The hulks of crashed ”warbirds” buried in the sand at the bottom of Lake Michigan lie silent now, but they recall a time when two unique aircraft carriers sailed the waters off Chicago in a secret program to help the United States and its allies win World War II.
With the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, the United States was officially at war, and the devastating strike had made it clear that air supremacy would be a key factor in winning the war in the Pacific.
For aircraft the Navy turned to models that were in most cases heavier and slower than their Japanese counterparts. They were, however, equipped with more armor plating and heavier armament and, most important, were much more versatile. Technological advances–higher-ho rsepower engines, larger fuel tanks and bigger guns–could be added to American planes on the assembly line without necessitating major structural changes or diminishing aircraft performance.
For pilots the Navy developed an intensive training program that took an average of 17 months to complete. One of the final phases of that training, called ”CQ”–for carrier qualification–required secrecy and security. The Navy chose Naval Reserve Air Base Chicago–now known as the Glenview Naval Air Station–as a CQ training site. It was a perfect location, the Navy believed, because of its inaccessibility to enemy observation or submarine attack. Beginning in August, 1942, the base`s runway was extended, and a large hangar constructed to house the new Carrier Qualification Training Unit.
At outlying airstrips around the city, landings and takeoffs were directed by a flight control landing officer. These runways were marked in the dimensions of an aircraft carrier flight deck. One was equipped with a catapult and arresting wires to simulate actual carrier operations. When pilots satisfactorily completed several takeoffs and landings, they proceeded to Point Oboe–the Bahai temple in Wilmette–and from there to coordinates in the lake where they rendezvoused with either the USS Sable or USS Wolverine.
This stage of the training was the brainchild of Vice Adm. Richard F. Whitehead (Ret.), who suggested fabricating aircraft carrier flight decks onto the hulls of Great Lakes steamboats. To accomplish Adm. Whitehead`s plan, two steamships, the Seeandbee and Greater Buffalo, were purchased by the Navy in 1942.
When launched in 1921 at Wyandotte, Mich., the Seeandbee was the largest inland passenger steamer in the world. Marine architect Frank E. Kirby took great pride in his 500-foot-long elaborately decorated masterpiece, which boasted 510 staterooms, 24 parlors and a grand salon finished in ivory and mahogany. She sailed mainly on Lake Erie in the luxury passenger service before being sold to the Navy, which removed her superstructure and installed a 550-foot flight deck in its place. After the modifications were completed, the ship was renamed USS Wolverine. While operating out of Chicago from 1942 to 1945, 18,000 cadets made 65,000 landings on her deck. She was scrapped in 1947.
Like the Seeandbee, the Greater Buffalo had been used on the Great Lakes in the passenger and freight business. She also was purchased and converted in 1942 by the Navy and renamed USS Sable.
It took at least eight good landings and takeoffs for a pilot to become
”carrier qualified.” And flight operations did not run smoothly for all the pilots leaving Point Oboe. The Sable and Wolverine operated year-round, requiring Coast Guard tugs and icebreakers to keep the lake open in winter. Sudden snow squalls that reduced visibility to zero were not uncommon. On one such occasion a group of six aircraft was lost and presumed to have crashed in the lake. The bodies of the pilots were never recovered.
Mechanical failure was the main reason for loss of aircraft over open water. On one occasion the pilot of a crippled SPD Dauntless apparently followed rescue procedures, including removing his shoes before entering his inflatable rubber liferaft. In 1981 commercial diver Harry Zych, whose American Diving & Salvage Co. has pulled three warbirds from Lake Michigan, located the Dauntless in 45 feet of water one mile north of the 68th Street water intake crib. He was amazed to find a standard-issue Navy Oxford on the starboard wing. A few feet away in the sand lay its mate. Apparently the suction created by the sinking aircraft had taken the shoes along with it.
Pilot error accounted for most of the deck crashes. As a pilot made his final approach, there was little time for adjustment. The landing pattern had to be perfect and flight adjustments made immediately as directed by the landing signal officer. It was his decision to give the ”set down” or ”wave off” signal. Sometimes after a wave off, the aircraft`s air speed dropped too low, causing the plane to stall. This, of course, resulted in a crash. In some cases nervous pilots forgot to lower the arresting hook (a large hook that trailed from the underside of the fuselage designed to catch on the arresting cable stretched across the flight deck, and stop the airplane).
All told, some 300 warbirds may lie beneath the lake, yet surprisingly few lives were lost in the training. After lying at anchor overnight just off Chicago, the Sable and Wolverine would steam out into the lake every morning accompanied by small Coast Guard or Navy vessels serving as ”plane guards.” These chase boats stationed themselves at either end of the carriers. Should a crash occur, they initiated immediate rescue operations. William Ross of Barrington made 14 landings during the training program. He recalls seeing a TBM Avenger in the water and the pilot being rescued ”before he got his feet wet.”
Losing an aircraft was not an automatic washout for a cadet. The time, money and effort already invested in training, the Navy believed, outweighed the value of the training aircraft. Moreover, the jerryrigged lake carriers were not equipped to store planes below, so flight deck personnel simply pushed damaged aircraft over the side.
Chuck Downey of Downers Grove was a 19-year-old Navy ensign in 1943 when he made his carrier qualification landings on the Sable on a gloomy, overcast day. He remembers how nervous he felt approaching the rolling deck of the Sable and thinking, ”I`m going to land on that? It seems so small.” Upon landing successfully, the nervousness gave way to elation. ”I couldn`t wait to make the next seven landings,” he recounts. Training at Glenview took only four to eight days depending on the weather. Downey completed his in four days and was sent to Wildwood, N.J., where he received additional training before being shipped out to the South Pacific aboard the USS Ticonderoga.
More Top Picks Best Computer Glasses For Eye Strain
Weekend divers searching for shipwrecks discovered the first warbird five miles east of Navy Pier in 1979. It was a TBF Avenger, the largest carrier-based plane used by the Navy in World War II and the first plane to incorporate hydraulically folding wings and an electrically operated gun turret. Designed and built by the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corp. in 1941, it was primarily a torpedo plane and bomber. Its versatile design made the Avenger an extremely useful aircraft. It could carry either a 2,000-pound torpedo, 1,000-pound bomb, two 500-pound bombs, an extra fuel tank for long-range reconnaissance or an auxiliary tank for deploying smoke screens. The three-man crew included a pilot, turret gunner and radio-torpedo officer. The aircraft was heavily armed, having one .50 caliber machine gun in the ball turret, one .30 caliber machine gun that fired through the propeller via synchronization gear and one mobile .30 caliber machine gun that could be fired through either side of the fuselage or through a gunport in the bottom near the tail section. Later models were equipped with wing-mounted .50 caliber machine guns.
In 1941 Grumman held a Navy contract to manufacture the F4F Wildcat fighter and was developing the F6F Hellcat when production started on the TBF Avenger, so the company turned over production of the TBF to General Motors Corp., which changed the plane`s designation to TBM.
The Avenger found in 1979 is considered especially significant. Upon close examination, the divers realized they had discovered a TBF, one of the first of approximately 300 airplanes made by Grumman before turning production over to GM. It had apparently crash-landed on a carrier deck and been dumped overboard, settling to the bottom upside down. The landing gear was extended toward the surface, the tires still inflated after 35 years. The aircraft was basically intact; most of the damage was on the starboard wing. On the side of the fuselage, ”T14”–meaning trainer No. 14–was stenciled in white, and the squadron decal of Donald Duck holding a torpedo was visible under the pilot`s canopy. The complex and expensive ball turrets of Avengers, reserved for combat aircraft, had been replaced with the bracing of training models.
In 1980 a volunteer effort was organized by two Chicago organizations, the Combined Great Lakes Naval Association and the Sea-Deucers Scuba Club, to raise the TBF. The intent was to restore it for exhibition alongside the USS Silversides submarine on the Chicago lakefront. The TBF was towed to Navy Pier and hoisted onto land once again, then taken to Glenview Naval Air Station for storage. Some parts were removed for restoration, but because of a lack of funds, the plane was untouched for several years and eventually was sold to a private party for parts.
In May of 1981 another warbird was located in 40 feet of water about 5 miles offshore at 68th Street. The new discovery was an SBD Dauntless dive bomber. The SBD was originally designed by Northrop Aircraft Engineering, but production was carried out by Douglas Aircraft Corp., which purchased Northrop shortly after the Navy contract was awarded.
Production of the SBD began early in 1941, but most of the first deliveries were destroyed on the ground at Pearl Harbor. Its primary functions were dive-bombing and scouting missions from aircraft carriers. The SBD was a well-designed, heavily armed and extremely durable airplane. In addition to its bomb payload it carried two .30 caliber machine guns mounted in the engine cowling and twin .50 caliber machine guns in the rear cockpit. One durable SBD returned from the Battle of the Coral Sea riddled with 214 bullet holes.
The SBD found on the bottom of the lake was nearly intact, indicating that it had been intentionally ”ditched,” probably the victim of engine failure. The landing gear was retracted, allowing the fuselage to rest upright, partially buried in the sand. The only visible damage was twisted motor mounts where the engine had broken free when the plane hit the surface of the lake. The aluminum skin was intact, revealing a flat-blue paint scheme when a thin layer of marine growth was removed. Only bits of the cloth covering on the flaps and ailerons remained. One diver managed to release the locking mechanism on the sliding navigation table under the dashboard. As he carefully slid the table out, he saw the pilots` pencil and folded chart still in place.
Of all the Navy warbirds, the SBD Dauntless is the one most coveted by collectors. Of the 5,321 built, only three are known to exist, and the aircraft recovered from the lake is one of them. It is now owned by a private collector who plans to use its parts to complete the restoration of another SBD to flying condition.
Of the hundreds of planes estimated by the Navy to lie beneath Lake Michigan, only three are known to have been recovered. The process requires approval from the Navy, which has not relinquished ownership of the aircraft. After researching a crash site, divers plot the area on a standard navigational chart. Using radio navigation, a search pattern is established. The radio beacon is connected to a plotting machine that traces the movement of the search vessel on a grid so that no parts of the area will be missed or retraced. The boat tows a rocket-shaped transducer–called a ”towfish”–
under water, which transmits and receives a sonar signal. The signals bounce off solid objects and are retrieved by the towfish and displayed on a computer print-out onboard in the form of dark spots, lines and shadows.
It was by this method that a Grumman F4F Wildcat was located 3/4 of a mile east of the South Chicago Harbor light. The history of this stout little fighter is often overshadowed by the F6F Hellcat and the F4U Corsair. In fact, the F4F held its own against Japanese Zeros for almost two years while the Hellcat and Corsair were being developed. Wildcats also were flying combat missions with the English RAF long before the U.S. entered the war, and were one of the few airplanes used until the end of the war. By then, the Wildcat had established an impressive 6.9-to-1 kill ratio.
The Wildcat found in the lake was severely damaged, apparently a carrier
”dump job.” The fuselage had been severed directly behind the cockpit. For whatever reason, only the forward airframe section containing the massive 14-cylinder Wright Cyclone engine, cockpit and wings were found. The canopy and seat were gone, but the dashboard, gauges, stick and radio were still in place. The wings were undamaged except for the tips, ailerons and flaps.
After reviewing the information on the F4F, a private collector contracted Zych to raise the plane.
Upon arriving at the wreck site, Zych sent a diver down to measure the wings from the leading to trailing edges. While the diver recovered scattered parts of the aircraft, steel ”spreader bars” were cut and welded, based on his measurements, aboard the work boat. When the spreader bars were ready, nylon slings were positioned under each wing alongside the fuselage. Then the spreader bars were shackled to the slings, and ”lift bags” to the bars. As an air compressor inflated the bags, the slings were tied in place to keep them from slipping out of position during the tow. When the large yellow bags inflated, the Wildcat slowly lifted off the sandy bottom. The lift bags floated to the surface, suspending the aircraft beneath them. The Wildcat was towed in this manner through the Chicago River locks and up the South Branch to a yacht yard, where a crane lifted it from the water. The collector planned to use its hard-to-get parts to restore another warbird.
During the rapid demilitarization after the war many famous aircraft were melted down for materials or otherwise destroyed, seemingly with little regard for their historical significance. Most of the warbirds in existence today are owned by museums, individuals and the Confederate Air Force, a group of private collectors based in Texas.