Sunken s e r u s a e Tr
trove of World War II aircraft, many of them veterans of major battles including Pearl Harbor, Midway and the Solomons. Today, these planes are being retrieved and restored to
George H. W. Bush in 1944
impress their lessons on a new generation. B Y C R A I G R ITCHIE
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ometimes you find the most remarkable things where you least expect to see them, including on your sonar screen. For historians looking to preserve irreplaceable artifacts from the second world war, it doesn’t get any better than the bottom of Lake Michigan right off the Chicago lakeshore. That’s where a dedicated team has spent the past 30 years scanning the lakebed for historically significant aircraft, veterans of battles that raged all across the Pacific. The aircraft — almost perfectly preserved by their ice-cold freshwater tombs — were lost in the ‘40s when the U.S. Navy conducted pilot training on the lake. There, safe from prowling enemy submarines, two former passenger excursion vessels that were hastily converted into makeshift aircraft carriers helped more than 17,000 pilots qualify for
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carrier duty, including future President George H. W. Bush. But accidents were frequent, and at least 150 aircraft wound up on the bottom through landing accidents and misjudged takeoffs. As salvage crews today recover these aircraft for museum display, they’re finding some of them to be veterans of major Pacific battles — Pearl Harbor, Midway, the Solomons — making these historic aircraft internationally significant. After being damaged in battle or simply outdated by newer, more potent models, these planes were typically sent back to America and relegated to training duties. Most would have been scrapped at war’s end had they not taken the big splash. But being bounced off a carrier deck and into the drink by a newbie pilot is precisely what saved them from a cutting torch, and we’re all the better for it.
I L L U S T R AT I O N C O U R T E S Y O F T H E N AT I O N A L M U S E U M O F T H E G R E AT L A K E S . ; P R E S I D E N T B U S H , W O LV E R I N E A N D S A B L E P H O T O S C O U R T E S Y O F U S N AV Y I
The bottom of Lake Michigan yields a treasure
