The paddle wheel aircraft carriers of Lake Michigan

An awful lot of the WWII naval fighter planes you see in museums were pulled up from the bottom of Lake Michigan. The pilots training to land on these carriers missed fairly frequently.

The water at the bottom of the lake is great for preservation too, so the planes are usually in very good condition, except for whatever damage occurred when they hit the water.

I was aware of converted oil tankers ("oilers") that were fitted with a flight deck and hangar, but not paddlewheel propulsion.

I had a book from the ship's library of the U.S.S. Sanangamon, and I had read the wiki on the ship. (It suffered a grievous attack, but survived, and was scrapped after the war.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Sangamon_(CVE-26)

The U.S. Navy still has their main training facility near Chicago. And they still have weird training ships. USS Trayer is probably the strangest.[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQCh1mLTIGk

The Navy requisitioned excursion boats to train pilots during WW2 and somehow this is not a more well known story.

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TL;DR converted WWII pilot training ships when everything was in short supply