Warbird Information Exchange

Called the Glenview Hangar One Foundation, the group of citizens and military veterans works to memorialize the village's history as the site of Naval Air Station Glenview — now home to a retail and residential development called The Glen.

Hangar One operates a small museum to that history, tucked away in a small warehouse at 2040 Lehigh Ave. But since the air station's closure in 1995, the foundation has sought to build a permanent museum to Glenview's naval past.

"This is the only place in the world that at one point naval aviators actually took off from a land-based training facility and qualified for carrier landings on fresh water aircraft carriers," said Bill Marquardt, 56, president of Hangar One.

The pilots and crews that trained in Glenview changed the course of the war, Marquardt said.

During the war, between 15,000 and 18,000 pilots left Glenview's air station to land on one of two steam ships on Lake Michigan that were converted into makeshift aircraft carriers, said Bob Coffin, 80, a Glenview resident and curator of the Hangar One museum.

Training on Lake Michigan allowed the pilots and ship crews to operate free from the threat of attack on either coast. The pilots, including former President George H.W. Bush, were required to make eight take offs and landings on the converted carriers before being shipped off mostly to the Pacific front.

Most training flights were successful, Coffin said. But landing a plane on what one pilot called "a postage stamp" was no easy task, and an estimated 150 planes landed in the lake. Of those who crashed, an estimated 17 pilots lost their lives, Coffin said. Most were rescued within minutes.

Capt. Grant C. Young was 22 when he trained at Glenview in December of 1943. After landing on one of the converted carriers — the USS Wolverine — Young took off to practice a second landing when his engine failed. He landed in the ice-cold December water, and had to swim to a nearby rescue ship while his plane sank.

"About halfway there, I realized I couldn't feel my legs anymore," said Young, 91, from his home in Lanark, Ill. Once aboard the ship, crew members worried Young would not survive the 10 minutes he spent in the water. But by the next day, he was back in Glenview finishing his carrier landing practice.

Thirty-one WWII planes have already been recovered from Lake Michigan, said Taras Lyssenko, a partner in A&T Recovery, a Chicago-based company that finds and recovers these planes for the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, Fla. The recovery process involves the approval of various state agencies, the Navy and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Just waiting for the phone call confirming the recovery date before booking my ticket to Chicago

MS

"This is the only place in the world that at one point naval aviators actually took off from a land-based training facility and qualified for carrier landings on fresh water aircraft carriers," said Bill Marquardt, 56, president of Hangar One.

The level of Lake Michigan is now at a all time record low so a planes to be recovered are not down quite as deep as they used to be. It probably does not make much of a difference but it's just a thought.

I'll be in Glenview over the holidays and I'll get some pictures at the NAS Glenview museum.

Where is the museum? I might stop by as well when I'm back there for the holidays.

The level of Lake Michigan is now at a all time record low so a planes to be recovered are not down quite as deep as they once were. It probably does not make much of a difference but it's just food for thought.

http://www.thehangarone.org/newlayoutindex.asp scroll down to "Naval Air Station Glenview Museum" for all the info you need. Let me know when you will be going and perhaps we and Chris Brame can meet up there!