For more than 60 years, remnants of a wrecked U.S. Air Force plane were lost in the Alaska Range, buried beneath ice and snow on a glacier snaking through a mountainside. And for generations, families had no hope of recovering the bodies of 19 service members killed in the 1952 crash.

Until now.

The plane — a boxy C-119 aircraft known by its radio call sign, Gamble Chalk 1 — has been found. Retired geologist Michael Rocereta, who spent much of his career searching for, and discovering, oil fields, used his training in glaciology to sleuth out the plane's movement through the decades as a glacier slowly carried it away from the crash site.

What will happen next is unclear. A helicopter flight to the wreckage is planned for August, to assess whether recovery of human remains is possible. Families of men killed in the flight, like 23-year-old Daniel Blasi of Kansas, hope for closure. "We're praying that something happens pretty quick," said Daniel's nephew, Leo Blasi, of any possible recovery missions.

If it wasn't for years of volunteer effort and a lucky break, the discovery might have never happened.

'How could I miss it?'

Gamble Chalk 1 was the first of three U.S. Air Force planes to crash in Alaska in as many weeks in November 1952. The second, Warm Wind 3, is still lost in the Cook Inlet area. The third, a Globemaster, was found on Colony Glacier in 2012. Military officials have been recovering human remains and debris since, sending recovered service members home with full military honors.