At the 2000 reunion in San Diego the subject of the Paddle Wheelers of Lake Michigan came up. I was one of the few aviators in the VC-35/(VA)AW-35 Association who made his initial arrested landings on one of the Paddle Wheelers. I said I would try to write a brief column about these two very unique ships.
The U.S. Navy's association with the Paddle Wheelers began in the early 1940's shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Seeanbee had for many years been a sidewheel passenger excursion ship on the Detroit River, Lake Erie and the St. Clair River. Early in 1942 the Navy bought the Seeanbee, stripped off the superstructure and installed a wooden flight deck. On August 12, 1942 the USS Wolverine, IX64 was commissioned with a 550 by 85-foot flight deck. That same month the Navy requisitioned the Greater Buffalo, one of the largest side-wheelers in the world. She was commissioned on May 8, 1943 as the USS Sable, IX81, after the same conversion as the USS Wolverine. The Wolverine and the Sable had no catapults or hangar deck and the flight deck was a mere 26 feet above water.
Someone may ask, how did you become acquainted with these two unique ships? I finished Operational Training at NAS Sanford, FL in March of 1945. From there I reported to NAS Glenview, IL for carrier qualification. Fortunately, there were some FM2 Wildcats being used for carrier qualification on the USS Wolverine and the USS Sable, each of which was home ported at the port of Chicago. I had flown the Wildcat in operational training and I was ready for the initiation to carrier aviation, or so I thought.
On a clear, cold day in March, after making several field carrier practice landings on the previous day, four of us nuggets left NAS Glenview headed for the USS Wolverine. By sheer luck or the Grace of God, we found the ship sailing along on Lake Michigan. I looked down at the ship's flight deck with a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach. It was not a large deck, but we made a sharp break over the ship and began our practice approaches.
The pre-flight briefing had emphasized that we would make several practice approaches with wave-off's until the landing signal officers were confident that each of us would make safe arrested landings. I was making my fourth "practice" approach, confident of another wave off when on final I saw the "cut" signal. My left hand immediately cut the power as my heart leaped into my throat. Fortunately, the tail hook caught an arresting wire and I came to a stop. When I was finally able to catch my breath, I realized I was standing on the brakes and a deck hand was frantically giving me a brake release signal. This began another frightening experience. About 20 sailors manned the wing and pushed me aft as far as possible. Remember there were no catapults on the ship, so it was necessary to make a deck launch. At this time I saw the Flight Deck Officer giving me a frantic full power signal. When I reached maximum power, the flight deck officer made a motion pointing towards the bow of the ship and I released the brakes and was rolling forward. The bow of the ship seemed to be directly in front of me and still holding my breath I tentatively raised the nose of my Wildcat and it flew off the deck.
I finally was able to breathe somewhat normally again and to my good fortune was able to make nine more successful landings and take offs and was certified to be carrier qualified.
After World War II ended in 1945 these two unique coal-burning ships were both decommissioned and sold for scrap. There was no longer a need for them due to the return of many operational carriers from wartime service.
I was one of over 15,000 aviators that made their first arrested landings on one of these two ships and it was an experience that I hope I will never forget.
