SBD Dauntless Bureau Number Twenty-One Oh Six, the Battle of Midway veteran they pulled from the bottom of Lake Michigan

SBD Dauntless Bureau Number 2106 is the only surviving dive bomber on Earth that actually fought in the Battle of Midway. After taking battle damage at Midway in June 1942 and surviving, it was relegated to carrier-landing training on Lake Michigan, where a student pilot ditched it in 1943. The cold fresh water preserved the airframe for roughly 50 years until divers recovered it in the early 1990s, and it now stands restored at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida.

What Was the SBD Dauntless?

The Douglas SBD Dauntless - the letters stand for Scout Bomber Douglas - was never a glamorous airplane. Early models had fixed landing gear, a stout little fuselage, and distinctive perforated dive flaps that split top and bottom along the trailing edge of the wing, as if someone had taken a hole punch to the aluminum.

The crews who flew her gave the initials a second meaning: “Slow But Deadly.” She cruised slowly and didn’t impress anyone parked on the ramp.

But pound for pound, the Dauntless may have sunk more enemy tonnage than any other American aircraft of World War II. She earned that reputation on a single morning.

Why the Dauntless Mattered at Midway

On the morning of June 4, 1942, the U.S. carriers were outnumbered, gambling everything on a code-breaking hunch about where the Japanese fleet would be. The American torpedo bombers attacked first, low and slow, and were nearly wiped out - scoring no hits and dying in the smoke and water.

Then the Dauntless squadrons arrived from high above. They had nearly missed the battle; one group, low on fuel and searching, followed a lone Japanese destroyer racing to rejoin its fleet. That destroyer pointed them straight at the carriers.

The dive bombers pushed over at a 70-degree angle, perforated flaps cracked open, the slipstream screaming through the holes in the wings. In roughly six minutes, the Dauntless crews mortally wounded three Japanese fleet carriers. A fourth went down later that day.

Four carriers - the heart of the fleet that had struck Pearl Harbor six months earlier - were gone. The tide of the entire Pacific war turned on those slow, unglamorous dive bombers.

The Combat History of Bureau Number 2106

One of the Dauntlesses at Midway was an SBD-2 carrying Bureau Number 2106. Built early in the type’s production, she flew the battle with Marine Scout Bombing Squadron 241 (VMSB-241), operating off Midway Island itself.

She took battle damage. She survived. She came home.

By 1943, the Navy did what it routinely did with a tired combat airplane: it sent her to the back of the line and turned her into a trainer. And she ended up in the last place anyone would look for a Pacific war hero - Lake Michigan.

Why the Navy Trained Pilots on the Great Lakes

When America entered the war, the Navy needed to teach thousands of young pilots the hardest skill in aviation: landing on a moving ship. But every real carrier was needed in the Atlantic and Pacific, and training off the coasts meant risking German U-boats.

The solution was inland fresh water. The Navy took two Great Lakes excursion paddle steamers, stripped their superstructure, and bolted flat wooden flight decks on top, creating the USS Wolverine and the USS Sable - the only coal-fired, side-wheel paddle aircraft carriers ever built.

Students flew out of Glenview Naval Air Station north of Chicago. To qualify, each had to complete a series of takeoffs and landings aboard these improvised carriers. Among the young men who qualified on the lake was a torpedo bomber pilot named George H. W. Bush, a future U.S. president learning his deck landings on a paddle-wheel boat in the Midwest.

Over the course of the war, the two ships logged roughly 100,000 landings.

How the Airplanes Ended Up at the Bottom of Lake Michigan

Not every landing went well. When a nervous student - sometimes with as little as 20 hours in type - floated too long, came in too low, bounced over the side, or caught an engine cough at the wrong moment, the airplane went into the lake.

Most pilots got out; rescue craft stood by. But the airplanes sank, settling into the mud about 200 feet down. More than 100 aircraft ended up on the bottom - Wildcats, Dauntlesses, and Helldivers - a sunken air force off the Illinois and Wisconsin shore.

Here is the crucial detail: fresh water preserves. Salt water turns aluminum to chalk and steel to rust within decades. Cold fresh water acts as a preservative. These airplanes didn’t rot - they waited. And 2106 waited for 50 years.

How Bureau Number 2106 Was Recovered and Identified

Beginning in the 1980s and into the 1990s, the Navy worked with a Chicago-based recovery outfit, A and T Recovery, to bring these aircraft up - not as scrap, but as history for the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola.

Divers descended into near-total darkness to find airplanes sitting upright on their bellies in the mud, dive flaps still perforated, cockpits open, gauges frozen in their panels. 2106 was raised in the early 1990s, streaming water and lake mud, seeing daylight for the first time since 1943.

At first she was just another sunken trainer. Then someone traced the Bureau Number through Navy records - and discovered this exact airframe had flown at Midway. The find transformed the project overnight: this was not a trainer to restore, but a combat veteran.

Restoring an Airplane After 50 Years Underwater

Recovering a 50-year submerged airplane starts a clock. Underwater, the aluminum is stable; the moment it hits air, it begins corroding in earnest. The first task is stabilization - flushing the lake out of every seam, rivet line, and box section.

Because fresh water saved the structure, much of 2106 was still original. But 50 years leaves marks: electrolytic corrosion where dissimilar metals met, crash damage, and long-gone fabric, rubber, wiring, and glass.

Restorers faced the choice every warbird shop confronts - rebuild her as a flyer, or preserve her as an honest relic with every original rivet kept. For a genuine combat veteran like 2106, the museum leaned toward preservation: keep the airplane that was actually there.

They cleaned 50 years of lake bottom out of every cavity, treated corrosion, repaired structure, and reskinned only where necessary. Finally they repainted her in her wartime markings - blue-gray over light gray, national stars on wing and fuselage - so visitors see a Battle of Midway dive bomber, not a corroded lump from a lake.

Where Is SBD Dauntless 2106 Today?

Today, Bureau Number 2106 is on display at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida. As far as anyone knows, she is the only surviving Dauntless that actually fought at the Battle of Midway - the single combat veteran of that fight you can still walk up to and stand beside.

She exists only because a frightened student pilot put her in a lake in 1943, and the cold fresh water of Lake Michigan kept faith with her for half a century until someone came back.

Most of the aircraft that won the war were scrapped by the thousands after 1945. The ones that survived mostly did so by accident - buried, forgotten, or sunk. It was the divers, recovery crews, and restorers, treating corrosion one rivet at a time, who pulled this piece of history back into the light.

Key Takeaways

• SBD Dauntless BuNo 2106 is the only known surviving Dauntless that fought in the Battle of Midway, where the type helped sink four Japanese carriers in roughly six minutes on June 4, 1942.
• The aircraft flew the battle with Marine squadron VMSB-241 off Midway Island, then became a carrier-qualification trainer on Lake Michigan in 1943.
• The Navy trained pilots on two converted paddle-wheel steamers, USS Wolverine and USS Sable, logging about 100,000 landings; over 100 aircraft sank into the lake.
• Cold fresh water preserved the airframes far better than salt water would have, leaving 2106 largely original after 50 years underwater.
• Recovered in the early 1990s and identified by its Bureau Number, 2106 was restored for preservation and is now displayed at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola.