WWII-era plane pulled from Lake Michigan now on display at Virginia Beach

Until April 7, a World War II relic with a far-fetched journey will be on display at Virginia Beach’s Military Aviation Museum.

"The airplane was recovered after 50 years on the bottom of Lake Michigan. It still has its original paint … we even found the pilot's seat belt buckle still inside the aircraft," museum director Keegan Chetwynd told Fox News. "Although a number of these have been restored following their recovery, and placed in static museums, it is rare for them to be made flyable once again, which is what we intend for the airplane." This airplane on display did not fly in combat because it was used on Lake Michigan as part of an incredible wartime effort to provide pilots carrier-landing training somewhere safe. The threat of German and Japanese submarines along the coasts of the U.S. meant that a full-size carrier being used for training naval aviators to land and take off from a ship would be too great a risk. So the Navy secured two ships originally designed for cruises on the Great Lakes, and cut the luxury accommodations off of them and made them into aircraft carriers. Known as the USS Wolverine and the USS Sable, the ships qualified thousands of naval aviators during the war.