ASN Wikibase Occurrence # 81674
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| Date: | Friday 24 November 1944 |
| Time: | |
| Type: | Douglas SBD-5 Dauntless |
| Owner/operator: | US Navy |
| Registration: | 36291 |
| MSN: | |
| Fatalities: | Fatalities: 0 / Occupants: 1 |
| Aircraft damage: | Destroyed |
| Location: | Lake Michigan -
 United States of America
|
| Phase: | Unknown |
| Nature: | Training |
| Departure airport: | |
As America rushed to train naval pilots to fight in World War II, thousands of them learned the tricky art of landing at sea on Lake Michigan, where a pair of passenger liners had been turned into aircraft carriers. A handful of pilots died, and more than 100 planes were lost to the lake during the war.
On 24 November 1944 Ensign Joseph Lokites, a pilot with so far 380 flight hours, tried his third of about six required landings on the USS Wolverine when his SBD-5 Dauntless Buno 36291 "just crashed into the lake", as Lokites, 86, said in a phone interview from his Des Moines home more than sixty years later, in 2009. He added: "I guess it ran out of gas or something. I took over from another pilot." Lokites 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."
In 2009, after a review of naval accident documentation, this aircraft was found by sonar scanning under 315 feet of water. A remotely operated submersible photographed it and fitted it with a sling and an inflatable balloon to carry it up. A&T Recovery diving engineer Keith Pearson dove into the freezing water and met it about 100 feet down, a shadow in the infinite blue surroundings. The salvage workers then hauled it underwater to Waukegan Harbor in darkness. The next day, on 27 April 2009, as a couple of hundred people, including children and war veterans, circled the harbor, a chugging, diesel-powered crane lifted it skyward by inches as the salvage men worked slowly to make sure the wings broke the surface of the water and not the other way around. At 1037 hrs, the SBD-5 Dauntless touched down on a blue tarpaulin alongside Waukegan Harbor.
The plane then went to National Naval Aviation Museum, Pensacola NAS, Pensacola, Florida, for restauration.
Sources:
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2009-04-25/news/0904240211_1_lake-michigan-plane-landing
http://www.aerialvisuals.ca/AirframeDossier.php?Serial=14797
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Michigan
http://www.maplandia.com/united-states/illinois/lake-county/waukegan/
Revision history:
| Date/time | Contributor | Updates |
|---|---|---|
| 14-Nov-2010 11:55 | ASN archive | Added |
| 25-Nov-2015 06:46 | Laurent Rizzotti | Updated [Total fatalities, Total occupants, Location, Country, Nature, Source, Narrative] |
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