Nice day.
Posted on 08/22/2010 4:18:35 AM PDT by Lonesome in Massachussets
SAN DIEGO (Aug. 20) -- A rare World War II dive bomber was lifted 90 feet from the bottom of a San Diego reservoir Friday and hoisted to dry land for the first time in 65 years.
The SB2C Helldiver aircraft was brought to the surface after days of work to free it from several feet of mud and debris on the dark floor of Lower Otay Reservoir, where it was spotted last year by two men using a fish finder.
Divers from A&T Recovery in Chicago said the tail of the plane was sticking out of the silt, but the engine was completely buried.
A crowd watched Friday as the mud-caked, single-engine plane, with both wings attached, broke through the surface of the water then officially touched shore at 3:50 p.m. PDT.
Chris Carlson, AP People gather around a SB2C Helldiver after it was recovered from a San Diego reservoir on Friday. Its propellor was mangled, but splotches of blue showed through the corrosion and mud elsewhere on the aircraft.
The plane will now be dried out, disassembled and trucked to the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Fla., for restoration and display, said Taras Lyssenko, A&T general manager.
(Excerpt) Read more at aolnews.com ...
Nice day.
Son of a gun!
CC
I read (most likely Wiki) that after ~75,000 engineering changes, they got it sorted out. I suppose that made it an acceptable sow’s ear made from an unacceptable sow’s ear.
Thanks LIM. My deceased uncle flew one of these in WWII, and crashed twice and lived miraculously through both.
One was on a land strip where he flipped and slid upside down into an ammunition storage building, and it did not go off.
The other was off a carrier into the water where it too flipped hitting the water upside down. Very few could get out of a plane hitting the water upside down, but he did.
He later became a prominent Florida architect and mayor of a major city.
My 93 yr. old father will love seeing this article and hearing about it. He was also in the Navy, retired from the reserves a Captain, and it’s a miracle he and my mother - 95 - are still living and well.
arlis
Sorry that was the SBD not the SB2C....
They made due with the tools they had. It took a lot of training, grit and guts to get the results they did. The pilots make the difference.
It was bigger, faster, better armed and a worse plane. There's more to improvement than just upping the specs.
Thanks, your family is one of the reasons I’m glad to be an American.
Wrong dive bomber, this one was the original SBDs replacement, and it wasn't a very good one.
Thank your dad for his service to our country.
My uncle worked on those planes. He did not care for them at all. Dad flew B-29's out of Guam.
This being California, I can’t help but wonder what kind of “Environmental Impact” statement was required for this operation. After all this aircraft was almost ‘native’ to the place after all of these years. Just think of the millions of fish that have sheltered there over the years that now lack this shelter!
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CC
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