In 1942, an aircraft carrier steamed out of Chicago's Navy Pier each morning, spent the day recovering warplanes on Lake Michigan, and returned by nightfall. It was the USS Wolverine, a gutted Great Lakes luxury steamer topped with a 550-foot oak flight deck, and soon a second carrier, the USS Sable, joined her. Together they formed the so-called Cornbelt Fleet, the only aircraft carriers in US history to operate entirely on fresh water.
With every fleet carrier needed in the Pacific after Pearl Harbor and no St. Lawrence Seaway to bring one inland, the Navy converted aging paddle-wheel passenger steamers into floating runways. Over the course of the war, the two ships qualified 17,820 naval aviators across 116,000 landings, including a 19-year-old future president, George H. W. Bush. This is the forgotten story of how Chicago trained a generation of carrier pilots far from any ocean, the lives lost to the lake, and the warplane wrecks still resting on its bed today.
#ItsHistory #Chicago #WWII
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IT’S HISTORY - Weekly Tales of American Urban Decay as presented by your host Ryan Socash.
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Scriptwriter - Ryan Socash
Editor - Karolina Szwata
Host - Ryan Socash
» NOTICE
Some images may be used for illustrative purposes only - always reflecting the accurate time frame and content. Events of factual error / mispronounced word/spelling mistakes - retractions will be published in this section.
Thumbnail Note: Features a modern composite image of Chicago for illustrative purposes. Real historical footage and photos of the USS Wolverine and USS Sable are featured throughout the video.
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