Wreckage from Tuskegee Airman's Plane Pulled from Lake Huron 79 Years After Crash
Published: Tuesday, August 22, 2023 10:00 am
By: Matt Durr, MLive
The 1,200-pound mussel-encrusted engine from a P-39 World War II-era fighter plane flown by a member of the famed Tuskegee airmen is moved, Thursday, Aug. 17, 2023 at the Tuskegee Airmen National Historical Museum in Detroit. The plane was flown by a member of the famed Tuskegee airmen that crashed during training nearly 80 years ago near Port Huron, about 60 miles northeast of Detroit. (Photo provided by the Associated Press)AP
DETROIT -- Nearly 80 years after a plane flown by a member of the Tuskegee Airmen went down in Lake Huron, some of the wreckage has been recovered. According to the Associated Press, the wreckage was pulled from the lake by a team of divers who have been searching the waters for years for pieces of the plane.
The plane crashed on April 11, 1944 and was flown by 2nd Lt. Frank Moody, 22, of Los Angeles. Although the famed Tuskegee Airmen were based out of Alabama, advanced training exercises were conducted in Michigan during World War II.
During an exercise, it’s believed that the plane’s machine guns were not in sync with the rotation of the P-39′s propellor. At some point when firing the guns, Moody hit the propellor, causing the plane to crash. Moody’s plane went down in the lake near Port Huron and his body washed ashore a few months later.
Wreckage from the plane was first discovered in 2014 and in 2018 an archeological recovery permit was issued to the Tuskegee Airmen National Historical Museum. Since then, several pieces of the plane have been recovered, including the bullet-riddled propellor, according to the AP. However, this week divers pulled the 1,200-pound engine from about 30 feet below the water along with some other pieces.
“The aircraft is largely disarticulated,” said Wayne Lusardi, Michigan’s state maritime archaeologist with the Department of Natural Resources and organizer of the recovery effort. “It’s broken, spread out over almost a half-a-mile underwater and consists of thousands of pieces.
“There’s still a good amount of the plane that’s still on the bottom.”
Once the plane is able to be restored, it will be displayed at the Tuskegee Airmen National Historical Museum at Coleman A. Young International Airport on Detroit’s east side, according to the AP. The plans to restore the plane are part of larger effort to shed more light on the contributions of the Tuskegee Airmen.
“It’s sometimes very easy to forget that this was a place where a young man died who gave his life for this country,” Lusardi said. “It really is going to be a memorial to the African American airmen that died here, that trained here in Michigan.”
The Tuskegee Airmen were made up of black members of the military who were forced to fight separately from their white counterparts due to segregation in the U.S. military. Fifteen members of the unit died in Michigan while training, including five pilots who were lost in Lake Huron. The wreckage of at least three other planes remains in the lake.
“This find is so important for Black history to find out how Tuskegee airmen fought for this country and how they fought a war at home,” said Isis Gillespie, the museum’s conservator of the plane.
In 2021, a monument dedicated to Moody and the other Tuskegee Airmen who died in Michigan was erected near the international Blue Water Bridge in Port Huron.
tags: History, Lake Huron, Michigan
