Many don’t know that many WWII Navy pilots were trained off the coast of Lake Michigan near Chicago. Older battleships were fitted with flight decks and provided aircraft carrier landing training to new Naval Aviators. Before the slain Meigs Field was brutally murdered by city endorsed bulldozers, there was a real cool model of such a ship with a bunch of Hellcats and Dauntlesses etc. and some info on the training. Supposedly there are TONS of aircraft at the bottom of the lake.
Oh, PS, this is from my local newspaper, and I guarantee there will be at least 2 or 3 schmucks with a completely ignorant comment. They could talk about a rainbow th really had a pot of gold and some local nimrod (not the cool British Comet) will have something to whine about so disregard our local ignorance!
HA for sure! I’ve flown the underbuildings.4 departure from Meigs many times on the sim!!
I never flew in there as a pilot, but I worked for 2 airlines who operated in there. I’m in Springfield, and since we’re not THE city of Illinois, many of our state workers etc are from ‘the city’, so when Meigs was still around, and when 19 seaters still dominated our skies around here, we operated Metros and BE1900’s all day. (Side note) at one point we actually operated an ATR in there . So my time with the airlines got me up there a few times.
Such a cool operation too, there was no security screening on the Meigs flight. It boarded from the terminal here, BUT it was at a gate that was not in the security checkpoint. If Cape Air operated the flight, it would’ve been straight out of the show Wings. The Meigs holding room was big enough for about 6 people, but usually held about 19 as those flights did real well.
Those were fun times! Now , it’s a …park.
. So my time with the airlines got me up there a few times.
…park.