SBD recovered

[John Szalay]

Chicago news is showing video of a Douglas SBD Dauntless pulled from the
lake this morning. anyone up there have the BuNo for it yet ?

http://cbs2chicago.com/local/aircraft.lake.michigan.2.993477.html

[frank]

On Apr 24, 2:52*pm, John Szalay >
wrote:
> Chicago news is showing video of a Douglas SBD Dauntless pulled from the
> lake this morning. * *anyone up there have the BuNo *for it yet ?
>
> http://cbs2chicago.com/local/aircraft.lake.michigan.2.993477.html

Nice set of photos at

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-090424-wwii-bomber-photogallery,0,4094634.photogallery

Chicago Trib has an article in page 6 of first section, 25April

A&T Recovery was diving team. seems diver met it at 100 ft from
article.

local paper had a nice shot of the converted paddleboats that were
turned into a/c carriers for training on the lake.

Navy ensign was from Des Moines, Joseph Lokites. He was interviewed
for story.

seems about 100 WWII aircraft are lost in lake, only 40 not
recovered.

Seems recovery was by submersible, that put on sling air balloon that
raised the acft.

IF I find an article online locally, will post it.

channel 5 had a nice story tonight, bit more than last night. Last
night was 'WWII bomber recovered from lake'. Haven't looked there for
footage yet.

Local paper noted that he thought it ran out of gas, seems they were
doing what we would call engine running crew change. One pilot landed,
got out, another got in and took off.

Trib has date of loss, 24 Nov 1944. For age, looks well preserved.

[frank]

A bit ot, but from looking at channel 2 write up, seems there was a
hiatus on recovery operations. I seem to recall at one point the Navy
was saying that it owned wrecks that came up and were going to take
them from people trying to turn them into warbirds. Seems there was a
bit of legal wrangling and all that a while back.

I don't know the entire story and at the time it was a big source of
heartburn among people recovering wrecks. No doubt there are other
articles and cites out there on this.

[John Szalay]

frank > wrote in


Thanks Frank
the news article also had the Buno.

SBD-5 Dauntless Bureau No. 36291