de plane

I suppose there's history to be found just about everywhere you go in the world, but as I've mentioned before, I really enjoy the seemingly unlimited histories of Chicago.

Last week, a marine salvage company, working with the naval aviation museum, hauled this out of Lake Michigan, about 30 miles from shore:





The aircraft went down during WWII training operations when naval pilots were being trained off Navy Pier for takeoffs and landings on aircraft carriers.

The plane was lost Nov. 24, 1944, as Ensign Joseph Lokites, a pilot with 380 flight hours, tried his third of about six required landings on the USS Wolverine.

"It just crashed. I guess it ran out of gas or something. I took over from another pilot," Lokites, 86, said in a phone interview from his Des Moines home. He landed in frigid water, and the right wing dipped under, but he was still able to jump out.

"It's not cold when you're fighting for life or death," he said, chuckling. "I was lucky."

A handful of pilots died, and more than 100 planes were lost to the lake. About 40 have been recovered, restored and spotlighted in Naval collections, museums and airport terminals.


While there are still about 60 planes hidden beneath the surface of the lake, chances of recovering them are getting slimmer due to the invasion of deep water quagga mussels (seen covering the plane.) Post restoration, this aircraft will be put on display in the National WWII Museum in New Orleans.

Man! I'm just thinking of all the Postmortem monologues I could have done if I read this ten years ago!