MOUNTAIN rescuers will return next month to a remote Icelandic glacier where the remains of a North-East airman were entombed for 60 years.
The team, who finally laid to rest Pilot Officer Henry Talbot, from North Shields, and three comrades last year, will continue a clear-up operation curtailed by ice activity beneath the glacier.
They will also seek to recover any retrievable wreckage and personal effects from the steeply-sloping mountain glacier, near Akureyri, in northern Iceland.
The remains of the airmen, whose bodies were entombed in a 1941 crash, were recovered by an RAF expedition, supported by Icelandic mountain rescuers and coastguards.
Families of the dead airmen - New Zealander pilot, Flying Officer Arthur Round, 26, his wireless operator, Flight Sergeant Albert Hopkins, 21, and their two passengers, Talbot, who was 24, and Flight Sergeant Keith Garrett, 22 - were flown over to attend their reburial, with full military honours.
Their Fairey Battle crashed in fog in mountainous terrain shortly after take-off in May 1941.
It was only in 1999 that hot summers, global warming and volcanic activity combined to reduce the ice cover and the wreckage began to show through the ice.
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