A World War II era Navy fighter was brought up from the bottom of Lake Michigan yesterday, evoking strong memories of a vanished time to the aviator who put her there:
Walter Elcock, 89, said he remembers the day as though it was yesterday.
During a training exercise during which Elcock was practising landing on a carrier deck, he was brought in too low and lost his lift.
Well…
Two thousand horses once screamed under that cowl.
The Hellcat – the first design to incorporate lessons learned from actual combat with the Imperial Japanese Navy – was the most successful naval fighter ever, credited with the destruction of over 5000 aircraft in the Pacific Campaign and another 50 or so with the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm.
David McCampbell, the Navy’s leading ace with 34 kills, scored all his victories in the Hellcat.
Over 12,000 Hellcats were built between 1941 and 1945.
’tis a shame that but a handful exist today in museums and and even fewer are airworthy and take to the skies. Yet another reason to go to Oshkosh before there are none or they all end up grounded for lack of a suitable fuel to feed the radial rumbling under the cowling.
12,000 Hellcats and tens of thousands of other warbirds made for the war, and how many are around today? I’ve always thought it’s a shame that the only thing the government has done efficiently in the past 75 years was destroying them after the war.
Hey, a bath, some nail polish, a little primping, be right as rain. At least she is up out of the water.
Jeopardy
Your parents Maytags and Kenmores were prolly made from them thar warbirds. Got a photo of hundreds of warbirds being cut up for scrap in OK after the war. So sad to see. There was a rumor in Guam years ago that the runway on Agana was built atop crated fighters waiting for the invasion of Japan. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki deemed to expensive to ferry back to the States.
“brought in low and lost his lift”? Wha?
BTW, before this warbird was brought up, there were exactly ZERO combat verteran Hellcats in existance. This one flew in the Solomons.
I see the dashboard is covered with Zebra Mussels. I hope it is structurally sound enough to repair.
Dashboard? Does that look like a Packard to you?
Heard on the news that it will be restored for museum duty, but not flying. Only 7 or so flying. Not nearly enough, seeing how it’s the #1 American ace maker (not the P-51) with 306 aces.
Yeah, and the P-38 destroyed more Japanese planes than any other mark, not to mention America’s top two aces -Richard Bong and Thomas McGuire- both drove the Lightning. So there!
Yeah, yeah. But if you wanted to shoot down planes, chew up stuff on the deck, AND have a danged good chance of coming home – take the Jug.
I just found this site: http://home.att.net/~C.C.Jordan/index.html
Some VERY good articles there. Including a lot about “Der Gabelschwanz Teufel”
Joe, very true! While the Lightning is my first love, I have no problem acknowledging in many ways the superiority of the Thunderbolt. I’ve noted several times on various blogs the fact that the Navy went to radial-only aircraft in the late 20s, and the USAAC/USAAF demonstrated a similar preference for radial-engine designs. IIRC, the P-51 was the last non-derivative inline design to got into widespread service. The Brits had their later Hawker designs, the Germans had the Kurt Tank designs, and Japan never did develop a reliable inline engine. Pretty much by 1945 the radial engine was the preferred power plant for internal combustion-powered aircraft.
I do have to say that there is a certain exotic elegance to the Two Tailed Devil. And it was a very good gun platform.
I think I fell in love with them from hearing a few stories by one of my uncles who was a tail gunner on a Liberator (anohter workhores and excellent aircraft that gets overlooked) about them. Then I read Thunderbolt, by RS Johnson and was hooked on them.
Err, no. P-38 claimed 1,700 Japanese aircraft. Hellcat: 5,156 airplanes. Corky Meyer’s “Flight Journal”. he quoted US gov’t numbers.
Did you notice the editorial content in each of the A/C images? “War”
I’m so happy that the superannuated aviator is alive to see his old ride.
Another Hellcat driver had a very large airport named after him. Butch O’Hare went down in a Hellcat but won the Medal of Honor in the Wildcat. Coincidentally they also fished a Wildcat out of Lake Michigan which is restored and now sits in terminal #2 commemorating O’Hare’s accomplishment.
Over the years at least ten warbirds have been recovered from Lake Michigan. However, proceed at your own risk if you find an aircraft and seek to restore it. The U.S. Navy is very agressive about protecting it’s airplanes and will fight fiercely to control its underwater property, claiming that it is not subject to traditional admiralty law. Without the Navy’s permission, (which is hard to come by) no one may salvage a piece of Naval property, even if the Navy has clearly abandoned it. Sort of counterproductive. The airplanes may disintegrate into a pile of rust when private salvors and collectors could preserve them and show them off.
Another of those Wildcats, an FM-2, is about 50% restored, sitting in the hangar deck of the U.S.S. Hornet up at Alameda. It’s in surprisingly good condition, all things considered.
I’m mindful of a couple of things when I think about the Hellcat. First, the Navy supposedly asked Leroy Grumman to design an airplane suitable for being flown in combat by relatively low time pilots (of which the Navy was going to have a bunch within a few months). So instead of going straight to what became the F8F Bearcat, Grumman’s team designed and built the F6F which could flown by relatively low time pilots.
And second, by 1944 faced with swarms of those Hellcats, the remaining older veterans in the IJN’s naval air arm were stunned by the ferocity of the American pilots. Of course those Hellcats and their pilots were feasting on the second and third iterations of IJN’s pilot cadre, but they were ferocious.
And as for the newspaper reporter saying that the Hellcat was “brought in too low and lost its lift”–well she might have been a tad smarter if she’d said “too slow” but I’m not holding my breath until she gains any aeronautical knowledge. The Los Angeles Times out here occasionally refers to P-51’s as “combat jet bombers”.
Yeah, that phrase tickled me a bit as well. Not to take anything away from the pilot, but the conventional expression for losing lift is “I stalled it.”
I’m sure he had to explain to the news babe, and that was the story she stuck with.
Wouldn’t “the airplane departed controlled flight” be a better explanation to the uninitiated? At least your peers would give you some miniscule bit credit for the bull$#!t factor in that answer.
It is worth remembering the “aircraft carriers” these guys were landing on were a bit smaller and slower than the huge acreage of sovereign American territory we are used to today.
These were sidewheel excursion steamers with reciprocating engines (not just the aircraft…)and four coal fired boilers.
Check out USS Wolverine (IX-64)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Wolverine_%28IX-64%29
and her sister ship USS Sable (IX-81) on which future Prez Bush 41 trained.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Sable_%28IX-81%29
They were acquired, design work done and conversion completed in nine months. If we had to do something like that today, they would still be arguing over the environmental impact statements or if it would be a traditional or “transformational” design.
IIRC, the Wolverine was parked in Lake Michigan. There used to be a 1/32 scale model of it in the main terminal at then-Meigs Field (now Northerly Island).
That’s how Navy Pier in Chicago got it’s name, that’s where the carriers docked.
I am happy our friends in the UK found this worthy topic!
No matter what the plane, pull back, go up, pull back, go up, pull back, go up, pull back, go down.
Still has nice lines even with the mud.
Some of the planes I saw while touring the Marianas courtesy of Uncle Sam were Hellcats, or so I was told. I wasn’t then, nor am I now, smart enough to identify an aircraft that has been in the water (or in the jungle) for almost thirty years.
Those planes in the water were usually was encrusted with coral, and not much left of the plane, being in warm and salt water as opposed to Lake Michigan waters.
Here’ the website of the Co. that raised it and about 30 others. Very interesting and they seem to be in remarkably good shape, considering.
http://www.atrecovery.com/
Ron,
I spent 69 and 70 flying from NAS Agana. Weekly log flights to Saipan on Tuesdays and Yap and Anguar in the WCI’s.I spent ground time exploring every island I went to including Iwo, Marcus, Truk, Kwajalien, Ponape and other’s. Don’tknow if the link will post, but here’s a pic ofa Zero that was caught on the ground on Yap in 44. There were quite a few of them.
http://i819.photobucket.com/albums/zz111/oldskydog/DonPotterJapZeroYap.jpg
oldskydog, thanks for the links.
Especially good photo of the one on Yap. Better condition than any that I remember seeing during my time in the area (‘71-74).
I’m going to have to look thru some boxes for some old photos. I know I still have a few of the shore batteries on the various islands -still shake my head in wonder at how the guys came ashore in the face of them.
Lex,
Just so you know. The F6F wasn’t built based on lessons learned from the opening days of the war. Rather the F6F was already on the Grumman development boards as early as 1940. The contract for the plane was signed for in June of 1941, or about six months before Pearl Harbor. Grumman realized that the F4F couldn’t hack it if it went up against Bf109’s or some of the designs coming from Focke-Wulf. Everyone was learning from the Battle of Britain and the air war over France from the opening year of the war. On top of that the Navy realized that the war was around the corner and they needed something which could be flown by low time pilots as they were being expanded to a larger force. Considering how unforgiving the carrier aviation realm is. So Grumman engineers worked very hard on putting the most powerful and proven engine into an easy to fly airframe. Until the Leroy Grumman left the company that was his design philosophy, putting a proven and powerful engine into a good airframe that was easy to fly. That is why Grumman did so well in the opening years of Naval Aviation.
It is a infamous myth that the F6F was based on lessons learned from a couple of captured Zekes. The F6F was already in flying prototype stage by the time a full version of a A6M2 Zeke was recovered from a peat bog outside of Dutch Harbor and the F6F was already in initial squadron service by the time that Zeke was made flyable and being evaluated by ONI.
All true, AT1 B. The Hellcat was Eric Brown’s choice for the greatest fighter of WWII, based on what the plane accomplished, not on it’s performance figures alone. He had the SeaFire as his great love, but would rather fight in a Grumman.
I really wish that the F6F-6 had made it to production, with it’s 4 bladed paddle prop, and bubble canopy. I am glad that they dropped the spinner on the prop hub, though, that looked odd.
My Uncle Darrell was a F6F driver, so I admittedly biased about the Hellcat.
When you look at an F6F, and compare it to the A6M Zero, it’s hard to believe that the Big Grumman Beast could stay with the Zero for the first 80 degrees of a turn, which was generally enough for the 6 Fifties to do their job. 5200 comfirmed kills for the Hellcat. I guess Leroy and Company knew what they were up to.
I should like to get down to Chicago, and see that 1/32 WOLVERINE! That thing must be 20 feet long!
Scott, you can fly into Chicago O’Hare and see an F4F on static display as you pass from security checkpoints to whatever gate it is you need to get to. With the wings folded I could fit it into my living room.
It is absolutely amazing how small those warbirds are compared to the present day. The B-17 I thought the size of a 727 or something. Little did I know it’s not much larger than a present-day Hornet until I’d seen both in person.
About that B-17, seeing 1000 of them in formation climbing over France, those radials rumbling, is one sight I don’t think any increase in scale can ever hope to beat.
– Max
Max, I live on the approach to Volk Field, a WI ANG base. Sometimes, pairs of C-130s will fly over, as they take off. Just those 8 turboprops make the house shake, I just can’t imagine what 4000 R-1820 would sound and feel like, as they passed over.
Scott, you bring back memories for My Good Wife. Her father was stationed there, and she and her family have grand memories of the place. The 130’s were a common sight and one that she as a kid looked forward to. Myself, it was BUFFs out of Offutt just south of Omaha, NE — they used to fly over the place when the wind was from the north and I used to lay on the snow in my coveralls and just watch them climb away and wish I were aboard one of them.
My Good Wife sends a message. Her father told her that if she sees a C-141 overhead to duck and pray, for some day God will look down from His firmament, spot that aircraft, and smite it down because obviously nothing that large can fly.
Ya know, there used to be a time when military aircraft flying overhead were the sounds of freedom and not a brash example of taxpayer dollars spent on making noise. I’d like to go back to that time, personally.
– Max
Every now and then, a C-5 comes trundleing over, and when I se it, my first thought is, ” Now just hold on, they can’t do that, nothing that big can fly! “
Not a pilot here but I’ve always been fascinated with aviation in general and naval avaiation in particular.
It’s my understanding that the F6F was able to outclimb the zero above 10,000 feet and was faster than the zero above 20,000 feet (engaging the zero below 5,000 feet was frowned upon I think). Those features combined with tactics suited to the skill level of the pilots … well the record speaks for itself eh?
A 2 part training video can be viewed here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ55LmRwkQg
High speed turns were better in the Hellcat. The Hellcat would dive and make a right hand turn. The Zero couldn’t follow that turn due to a quirk in the aerodynamics.
G-Man:
“There was a rumor in Guam years ago that the runway on Agana was built atop crated fighters waiting for the invasion of Japan. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki deemed to expensive to ferry back to the States.”
Sadly, not true. The USAF Museum went to great lengths a couple decades ago to check this out, because if it were true there would have literally been examples of every P-series bird from the Jug on up. What appears to have happened is that some crated birds were unboxed then bulldozed into unrecognizable piles of scrap, then buried some distance from what’s now Andersen AFB. Now what IS true is that at Guam, Okinawa and the PI crated birds that were deck cargo on freighters were actually pushed over the side at war’s end – these would almost certainly have been P-51s and P-47s. The problem is that no one knows how many or exactly where…
Mike
“What appears to have happened is that some crated birds were unboxed then bulldozed into unrecognizable piles of scrap, then buried some distance from what’s now Andersen AFB.”
I believe that location was at NAS Agana. While I was stationed there in 69-70, we were unable to do a compass swing on the ground so we had to do it inflight using the sextant. We were told that the reason was that many aircraft were bulldozed under nearby, making the compass rose unuseable.
The Hellcat was found in Lake Michigan but this one came in low and slow and lost lift landed on the carrier deck and went over the side. I must have missed something. What carrier was in Lake Michigan at the time and how did it get there? I know there was a sub base there called Great Lakes which is still there today and subs could sail a canal that paralleled the Saint Lawrence River. Was this deep enough to take a deep draft ship like an aircraft carrier and if so how did it get into Lake Michigan?
The carriers were two former excusion ships, the Greater Buffalo, and the Seeandbee, which were sliced off at the main deck, and had flight decks built upon them. There were used only for Carrier Qualifications, and had the rather nice advantage that they sea they sailed was almost 100% U-Boat free, and those that were there, were ours, heading from Manitowoc, WI, where they were built, to the Chicago Sanitary Canal, the Illinois River, the Mississippi, and eventually, the Gulf. To my knowlege, the USS SABLE ( ex Greater Buffalo ), and the USS WOLVERINE, ( ex Seeandbee ), were the only coal fired, side wheeler carriers ever made. The SABLE was the first USN CV to have a steel flight deck.As I noted above, Navy Pier in Chicago is named thus, because that is where the carriers docked.
Plane Guard duties were done by USCG patrol boats, I want to say 85 footers, and the planes came from NAS Glenview. One of the pilots to CARQUAL on SABLE was LT(jg) George Herbert Walker Bush.