Forgive Heroes on Deck: World War II on Lake Michigan—an hourlong documentary that will premiere Thursday—for the melodramatic note on which it begins: narrator Bill Kurtis intones that “this film contains rare footage of a U.S. Navy operation, just off Chicago’s shoreline, that changed the course of World War II.”
No, it was war. “More than 100 World War II aircraft rest on the bottom of Lake Michigan,” reports Heroes on Deck. “This is the story of how they got there.” They got there because the pilots were green, the flight decks were short, and the pace was relentless: each pilot had just about a week in Chicago to master his plane and complete carrier qualifications. Once he’d landed on a carrier and taken off again eight times—which he might do in two intense hours out on the lake—he moved on to the front.
Heroes on Deck was put together by three former WTTW producers—John Davies, Harvey Moshman, and Brian Kallies. Davies, who wrote and directed the film, had made a half-hour, low-budget documentary on the Lake Michigan carriers back in 1988. Now an independent producer living in LA, he tells me that two years ago he and Moshman decided to take another pass at the subject and do it right. Moshman’s a diver, and he brought to the project high-def footage he’d shot of wrecked planes lying at the bottom of the lake.
Heroes on Deck: World War II on Lake Michigan airs Thursday, May 26, at 9 PM on WTTW, channel 11, and again on Sunday, May 29, at 6 PM.
