Roy Shoffner, a Kentucky businessman, made finding the remains of the lost squadron a passion.

FORBES: A Wildcatter In Love With Warbirds

In 1992, a team bankrolled by Tennessee businessman Roy Shoffner and led by Bob Cardin excavated the plane by using hot water to melt a shaft into the ice, hoisting the plane out piece by piece.

FORBES: Lord Of The Warbirds

Shoffner died in 2006, and Lewis bought the plane from the Shoffner family the next year and spent millions more to dispatch her and a handful of escorts on a re-enactment of her fateful trip, launching from New Jersey's Teterboro Airport, circling the Statue of Liberty and heading up the Eastern Seaboard, over Greenland and on to England, with refueling stops along the way.

FORBES: A Wildcatter In Love With Warbirds