It's no secret that diaries about old warbirds find a ready audience among the Kossack Air Force. Those old aircraft are like touchstones, a link to a past otherwise relentlessly receding into the depths of time. There were several recent news stories about aircraft I thought I'd write up tonight for those who might have missed them. As it happens, they all relate to World War II.
More below the Orange Omnilepticon
Freshwater Wildcat
The first news item is of history reclaimed. Air Force Magazine reports an FM-2 Wildcat has been recovered from Lake Michigan It had ended up in the lake, near Chicago, after a failed take off from the U.S.S. Sable in 1944.
The fighter rolled off the deck; although the pilot, Ensign William Forbes, was able to swim free, the Wildcat sank in roughly 200 feet of water where it remained for some 68 years. A recovery crew pulled the FM-2 largely intact—except for the tail—from the water's depths on Dec. 7, reported Chicago's Daily Herald. Ellis said the airplane is expected to go on display "in the Chicago area" following its restoration.
The
Daily Herald report has some intriguing additional details.
The Wildcat settled upside down in the muddy bottom, 200 feet below the surface. Dozens of other aircraft remain submerged in the lake, deteriorating.
"The rest of them need to come out of the water real soon," said Taris Lyssenko, whose A&T Recovery company has salvaged about 40 aircraft from Lake Michigan.
When the Wildcat was pulled from the water Friday, much of it was intact. Although part of the tail had broken away, both wings were attached, as was the propeller and many of the gauges inside the cockpit.
It was rusty, of course, and zebra mussels had taken over many of the plane's surfaces. But some of the Wildcat's paint was still visible, as were distinctive markings on the propeller and wings.
Two holes in each wing that once held the plane's guns were visible, although the guns were long gone. On the retractable landing gear, one of the tires remained full of air.
"Good old Lake Michigan, ice-cold water," said Seyler, the retired Marine.
At this late date, it seems almost difficult to credit the idea of
U.S. Navy Aircraft Carriers operating in the Great Lakes during World War II, but it makes a lot of sense: no need to worry about enemy u-boats, no need for an escort group or armaments - just train pilots to get on and off the deck of a moving ship. The Wikipedia article about the
U.S.S. Sable has a bit more.
Speaking of lost aircraft in the Great Lakes, there are still those who'd like to know where B-24 Getaway Gertie went down in Ontario one winter night.
Bad News From Burma?
The hunt for the Spitfires supposedly buried in Myanmar at the end of World War II is not off to a good start.
It's the confession that no excavation team ever wants to make – that its search has come up empty. But for Spitfire hunters in Burma, who have been on the prowl since early January for dozens of second-world-war-era British fighter planes, that seeming admission came on Friday, when archaeologists were forced to cancel a news conference after their search turned up not planes but cables and pipes instead.
The British-led archaeology team, headed by the Lincolnshire farmer and Spitfire enthusiast David Cundall, has been on the hunt for as many as 140 fighter planes believed to be buried in three sites around the country, with 36 of them supposedly buried close to the runway at Rangoon airport. Armed with mechanical diggers and quite a lot of hope, the 21 archaeologists have spent the past fortnight digging up various holes around the airport looking for the giant crates reportedly housing the planes.
But all the team has found so far is bundles of electric cables and water pipes, a retired Burmese geology professor who has been involved in the Spitfires search told the Associated Press. "We haven't stopped [searching] and we cannot stop," said Soe Thein. "It is just a delay in our work."
No map exists with details of where exactly the planes might be.
The Guardian report notes the search is still continuing. Diggers at another site may have found something - but they have a lot of water to pump out of the way before they'll be able to check what they've uncovered. The hunt continues.
After 70 Years, Their Fate Is Known
The Coast Guard recently announced one of their planes, missing since 1942, has been located in a glacier in Greenland. The J2F-4 Grumman Duck had been rescuing the crew of a B-17 that had crash landed in Greenland. The search had been going on since 2008.
NEW YORK – The Defense Department's Joint POW/MIA Personnel Accounting Command said an exhaustive search by an expedition team of U.S. Coast Guard service members and North South Polar, Inc. Scientists and explorers has produced sufficient evidence that the crash site of a WWII Coast Guard Grumman Duck rescue aircraft missing for 70 years with three men aboard, beneath the ice near Koge Bay, Greenland, has been found, Coast Guard officials announced Monday.
By using historical information, ground penetrating radar, a magnetometer and metal detection equipment, the expedition team isolated the location where the aircrew crashed on Nov. 29, 1942. The team then melted five six-inch-wide holes deep into the ice and lowered a specially designed camera scope. At approximately 38 feet below the ice surface in the second hole, the team observed black cables consistent with wiring used in WWII-era J2F-4 amphibious Grumman aircraft.
Further analysis of video from the camera scope and photographs captured by a member of the expedition team revealed additional aircraft components similar to those found in the engine area of the J2F-4 Grumman Duck.
“Locating the J2F-4 Grumman Duck was a monumental success,” said Cmdr. Jim Blow, from the U.S. Coast Guard Office of Aviation Forces. “Collectively, the Coast Guard and NSP accomplished what the Coast Guard set out to achieve in 2008 when efforts began to locate the Duck.”
For nearly three years, Coast Guard and NSP have been working together on this project researching historical documentation about the last flight of U.S. Coast Guard Lt. John Pritchard, Petty Officer 1st Class Benjamin Bottoms and U.S. Army Air Force Cpl. Loren Howarth aboard the Duck.
“The three men aboard this aircraft were heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country,” Blow added. “The story of the Grumman Duck reflects the history and the mission of the Coast Guard, and by finding the aircraft we have begun to repay our country’s debt to them.”
The Coast Guard crew managed to fly out two of the crew in their first flight, but their second flight with another crew member ended in a crash when weather closed in.
Pritchard and Bottoms returned to the B-17 crash the next day but were forced to leave quickly with only one of the crew because of an incoming storm. They took off and headed back for Northland but were met with impassable weather. They radioed out, “M-O, M-O,” requesting magnetic orientation from the ship. That was the last that was heard of Pritchard, Bottoms, and the rescued airman they carried with them, Corporal Loren Howarth.
The Duck was lost as part of a larger rescue effort involving several downed aircraft on the Greenland ice sheet. (
PDF file account here.) The details, and the accompanying photos give an idea of just how hazardous operating in that area of the world was and is. Even today, the
109th Airlift Wing of the NYANG operating C-130s on skis out of Scotia, NY doesn't take it casually. The remaining B-17 crew members were forced to wait several months before finally being rescued; air dropped supplies kept them going.