November 23, 1943, was not unlike most wartime days at Naval Air Station (NAS) Glenview, Illinois. Flocks of training aircraft took-off and assembled in the skies over Lake Michigan to practice landings and take-offs aboard the training aircraft carriers Wolverine (IX 64) and Sable (IX 81). At the controls of one of the aircraft, an SBD-3 Dauntless dive-bomber, young Ensign Edward H. Hendrickson descended towards the floating airfield that was Wolverine. Soon, the waving arms of the landing signal officer (LSO), a man stationed on the carrier’s deck to guide the approaching aircraft in for a landing, came into view. With a snappy movement of his arm across the front of his neck, the LSO gave the “cut” signal and Hendrickson awaited the reassuring thud of his wheels hitting the deck.
However, as was common among those inexperienced in the art of carrier landings, something wasn’t quite right; Hendrickson was coming in too fast and slightly to the left. Before he could correct his error, the left wheel of the Dauntless hit the catwalk on the edge of the flight deck and the aircraft tumbled into the frigid waters of Lake Michigan. The startled aviator managed to escape the cockpit of his aircraft, which ended up in an inverted position on the water. However, the lake would not be as kind to the dive-bomber and it quickly sank to the dark depths below.
Scenarios like this were played out many times during World War II; indeed the combination of demanding carrier operations and inexperienced aviators resulted in many aircraft being lost in Lake Michigan. It was there that they remained, their engines silent and their existence largely forgotten. However, some of these antiquated warbirds have returned from the deep through the efforts of the National Naval Aviation Museum.
Although naval aircraft had been pulled from the waters of the lake as early as 1979, the Museum had initially expressed no interest in obtaining them. Officials deemed the restoration requirements on aircraft that had spent years underwater to be not worth the expenditure. However, when Captain Robert Rasmussen, USN (Ret), assumed the helm as director in 1988, he brought with him an immediate interest in the lost aircraft in Lake Michigan. In these planes he saw the potential to greatly improve the Museum’s collection.
The Navy had not been farsighted in preserving examples of its aircraft for posterity, leaving museums without examples of many World War II aircraft. For instance, of the 1,978 F4F Wildcat fighters built by Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, none had survived World War II. Although SBD Dauntlesses, like the one Hendrickson was flying, had been Naval Aviation’s most capable dive-bomber of the war, there was no example of one at the National Naval Aviation Museum. Lake Michigan offered a solution to this dilemma. Many of the aircraft sent back for duty with the Carrier Qualification Training Unit at Glenview were the exact types of airplanes that were missing links in the Museum’s collection. In addition, there was the possibility that some had been returned to the United States directly from the war zone, a fact that made an underwater search even more appealing.
Thus, beginning in 1990, the National Naval Aviation Museum began efforts to reap these rewards as initial recovery efforts began in Lake Michigan. The result has exceeded all expectations, the prize catches aircraft previously unrepresented in museum collections. These finds include a one-of-a-kind example of Vought’s SB2U Vindicator, of which a total of only 169 were built. The last SB2U-2 version of the scout-bomber, the Museum’s aircraft flew from the decks of some of the Navy’s earliest aircraft carriers, including the Ranger (CV 4) and the Wasp (CV 7), during the period 1939–1942. In addition, the Museum has recovered examples of the F4F-3 Wildcat, unique not only because they are Grumman-built versions of the famed fighter, but also because they are some of only 285 models that did not incorporate folding wings for easy stowage aboard aircraft carriers.
In addition, combat veterans have been exhumed and given new life. Discovered fourteen miles offshore, the same SBD-3 that Ensign Edward Hendrickson crashed in 1943 was salvaged in October 1990. A veteran of Guadalcanal, a vicious battle waged between Allied and Japanese forces in the Solomon Islands between August 1942 and February 1943, the aircraft flew with two Marine Scouting Bombing Squadrons. During the restoration process, which encompassed 7,000 man hours, workers discovered patches in the rear-gunner’s cockpit, an indication that the plane had been hit by enemy fire at some point during its travels. Another Dauntless, a SBD-2 pulled from Lake Michigan in October 1993, participated in an early carrier raid against Japanese shipping at Lae and Salmaua, New Guinea, and also flew against the Japanese fleet at the Battle of Midway on 4 June1942. Other SBDs flew into harm’s way in the skies over North Africa in support of Operation Torch in November 1942. All told, as of October 1995, twenty-nine aircraft have been pulled from Lake Michigan. The majority of them have been placed on loan to other museums. Twelve currently reside at the National Naval Aviation Museum, where they are either in storage, under restoration or on display. Perhaps the most unique position of any of the Lake Michigan aircraft in the latter category are those in the “Sunken Treasures” exhibit. Opened on 8 June 1993, this exhibit displays two Lake Michigan aircraft in their original underwater state. Complete with dirt to recreate the lake bottom and light dancing through tanks of water to provide the illusion of being underwater, the exhibit is popular with the visitors.
Although Lake Michigan has indeed been the center of underwater salvage, it has not had a monopoly on the Museum’s recovery efforts. On 29 August 1940, Marine 1st Lieutenant Robert Galer, a future general and Medal of Honor recipient, ditched his Grumman F3F-2 fighter during a landing approach to the carrier Saratoga (CV 3), which was operating off the coast of California. Forgotten by time for almost forty-eight years, it was inadvertently discovered in June 1988 by a Navy underwater submersible. The fighter was in the near vertical position and virtually intact. In April 1990 the National Naval Aviation Museum executed a long-planned recovery effort. Unfortunately, in the twenty-two months since discovery, the aircraft had been snagged by a trawler’s net and dragged some 800 feet across the ocean floor. Although extensively damaged, the aircraft was pulled from the Pacific on April 5, 1991 and placed in restoration at the San Diego Aerospace Museum. It is now on display in the Museum. In 2004, a lake in Russia revealed the wreckage of a Finnish Air Force BW-372, export version of the U.S. Navy’s first monoplane fighter, the Brewster F2A Buffalo. Though American combat experience with the type left much to be desired, Finnish pilots racked up quite a record in the type while flying against the Soviet Union. Among the top-ranking aces was Lieutenant Lauri Pekuri, with 18.5 kills. On 25 June 1942, Pekuri engaged in a running dogfight with enemy fighters, suffering damage to his aircraft that made it necessary for him to ditch his aircraft in a lake. Sixty-two years later, that aircraft arrived at the Museum, the tail still pained with the silhouettes signifying some of Pekuri’s kills and the fuselage and pilot’s seat showing the signs of damage from its last pitched World War II air battle.
Today, the Museum’s seeks salvage opportunities in Lake Michigan and other underwater aviation archeological sites around the world, taking advantage of the last significant stores of the aircraft of Naval Aviation history. The goal remains simple - to recover, preserve, and display this important element of our country’s heritage.