Navy Pier by Douglas Bukowski

Author:Douglas Bukowski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee
Published: 1996-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

The USS Wolverine, formerly the Seeandbee of the Cleveland and Buffalo Transit Company. Early on, the smoke from the side paddle-wheel carrier made landings extremely difficult. National Archives

Sometimes, the work crews operated the boiler on days when the men were ordered to air out their bedding. The inevitable smell of tar picked up by the bedding was one of the smells Schneider associated with the pier. Another was apricots: “Stewed apricots, apricot pie or even fresh apricots; count on them, they were served at each meal.” On a trip to Navy Pier forty-three years later, Chester Schneider could still smell apricots.

A small portion of the pier was reserved for a tugboat and barge charged with the job of retrieving Navy planes that had crashed into Lake Michigan. These accidents were not totally unexpected. Rather, they were a by-product of one of the most fascinating training efforts of the war. Anybody who passed Navy Pier in 1944 or 1945 could tell that some serious military activity was going on just by looking at the two aircraft carriers moored to the south of the pier.

The war in the Pacific often consisted of naval engagements involving carrier-based aircraft. Training a steady flow of pilots was essential, but taking a carrier out of active service for that purpose was out of the question. The balance of power in the first half of the war with Japan was so precarious the Navy could ill-afford the loss of a carrier, even for training. Then, in early 1942, an officer stationed at Great Lakes proposed a solution—train flyers on Lake Michigan.

Commander Richard F. Whitehead argued that lake-based training would free the Navy from worry of attack or the presence of mines. The only drawback was that aircraft carriers did not ordinarily ply the Great Lakes. Anticipating this problem, Commander Whitehead convinced his superiors that the training could be done on lake steamers converted for the purpose.

The boats chosen were both side paddle-wheel steamers, the Seeandbee (named for the owners, the Cleveland and Buffalo Transit Company) and the Greater Buffalo. The Seeandbee was purchased and converted first; it was commissioned the USS Wolverine in August 1942. The Greater Buffalo followed as the USS Sable nine months later.

The Seeandbee, constructed in 1912, was the largest side paddle-wheel steamer in the world, with a length of approximately five hundred feet; the overhang on the flight deck added another fifty feet to the ship. The Greater Buffalo, built in 1923, was slightly longer. In contrast, carriers like the Enterprise and Yorktown were some three hundred feet longer, a distance which gave a margin of safety for planes landing or taking off. But pilots learned to make do, just as they did with another feature of the two lake carriers. The landing decks were only twenty-six feet above water. An aircraft taking off any carrier tends to dip downward as it leaves the deck. The challenge on Wolverine and Sable was to make sure the dip did not turn into a splash.

The two carriers presented a unique sight during the war years.

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