PORTAGE, Mich. — A piece of World War II history was sitting at the bottom of Lake Michigan for 70 years. No one knew about it until recently.
Air Zoo officials said the "Dauntless" Dive-Bomber plane was recovered in 2009. The U.S. Navy chose them to restore it.
"We're going to restore the story of this airplane that was over in Pearl Harbor one month after December 7 of 1941," said Troy Thrash, president and CEO of the Air Zoo.
After the attack in Hawaii, which thrust the U.S. into World War II, fighter planes like the Dauntless Dive-Bomber took off for battle. Now it's being restored in West Michigan.
"What you are going to see, what people here in our community and around the globe are going to see is how we ultimately restore all of the metal," said Thrash. "The aluminum, the magnesium, the steal, the plastic, the leather, the paint, all of those material things [will] be very easily visible to see as we progress throughout these 5 years."
The Air Zoo said that's how long the restoration process will take. Thrash told the crowd of 200 people that more than restoring its look, the goal is to bring to life the stories behind it, like how it wound up at the bottom of Lake Michigan.
"Lt. John Lendo, who was a Massachusetts native and Dartmouth grad, who on February 18th of 1944 was coming in for a landing on a training aircraft carrier in Lake Michigan," said Thrash. "And suddenly his engine RPMs went to zero, probably due to carburetor icing. He was forced to land this airplane in the water."
Lt. Lendo survived uninjured said Thrash. But he died 10 months later while fighting in the Philippines. World War II Veteran Paul Watters trained on the same type of plane and remembered it to be "fantastic."
"It did a really great job in the Pacific you heard what the man said about sinking a couple of carriers, 2 or 3 or 4," recalled Watters. "Without it I don’t know we may not have won the war."
