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‘Heroes on Deck’
Review: Planes in Lake Michigan? ‘Heroes on Deck’ Has the Answer
More than 100 WWII aircraft rest on the bottom of Lake Michigan just off the Chicago shoreline.
This is the story of how they got there.
HEROES ON DECK will be broadcast nationally on Public Television stations beginning on Memorial Day weekend May 2016. For a complete list of broadcast times and dates in your area, check your local station listings.
By NEIL GENZLINGERMAY 25, 2016
Memorial Day always prompts an array of programming about battlefield exploits, but one of this year’s offerings looks at a subject not generally covered by these annual commemorations: training. It’s called “Heroes on Deck: World War II on Lake Michigan,” and it explains how dozens of wrecked planes came to be on the bottom of that body of water.
The film, by John Davies, recounts the training of pilots in how to land on aircraft carriers. Two passenger liners were stripped down and fitted with long decks (though not as long as the decks on actual aircraft carriers) and floated on Lake Michigan, where the training could take place without the threat posed by enemy submarines. Landing a plane on a floating airstrip was easier for some young men than others.
“You have all flavors of pilots,” says Kris Habermehl, a journalist with aviation expertise. “Some guys were born to it, others — not the best naval aviators. Not everybody’s going to be the Great Waldo Pepper.”
Vintage footage shows crash after crash, though only a few fatalities resulted, in part because preflight training included how to escape if your plane were to go into the drink.
The film, showing on many public television outlets (including NJTV on Saturday and WLIW World on Sunday; check local listings), does more than just revisit an interesting tidbit of military history. It also chronicles present-day efforts to raise some of the planes from the lake bottom and restore them for display in museums and airports.
That part of the film will be catnip to aviation buffs. A Corsair, a Grumman Wildcat and other battered planes, encrusted in quagga mussels, are brought to the surface. Military record-keeping was precise enough that it’s possible to trace who was flying a particular plane when it went under. In one especially sweet moment, the grandson of the pilot who rode one plane into the water becomes the first person to sit in its cockpit since his grandfather did.
Last edited by Goose (5/30/2016 8:01 am)
We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists.