Saturday, March 20, 2004

Two WWII veterans -- pilot and plane -- reunited

By RONALD WILLIAMSON | News-Journal Staff Writer

Bits of bright orange rust lie scattered in the sun around the old aviation engine. Corrosion has melted the magnesium manifold. Many metal parts and fittings are fused by time and elements, but the 13 chunky cylinder heads around the engine block are pretty clean.

Ed Carson, left, and Gene Storz, both of DeLand, stand Friday on a Grumman TBF torpedo bomber that they are helping to restore at the DeLand Naval Air Station Museum. (Photo: News-Journal/CHAD PILSTER)

The long, lusterless fuselage stands nearby. Faded squadron markings and the Navy star are visible, but barely. Machine guns are long gone. Bent, damaged wings lie near the bomb bay doors.

The World War II Avenger is a big mess.

Which is no real surprise. More than 60 years ago, a trainee pilot ditched this torpedo-bomber in Lake Michigan, right beside the Wolverine, a wooden Great Lakes passenger paddleboat converted to a flattop so Navy pilots could learn to take off and land on a pitching deck. The plane lay on the muddy bottom for nearly half a century while divers took souvenirs from it. About 1990, the hulk was salvaged in pieces and for another 13 years sat wasting away.

Five months ago, like some Cinderella story, the wreck found a home where people love it, clean it and care for it like a favorite sports car. It rests on a new concrete pad behind the DeLand Naval Air Station Museum. Members are restoring the warplane´s shine and bright markings to the way they were before Bob Banta watched it sink in the cold lake water.

“It was apparent immediately when I took off that I had a fire onboard in the engine compartment,” Banta recalled this week by phone from his Palm Beach home. He banked sharply to return, but no one wanted a burning plane on the wooden deck. The landing signal officer waved his paddles toward the lake.

“I just pulled the wheels up, put the flaps down, and set it right on the water. Just like a normal landing, except the stop was pretty abrupt. I was going maybe 85 knots, but the water was flat. Nothing to it.

“The canopy was open. All I did was step out on the wing -- quickly -- and started to pull out my rubber life raft, but I didn´t need it.” A chase boat near the Wolverine retrieved the young aviator.

Banta, now 83, gave the ditched plane no more thought. He had a war to fight.

He flew Avengers in the Pacific, gave close air support to Marines on deadly Iwo Jima, dropped bombs on Okinawa and flew in the first large carrier strike on Tokyo. He returned in one piece to his hometown, Madison, N.J., became a car dealer and retired to Palm Beach in 1974.

Late last year, the old Avenger rolled into DeLand on the back of a flatbed truck from Pensacola´s Naval Aviation Museum. In pieces, it was more a pile of tangled metal than an aircraft. Aviation veterans began the long task of research and restoration. Amazingly, one of them tracked down Banta. Just as amazing, other veterans found the apparent cause of the fire.

The fire, they believe, had nothing to do with the engine. Some poor deck ape, one said, would have been hung from the Wolverine´s yardarm if officers had seen the evidence now in the little museum.

Little is an apt description. The museum is bursting at the seams. Every wall and corner of the house, once a chief petty officer´s residence at the 1942-46 training base, has photographs, uniforms, weaponry and all kinds of donated artifacts and memorabilia from veterans across the nation.

A Vietnam-era PT boat, nearly twice as big as the house, is under restoration near the Avenger. The museum commemorates the training base, those who served there, and all veterans. It organizes an annual Veterans Day parade and throws a hangar dance reminiscent of wartime social events at the base.

Museum members want to build a hangar to exhibit the Avenger, and other artifacts, and on Thursday will begin an ambitious campaign to raise money. The guest of honor at the event will be Banta, who said he looks forward to seeing the plane and meeting those dedicated to its restoration.

“It was a surprise to find out they had recovered that airplane,” he said. “The last time I saw it, I was standing on the starboard wing and we were floating on Lake Michigan.”

The restoration crew has another surprise. They´ll show Banta what they believe caused the fire -- more than six decades after the Navy lost a perfectly good plane, and plenty long enough that no one gets hung from the yardarm.

Special Project: THE FLORIDA QUEST Laptop Lauren and the Trackers are the main characters in the Florida Quest, a 4-week, multi-media project involving thousands of students in Volusia and Flagler counties. In this quest they discover Homefront and Heritage!