you doing?
-This is Richard Bates. -Hi.
We've worked together in a lot of far flung places, you and I.
-Mainly hot ones, though. Yeah. -[Josh] Mainly warm ones.
You finally got me to St. Andrews.
Yeah. I'm glad you could come
and see this wonderful countryside.
Oh, beautiful weather, too.
Fantastic, aye.
I'm thrilled that we're here in your backyard
because this is a perfect case for you.
We're searching for these potentially buried Barracuda,
and from above,
we do see something kind of strange here on the landscape.
And you can see it from down here.
Oh, absolutely. I mean, as you come down along by the wee burn...
-I'm sorry, the what? -The wee burn.
[in Scottish accent] The wee burn?
-The small river! -[in normal voice] Small river. Sorry. Sorry.
I need a translator up here.
[chuckles]
And you need a kilt, too, if you're gonna stay much longer.
All right, all right. Fair enough. All right.
-So, down by the wee burn... -[Josh] Yes.
...you see the smoothness of the contours,
-and that's what hill slopes will do. -Right.
But then, superimposed on that,
you've got these humps and bumps, and that's not natural.
So you think there could be something buried here?
Absolutely, there could be.
The plane we're talking about, the Barracuda,
is the first British all-metal aircraft.
-So tons of metal. -Right.
That's great for a geophysical signature.
And to do that, we're using this equipment behind you?
Yeah, we'll use this electromagnetic sensor
and we'll control it with GPS.
And that can look underground about how far?
So, the instrument can look down about 20 feet.
[Josh] Wow. Okay.
-[Archie] Hmm. -So if something's buried here...
-We should see it. -We should see it.
-Let's get into it. -[Richard] Okay.
So, Josh, why don't you do the honors this time,
'cause I'm getting old and my back's getting bad.
That, when you say things like that,
it makes me feel like the equipment's not safe,
and that's why you want me to wear it.
[Richard grunts]
You've had all the children you want?
[Archie chuckles]
[Josh] The electromagnetic conductivity meter
will map beneath the ground's surface
by measuring variances in conductivity,
allowing it to identify water, metal and other anomalies.
Okay, Josh, we're gonna have you go and do
a series of parallel lines to the river.
[in Scottish accent] The wee burn?
-Aye, you could do that too. -Aye, okay.
-[in normal voice] You ready? -Go for it.
Parallel lines. Here we go.
I feel like I work at the circus.
[Richard] Okay, Josh. At the end of the line there,
turn to your left two paces and come back parallel.
That's it.
-Here? -Yeah.
Now, come back parallel to your old line.
Okay. It's starting to get a little heavier now.
I continue my tightrope act
until I've completely covered the hill
and completely compressed my spine.
Now it's time to examine the data
and see what I've been walking on top of.
Okay, the big question: Does your machine work? Do we have data?
Absolutely. It works.
Not only do we have data,
but we have data from all the sensors on it.
Okay, so a lot of material here?
A lot of material down here.
So here you can see a map of the site.
[Josh] These are targets?
[Richard] So all of these are targets I've put in.
-[Josh] Whoa. -And those are the most obvious ones.
I think there are probably even more.
Do you see the change in coloring?
-[Josh] Yes. -In the plot in here?
[Richard] It's almost certainly something like buried metal.
-You think it's metal? -Absolutely.
Can you tell how big these spots are then?
Well, you can see,
the area extent of some of these patches is 10, 15 feet across.
So there might actually be something here?
Oh, no, there's definitely something here.
What exactly it is,
we're gonna have to scrape the soil off and start digging it.
Okay, so now we've got to turn some earth.
So I brought a trowel along with me.
Yeah, I brought a trowel with me too.
Can I get the trowel?
The excavator will help us
get down to the layer of our newly discovered targets.
Also helping us is an archeologist
who's extensively researched Dunino Airfield's role
during World War II, Steve Liscoe.
Here we go.
The operator uses the huge machinery
to delicately cut into the ground over the first anomaly,
shaving soil away one layer at a time.
It's like watching King Kong repair a watch.
-[Richard] Stop! -[Josh] Right away something.
-Oh, look. -Is this brick?
-[Steve] That is a brick. -[Josh] That is a brick.
-Look at that. -[Steve] Indeed it is.
Yeah. I'd give it a wipe there.
[Josh] Oh, there's something stamped.
[Steve] "W-E-M."
And if that was complete, that would say "Y-S-S."
It's from the Weems Brickworks,
which is a 20th century product.
-Would this be contemporary with World War II? -Oh, indeed, it would.
If you looked at any of the buildings
that we've got on the site here,
they'd be made with the same bricks.
-Okay, so... -So we're looking at some sort of deposition
from the time of the airfield.
-[Josh] This is a great start. -[Steve] It is.
And it tells us that Bates kind of knows what he's doing,
which is surprising, I know, to all of us.
Well, I mean, I'm stunned.
[laughter]
[Josh] While the backhoe continues working on the first site,
Dickie focuses on other anomalies from his data nearby.
Okay, Paul. Next spot is right here.
[Josh] And those hits turn out to be just as productive.
[Richard] Oh, what's that? That's got a shape to it.
What have you found there, Josh?
[Josh] I thought it was a wrench at first, but I'm not sure.
It could be a tool.
A tool of some kind?
[Archie] Something here, guys.
Something here?
-[Steve] Well, what is that? -[Josh] It's in a canister.
Looks like a battery.
It has terminals on the top, and it is heavy as hell.
I mean, could this be aviation?
If it's aviation, I suspect somebody's going to be able to recognize that.
All right. We'll get this cleaned up a little bit, take some photos of it.
-Okay. -And whatever this is.
-And that as well. -That's a tool, I think.
A tool.
This is more than just some ceramic and brick.
We're now getting into maintenance or workshop material
and possibly aircraft parts.
The battery is a tantalizing clue,
but something else in this location
is about to spark our interest.
There's something in here.
Is that a spark plug?
[Steve] That is a spark plug.
That's an aviation spark plug.
-[Steve] No question. -[Richard] That's aviation. That's big.
[Josh] Oh, my Lord, that's incredible.
And why do we know that's from a plane and not from a vehicle?
[Steve] This pattern is out of an aerial engine.
Score.
-No question? -No question. Absolutely.
[Josh] At a former Royal Navy airfield in Scotland,
I'm with a team looking for evidence
of a British aircraft from the Second World War, the Barracuda.
We're hoping to find parts which can be used
to reconstruct the legendary bomber.
So, probably from an aircraft.
-[Richard] Mm-hmm, yeah. -[Archie] Yeah.
Potentially from a Barracuda?
-Potentially, till proven otherwise. -Potentially, yeah.
Let's get this cleaned up as well,
and I'm gonna send some photos of this back to the museum
to see if they can identify what this is.
-Yeah. -'Cause if this is a Barracuda part,
then, mission accomplished. We're in, right.
Okay, let's carefully keep digging here. Great find.
In the layers below, we're amazed to find more aviation machinery...
-More stainless steel, yeah. -More bits of airplane.
[Archie] Those are aircraft parts.
I would think they're aero engine linkages of some kind.
Got another piece of alloy casting down here.
Almost certainly off an aircraft.
That should be able to match up
to a parts inventory somewhere.
[Josh] ...along with other stuff.
-[Josh] Oh. -Keep that for lunchtime.
Look at that. That's a beauty.
-It's got a government stamp on it. -[Archie] Oh, right.
This is definitely from the airfield.
-This is a government spoon. -Government spoon.
So it's government property.
-You keep your hands off it. -You wanna give--
Gentlemen, I apologize.
You ought to give it back now, Josh.
I'm keeping this. This is for all the taxation back in the colonies.
[laughter]
This is mine now.
[Josh] So we continued to move around the site,
following our map of geophysical variances, and soon enough...
[Steve] Paul, stop!
-[Josh] Aluminum? -[Steve] It looks very much like it is.
Yep, sheet aluminum.
Definitely potentially aircraft material.
[Josh] So now we are right in the money of airplane skin.
And by the right gauge as well.
[Josh] That's right.
So potentially something off a Barracuda here,
or maybe just raw material for repairs.
I think we've certainly verified Johnny Paul's story here, right?
We are, no doubt, at this old airbase.
We are, no doubt, near these old maintenance facilities.
And we're finding stuff that looks aviation.
-Mm-hmm. -Yeah.
-Absolutely. -What we're not finding are big parts.
You know, these guys at the museum are desperate for a wing.
-They're desperate for the tail of a plane. -Yeah.
No sign of any of that yet.
But this is a hugely important place to keep looking.
I keep thinking back to that black and white photo.
-Hundreds of Barracudas parked out in this field. -[Archie] Yes.
So, I think, no question, we keep digging here, we keep looking here.
-Great work, guys. -Thanks.
[Josh] We photograph all of our finds
to send back to the Barracuda team for identification,
excited to report that a larger excavation here at Dunino Airfield
could reveal even more parts.
However, larger pieces of the Barracuda
may be hiding in places other than Scotland.
A recent discovery by hikers
may point to the wreckage of a Barracuda
near the site of its greatest victory.
So, from St. Andrews, I make my way north,
far north, to 500 miles above the Arctic Circle
and a small city
perched at the end of the inhabited Earth.
Welcome to Alta, Norway.
Home to a population of about 15,000,
this is one of the northernmost cities in the world.
In fact, we are closer to the North Pole right now than we are to Paris.
And did I mention how warm it is?
[exclaims]
But the cold weather does come with a silver lining.
Alta's quaint villages and fishing bays
sit at the mouth of one of Norway's stunning fjords,
and it's known as the aurora borealis capital of the world,
where the sky often puts on a dazzling display.
If the town center looks a little modern,
that's because of the Nazis,
who invaded Norway in 1940
and burned every single building in Alta
in their retreat four years later.
And, as it happens, the Nazis are why I'm here as well.
It was in the Alta fjord
that they parked the fearsome battleship Tirpitz in April of 1944.
Today there's a Tirpitz museum in Alta
where I hope to uncover clues about lost Barracudas.
Assuming, that is, I can find this place in the dark.
Well, it is 2:00 p.m. in the afternoon here in Alta,
and it is literally pitch black outside.
Welcome to Polar night above the Arctic Circle.
For a few months of the year,
Alta gets zero sunlight altogether.
This time of year, there's about four or five hours a day.
GPS gets me to my destination,
where I find author and expert on the Tirpitz, Frode Lindgjerdet.
Frode.
Oh, hi.
[Josh] Frode is a historian
from the Norwegian Defense Museum,
as well as an active member
of the country's civil defense service.
Thank you for taking the time.
As you know,
I am investigating the Barracuda.
Yeah.
And here in Alta,
this is the scene
of the biggest moment of glory for this plane, right?
And this is the Tirpitz right here, right?
-Let's take a look at this. -Yeah.
This is, like, a really imposing ship.
[Frode] Yeah.
[Josh] This is like the Death Star of its day.
This thing is a beast.
[Josh] The Tirpitz,
sister ship of the vaunted Bismarck,
was the largest battleship ever built by the Nazis,
and the single greatest obstacle
to an allied invasion of Norway.
With a huge complement of anti-aircraft guns
as well as anti-submarine mines,
it was a one-boat armada in the Baltic Sea.
If the Allies were going to win World War II,
sooner or later,
they knew they'd have to take the Tirpitz off the board.
How many attacks were carried out on the Tirpitz?
-Twenty-five different attacks? -Yeah.
Before she was even out in the water?
-The mission that succeeded in crippling her... -Yeah.
...was the one using Barracudas.
-So that was called Operation... -Tungsten.
[Josh] In April of 1944,
the British decided on a new approach to sink the Tirpitz.
The Barracuda would lead the attack
because it was the only carrier-based bomber
capable of deploying the 1,600-pound bombs
necessary to penetrate the ship's foot-thick armor shielding.
Forty Barracudas surprised the Tirpitz
in two waves of heavy bombing,
and when the smoke cleared, the battleship was so damaged,
it was taken out of service for six crucial months.
In June, only two months after the Tirpitz raid,
the Allies landed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day,
beginning their liberation of Europe.
And this is one of the reasons
-that this Barracuda belongs in a museum... -Yeah.
...that this plane really should be recognized
-as a real hero of the war. -Yep.
So let's talk about this wreckage that I've heard about.
What do we know here?
-Some hikers have given us a location. -Okay.
It could be the wreck of an aircraft.
Do you think it's possible that it is a Barracuda?
It's possible,
but there's also a lot of other types of aircraft in those mountains.
-There are? -Yeah.
And this place is reachable?
It's a tough hike, but it's possible.
-So you're up for a little walk? -Uh, sure.
-Tomorrow morning? -Tomorrow morning.
-I'll pick you up. -Yeah.
Little walk.
The next, I guess we're calling this morning,
Frode and I hit the road before dawn
to drive to the mountain where the airplane wreckage was spotted.
-Good morning. -[Frode] Good morning.
Or good evening. I don't know anymore.
-[chuckles] -So where are we headed?
It's about a 45 minutes drive into the mountains.
And the sun is going to come up, right?
Yeah, I'm told so. [chuckles]
"I'm told so."
Oh, boy.
During winter in Norway, even the sun sleeps in.
We drive on lonely, snow-covered roads
until the leisurely hour of 9:00,
when daylight begins to creep over the horizon,
and we arrive at the mountain.
Okay.
Okay, so take me back in time.
It's April, 1944, and the Tirpitz is anchored just around the corner,
further up the fjord.
So the Barracudas would've been coming
from aircraft carriers over these hills...
-Yeah. -...bombing the Tirpitz,
and then heading back this way?
-Yeah, in that direction, yeah. -Okay.
So it's possible one of those Barracudas didn't clear the mountain?
-Yeah, especially if it was hit by anti-aircraft fire. -Right.
And the wreckage coordinates are where?
They're up in the mountains over there.
-Should we check it out? -Yeah.
Let's do it.
We leave our car at the side of the road...
Don't worry, it's a safe neighborhood...
...and using Frode's coordinates,
we set out for the wreckage one icy step at a time.
Okay, into the mountains.
This is straight up, isn't it?
[panting]
Up, up, up.
A thousand feet up,
there could be nothing for us but ice, snow and frostbite.
Or there could be a Barracuda.
-This is a creek here? -Yeah.
-But be careful if-- -Yeah.
[Frode] You can snap an ankle pretty quickly if you go through that.
[Josh] Absolutely. I'm not sure how solid that is.
[Frode] No, that's not solid at all.
[Josh] The higher we get, the steeper the grade becomes,
and the less sure our footing is.
Exhibit A.
[bleep]
[Josh grunts]
[Josh] This all looks like ice.
[bleep]
[Josh grunts]
-[Frode] Are you okay? -I'm good.
I'm good.
-Bruised my ego. -[Frode chuckles] Yeah.
Here we go.
On a frigid mountain 500 miles north of the Arctic Circle,
historian Frode Lindgjerdet and I
are climbing to the coordinates
where a hiker may have found the wreckage
of a lost British bomber known as a Barracuda.
Well, we're getting there.
It is not warm.
And there's not exactly a direct path to follow here.
We're basically zigzagging
back and forth around this creek.
A few hundred feet up,
and we get our first view of the water
where the Nazi super battleship Tirpitz was stationed.
Look at that.
Yeah. Quite a view.
Beautiful.
And you can imagine the Tirpitz just anchored right out there.
[Frode] Yeah, it'll definitely blend right in.
[Josh] Yeah, exactly.
Okay. GPS, how far are we?
Yeah, uh, it's about half a mile in that direction.
-Uphill. -Uphill.
-Yeah. -All right. After you.
The coordinates are still higher,
so we resume our climb into a frozen world,
With icicles along the rock face as tall as we are.
This is like another world. Look at this.
Yeah.
[Josh] Incredible.
You know, the last time a Norwegian and an American
were out in this kind of weather
was in John Carpenter's The Thing.
Yeah, well, I'm not the alien.
That's exactly what an alien would say.
We'll see.
-Yeah. -We'll see.
-I packed a flamethrower. -Yeah.
Just, you know, gotta be safe.
Okay, so we should be almost there?
[Frode] Yeah.
And we also have only a couple of hours of daylight left,
so we have to move quick.
Copy that.
We're racing against the clock even at 10:00 a.m.
At this time of year in Norway, the sun sets at 2:00,
and you do not want to risk being in these conditions after dark.
-Oh, careful. That's ice. -[Frode] Yeah, I know.
-This is like a waterfall here. -Yeah.
[Josh] Okay, what's our distance now?
I got 130 feet.
So let's fan out. You go left, I'll go right.
Where are you?
-[Frode] I think we got something here. -You see something?
-[Frode] Yeah. -What do you see?
Uh, looks like wreckage.
-[Josh] Metal! Right there! -[Frode] Yeah, metal.
That's metal for sure!
-That is metal! That's a wreck! -[Frode] Yeah.
-That's a wreck. -Oh, my word.
This is riveted.
This is riveted, and it's aluminum.
-Ooh, and look at the aluminum cutouts. -Yeah.
This is aviation.
This is definitely aviation.
-This is a plane. -Yeah.
Ha-ha! Unbelievable! Look at this!
And look further up the hill.
-More? -Yeah.
-Where? Oh! -Everywhere.
-Metal there, and there, and here, and there. -Yes.
There is literally a debris field
stretching the entire way up the hill.
-Yeah. -This must have been a violent crash.
A violent crash. Probably an explosion.
Now we know it's a plane.
-But the question is, what kind of plane? -Right, okay.
So let's dust as much of this off as we can,
see if we can find something diagnostic.
-Yeah. -Okay?
All right, let's get into it.
We split up to try to uncover as much wreckage as we can,
and we only have a couple of hours of daylight left to do it.
I think I got part of the fuel tank here.
-[Frode] Really? -Yeah.
[Frode] I think I have the engine.
-You found the engine? -Yeah.
Oh, yeah, you got it. You got it!
That's it!
Okay, let's take a look. Let's get this thing clean.
Yes, this looks like the top.
I got a serial number.
-[Frode] Yeah? -Yeah.
Looks like 0-1-6-7-F-D, or zero again,
and then a smaller number here.
And this looks like writing as well.
So we'll photograph all this.
-Yep. -That's huge.
The serial numbers on these parts
can be used to identify a plane,
including its make, model, and even its crew.
-More numbers! -[Frode] Yeah?
[Josh] Yeah. More serial numbers here.
-[Frode] Yeah. -Look at these stamps.
Can we see the cylinders?
No, but you can see them definitely arranged in a "V."
-[Josh] Right. -Right there. Yeah.
-So this is a piston engine. -Yeah.
You know what this is?
Most likely a Merlin.
It's a Merlin, right? Okay, this is a Merlin.
The Rolls Royce Merlin engine was first designed in 1933
and quickly became Britain's foremost aviation advantage.
Fifty different versions were made
over the course of the war.
Now, the Barracuda was outfitted for Merlin engines.
Yes, it was.
-But... -I know.
Yeah, there's a lot of aircraft
having the exact same engine.
This was like the workhorse engine
that helped win World War II.
But it still keeps us on the track of the Barracuda, right?
-Yeah. -If we'd found some big radial engine here,
-we would've been in trouble. -Yeah.
So, so far, this could still be a Barracuda.
We take meticulous photos of the parts
with their serial numbers, for identification,
even as we continue to uncover more pieces of the plane beneath the snow.
I think I got part of the wing here.
-Really? -Yeah, for sure.
Let me grab that iPad, see if we can ID what this is.
We're hiking with a tablet loaded with Barracuda specs from the team back in England.
I'm hoping the photos can help us make
a preliminary ID of the parts.
This piece right here. See that?
This piece right here with that support,
-I mean, is that not identical to that? -[Frode] Yeah.
Holy [bleep].
But so many of these planes
have a similar internal design structure.
-We need more to prove it's a Barracuda. -[Frode] Yeah.
But, boy, is it adding up.
If this is a Barracuda wing, it's a crucial find.
The restoration team back at the museum
is missing wing parts and wants them desperately.
So we sift through every piece of twisted metal we can see.
-Ooh, I got paint. -[Frode] Yeah.
Red paint. Look at this!
[Frode] Wow.
That's paint. So this is an exterior piece. What is this?
-Is that paint? -Yeah, that's paint.
-That's blue paint. -Yes, blue and red.
Holy [bleep]!
-This is the paint scheme on a British plane. -[Frode] Yep.
[Josh] They say that everything is relative,
which is exactly the perspective you need during winter in Norway.
Out of curiosity,
what constitutes a cold day here in Norway?
Like, what does the temperature have to be
for you to say, "Kids, it's cold outside."
Negative five, around.
-Yeah. -[scoffs] Negative five, that's the threshold.
Negative four, negative three, beach weather.
-[chuckles] Yeah. Yeah. -Warm out.
Negative five.
That's when you put a sweater on.
That's when I put a sweater on, maybe some gloves.
-Maybe, at negative five. -Yeah.
Norwegians.
So now, no question, we have a plane,
and no question, we have a British plane.
I've traveled 500 miles above the Arctic Circle
to find wreckage of the legendary British bomber, the Barracuda.
A restoration team in England needs original parts to bring one back to life.
Remarkably, against all odds, we may have some.
-And this is the rudder. -This is the rudder!
Yeah. It would have fitted into this slot.
-Yes, it would have! -Yes. Yeah.
-This is part of the tail of the plane. -Yes.
These are the right colors in the right location.
Let's see if this looks like the Barracuda tail.
I bring the iPad out to see if I can place the part we found on our missing plane.
So here's our Barracuda,
and here's our tail.
-[Frode] Yep. -Look at that.
-[Frode] Yeah. -I mean, is that a beauty or what?
-[Frode] That's a match. -That's a perfect match.
-It's a perfect match. Yeah. -Hey, that is...
That is unbelievable!
But here's what bothers me.
Where is this? Where is this whole horizontal section of the tail?
It's the one very weird design element on this plane,
and it's like the fingerprint of the Barracuda.
-Yeah. Yeah. -Where's that?
It's not here at all.
The high elevators on the tail
are a signature of the Barracuda's design,
and a part of the plane that the team back in England
is specifically hoping to acquire.
-If we can find that, we can close the case. -Yup.
-Let's find it. -Let's find it.
-Come on. -Yeah.
[Josh] We're one piece away
from solving an 80-year-old jigsaw puzzle.
So we hit the debris field one more time with new urgency
as the sun begins to set, and a deadly cold creeps in.
Hey, Josh, come over here.
-See something? -Yeah.
I think this is a part of the elevator.
[Josh] Is this that high piece of the tail?
Yeah, I think it is.
I mean, if it is, then this is a Barracuda.
[Frode] Yeah.
I'm quite sure. Yeah.
Then these are the parts that they're looking for.
These are the parts that could complete this lost aircraft...
-Yeah. -...back at the museum.
That's unbelievable.
I'm speechless.
I am utterly speechless.
The elevator pairs perfectly with the tail piece that we found earlier.
Together, we may have found
a complete Barracuda tail section for the very first time.
This is a piece of World War II history right here.
Right here.
But the idea that we are standing
in front of the wreckage of one of these lost planes
is so humbling.
I am awed in this moment.
This plane crashed, saving the world from an unimaginable evil.
And now, it is lost no more.
We look at the violence of this crash,
most likely, people died in this accident.
So we are also on a kind of hallowed ground here.
Yeah. This is a war grave.
It is a war grave.
-But I think this is exactly what we came for. -Yeah.
Hey, put her there.
Thank you for coming up here with me.
My pleasure. This was awesome.
-It was amazing. -Yeah.
[Josh] Here, far above the Arctic Circle,
a plane that helped turn the tide of World War II
has been rediscovered,
and in time, may serve its nation once again
in the rebuild of the Barracuda.
We perform a 3-D scan of every inch of the plane.
Then, in the frigid darkness,
we undertake the long and treacherous hike downhill
with our data clutched tightly in hand,
excited to share it with the team back in England.
The reconstruction of the Barracuda
is a project unlike any attempted in aviation history.
And when David sees what we've found,
he knows it's just taken a giant leap forward.
-[David] Wow, look at that. -[William] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's the fin.
-It is the fin, right? -[William] Yeah.
-Yeah. Hundred percent. That's a Barracuda. -[Josh] Hundred percent.
That's the tail fin from a Barracuda.
[David] That's the tail fin from a Barracuda.
[Josh] Using the serial numbers on the parts we found,
David was able to uncover the identity of not just the Barracuda,
but also the crew that flew her.
Around the corner from the museum
is the Fleet Air Arm Memorial church,
where the names of fallen soldiers
are inscribed in a book of remembrance,
including two members
of our Barracuda's crew,
Sub-Lieutenant Hubert Horace Richardson
and Sub-Lieutenant Andrew George Cannon.
Only Gunner E. Carroll managed to bail out.
Captured by the Nazis,
he was a prisoner of war until 1945.
And soon, we can honor their service
with the only example on Earth
of the plane that they flew.
The newly-discovered pieces will help complete the puzzle
and transform the Barracuda
from a monochrome wartime memory
into this,
a phoenix risen from the ashes in living color,
restored for a new mission:
to tell her story,
and the story of those brave men who flew her,
for generations to come.