Photo by Eastlaketimes on Flickr

Recovery divers from A&T recovery of Chicago spent a few days clearing mud and other debris from a Helldiver plane that crashed into the Lower Otay Reservoir. Speculation is that this plane suffered an engine failure when it crashesd, by all accounts, the Helldiver was not a particularly good plane.

The first two Helldiver prototypes crashed during flight testing. The Helldiver was nicknamed “The Beast” by its flight crews because it was a very difficult plane to fly.

The rare WWII plane that was pulled out from the lake crashed back in 1945 and spent the last 65 years buried under silt and mud.

This plane will be disassembled and trucked to Pensacola, FL form restoration.

5,100 Helldivers were manufactured during World War II but only a few still still exist.

Photo by: TMWolf on Flickr

More info on MSNBC

1. The obvious, sit at a bar and have a drink. There are lots of them all over the place. You can have your pick ranging from the typical sports bar to the various airline’s frequent traveler airport club. Whatever floats your boat.
2. Sit and watch the airline crews walking by. This one is free and can provide hours of entertainment. Sit and watch the flight crew for the German national airline as they walk in unison towards their gleaming white plane, as if they trained to step with a certain gait and cadence in a military type school. After you watch the Germans, watch the flight crews for various other national and international airlines walk by in complete disarray. The contrast will leave you scratching your head in amazement.




3. Go to all of the different bookstores and read the magazines, the books, etc. It’s amazing how much you can learn and read when you have no where to go. Don’t spend too much time in one place though, walk around and check out the scenery en route to the other magazines stores.
4. Get something to eat. There are many food courts selling a variety of food types. Actually, it’s mostly fast food fare, but it’s all quite tasty and surprisingly not much more expensive than it is elsewhere. Depending on where you’re heading out to or coming back from, this may be your last or first chance to have an American made burger.
5. Watch the planes do their dance. It’s amazing to think about how many planes take off and land from this airport. It all happens with precision and coordination and all the action is right outside the windows. All you have to do is watch.
6. Rent a DVD movie and should you need to, a DVD player as well. That’s right, there’s a place in the concourse where you can rent a DVD movie and a DVD player as well. All you have to do, is mail it back to the airport, or if you happen to fly into an airport that has one of these rental stores at it, you can just turn the movie/player back in at the other store.
7. Have some coffee. There are so many different brands and franchises of coffee stores in the airport that you could conceivably have enough coffee to stay awake all night and all day if you really had to.
8. People watch. Not to be confused with watching the flight crews, just look at the people at the airport. Some of them look fabulous, some don’t. Some are nursing broken legs on their way home from the slopes. Some are nursing broken hearts or celebrating their honeymoons. Try telling them apart or coming up with stories for all of the people that you see.
9. Get online. If you have your laptop, you can get online at the airport and just surf the net. But, why would you when there is so much going on around you.
10. Get on your plane. Don’t forget to get on the plane and take your flight!