Chicago's Other German U-Boat, the UC-97.

We're all familiar with the World War II Nazi Germany U-505 submarine, which was captured by the U.S. Navy on June 4, 1944. The U-505 was donated to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago in 1954 and is still on public display.

This is the story of Chicago's other U-Boat, the UC-97. On June 7, 1921, the first explosive shells fired on the Great Lakes since Admiral Perry tangled with the British on Lake Erie in September of 1813 were directed toward the German U-Boat UC-97, sinking it in Lake Michigan about 20 miles east of Fort Sheridan, Illinois.

The UC-97 was one of six U-boats that the Navy received as part of the armistice agreement, which ended WW I on November 11, 1918. The UC-97 crossed the Atlantic in the spring of 1919 to participate in a ceremony in New York City that honored the victims of submarine attacks during the war.

Due to Engine problems, the UC-97 would be escorted from New York to Halifax, Canada by USS Bushnell (AS-2), and then handed off to the naval tugboat USS Iroquois (AT-46) for the remainder of its journey to the mouth of the Canadian controlled St. Lawrence canal system. It is through this system that UC-97 would reach the Great Lakes. 

WWI German subs, UB-88, UB-148, & UC-97, surrendered to the Allies in 1919.

Surrendered German U-boats were at the Brooklyn Navy Yard on April 29, 1919.

From there, it transited the Great Lakes until August when engine trouble laid it up at Municipal Pier, today's Navy Pier, in Chicago.

Inside a German WW I UC-Class Submarine.

The UC-97 spent the winter of 1920 on the North Branch of the Chicago River, where the U-boat received its post office address: Cherry Avenue and Weed Street (Today that would be at the north end of Goose Island, opposite the Whole Foods store on Kingsbury). 

For a time, the Navy considered a more permanent and dry change of address, perhaps giving the submarine to the Field Museum or putting it in Lincoln or Grant Park. Ultimately, the Navy decided that the terms of the armistice treaty required sinking its prize. The UC-97 was in no condition to go very far, so she was towed out into Lake Michigan to be used as a target on June 7, 1921, by the Navy reserve vessel USS Wilmette.

Ironically, the gunboat that sank the German UC-97 was the USS Wilmette which was a gunboat training ship for naval reservists. It was repaired and refitted from the Great Lakes passenger steamer, the SS Eastland, on which 844 people lost their lives when it turned over in the Chicago River on July 24, 1915.

The Navy made a big production out of sinking the UC-97. The first shot from one of Wilmette’s four 4-inch guns was fired by Gunner’s Mate J. O. Sabin, who had been credited with firing the first U.S. Navy shot in the Atlantic during WWI. The last shot was fired by Gunner’s Mate, A. H. Anderson, who had fired the first torpedo at a U-boat during the war. After being hit by 13 4-inch rounds of 18 fired, the UC-97 sank. The famous ship was then immediately forgotten for decades.

Photo of UC-97 as viewed in the monitor during the recovery expedition.

In August of 1992, salvage partners Taras Lyssenko and Al Olson of A and T Recovery located the submarine. It drifted considerably from where it went down, and for years no one could locate it. The costs of raising and restoring the submarine, which some estimate to be near 50 million dollars, along with the shaky legal question of who would have the legal rights to the sub when raised, have kept it at the bottom of the lake.

Size Comparison
The UC-97 measured 185 feet in length, weighed 491 tons while surfaced, and had a crew of 32. By comparison, the U-505, manufactured some 20 years later, was 252 feet long, weighed 1,120 tons, and had a crew of 59.

World War II Nazi Germany U-505 submarine.

The USS Seawolf, the Navy's latest generation, a nuclear-powered attack submarine, is near twice as long and weighs more than 16 times as much as the UC-97, with a crew complement of almost four times greater.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

A Proposal to House the Entire 1893 World's Fair... within One Structure... on Lake Michigan!

The structure (tent-like) that architect Edward S. Jenison proposed for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition would have had to be enormous to house the entire World’s Fair. Jenison must have taken Daniel Burnham’s recommendation to "make no little plans" literally.

CLICK FOR FULL-SIZE IMAGE

Galleries, 75 feet wide.
Entrances from outside only on first gallery.
Under first gallery six tracks for railroad exhibits.
First gallery a grand boulevard for driveway, cafes, etc., etc.
Second gallery for race track 1 3/4 miles long.
Twenty-four stairways from first gallery down to main floor.
Grand Canal, 150 feet wide, with 24 bridges.
Picture galleries in fire-proof vaults under high part of amphitheater.
Amphitheater in center, 600 feet in diameter, 60,000 seats.

Jenison’s round, tent-like structure would have been 3,000 feet wide – that’s just over 1/2  mile. The center steel tower 1,492 feet high (the year Christopher Columbus landed in North America) with an elevator leading to an observatory at 1,000 feet. That’s only 8 feet shorter than the John Hancock Building's highest antenna tip!

Cables radiating from the center mast to a three-story-high brick wall would support the glass and corrugated iron roof encompassing over 160 acres. An amphitheater around the center pole would seat 60,000 people.

Interior Illustration

And it wasn’t just the size and height that was ambitious. Jenison planned for the whole thing to be built, not on land, but in the lake near the shoreline off Jackson Park and supported on submerged piles. Water would be drawn up through the central tower and distributed over the roof to keep the building cool. He also included plans for an interior canal for a naval exhibit. Railroad exhibits would run on six tracks around the inter-perimeter of the building.

The green circle is exactly 3000 feet in diameter.

Architect Jenison estimates that his building would cost $6,000,000. But in reality, it would come closer to $20,000,000 in the 1890s (that's $553,779,150 in today's dollars).

Tim Samuelson, the City of Chicago's Cultural Affairs and Special Events Coordinator was familiar with this plan. He describes it as a “pipe dream” that captured a lot of people’s imagination. Jenison proposed it in the spring of 1890 when planning for the Fair actually began.

Engineering experts questioned whether it was even possible to build it. Some said that in theory, it might be, but most architects believed that the technology wasn’t available yet.

As for the architect, in Tim Samuelson’s words, Jenison was probably kind of “out there.” He monopolized at least one committee meeting with his idea, and one Fair planner stated, “Mr. Jenison calls at headquarters daily.”

Ultimately, Jenison’s plan was rejected when fair Officials decided to build the World's Fair on land in Jackson Park rather than in Lake Michigan.

It was deemed that a building like this would never satisfy exhibitors. as most would want to build their own structures. It would not show exhibits to the best advantage, would mix things up in an incongruous manner—artworks, statues, machinery, goods, locomotives, thrashing machines, and bric-a-brac, etc., that would distract, confuse, and tire the visitors.

George B. Post’s Manufacturers and Liberal Arts Building
at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.

But the Columbian Exposition still managed to create the largest building in the world at the time: the colossus Manufacturers and Liberal Arts Building, designed by George B. Post.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Willa Beatrice Brown was an aviator, teacher, lobbyist, a civil rights activist and a woman of influence.

Willa Beatrice Brown (1906-1992) as the first black female to become a licensed pilot in the United States. She was also the first black officer of the Civil Air Patrol, and the first woman in the United States to possess both a mechanic’s license and commercial license in aviation.

When Willa Brown was born in 1906, the Wright Brothers had been flying for just over three years. By the time Brown began taking flight lessons, in the mid 1930s, there were between 700 to 800 licensed female pilots. Brown was also an activist. Her contributions to the growing field of aviation led to many changes, including the integration of the United States military.

Brown was greatly influenced by Bessie “Queen Bess” Coleman, the first black female pilot. Due to racial and gender discrimination in the United States, Coleman was forced to obtain her license in France, through the Ecole d’Aviation de Freres Caudron, becoming the first black female pilot in the world. By the time Brown began to take flying lessons in 1934, several women, including Louise Thaden, Katherine Cheung (the first woman of Chinese ancestry to obtain a license), Phoebe Fairgrave Omelie, and Ann Morrow Lindbergh, had broken the gender barrier in the United States. Nevertheless Brown was the first black woman to break the racial barrier and obtain an aviator’s license in the United States.

Willa Beatrice Brown was born to Eric B. Brown, a minister, and Hallie Mae Carpenter Brown on January 26, 1906, in Glasgow, Kentucky. The family first moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, when Willa was six years old and then to Terre Haute, where she received most of her schooling. In 1923 Brown, who was a good student, graduated from Wiley High School. She then attended Indiana State Teachers College earning a bachelor’s degree in business, in 1927. Immediately upon graduation, Brown found employment as a teacher in Gary, Indiana, where she met and married her first husband, Wilbur Hardaway, an alderman; the marriage was short lived. In 1932 Brown moved to Chicago, where she found employment in the public school system.

Brown’s years in Chicago were extremely active. After teaching for two years, she returned to school, attending Northwestern University, where she received an MA in business in 1937. During her student days, she taught and worked at a variety of jobs.

She worked as a secretary to Calar Paul Page, director of the Chicago Relief Administration and as a social services worker for the Cook County Bureau of Public Welfare. She was also a clerk for the U.S. Department of Immigration and Naturalization and for the United States Post Office and was secretary to Horace Cayton. On top of all these activities, Brown began taking flying lessons from Fred Schumacher at the Harlem Airport in Chicago. In 1935 she earned a masters certificate in aviation mechanics from the Aeronautical University and later joined the Challenger Air Pilots Association (CAPA), one of the first black pilot organizations. The CAPA was founded by Colonel John C. Robinson, one of Brown’s flight instructors, who was one of the first black graduates of Curtiss Wright Aeronautical University. It was at the Harlem airport that Brown met Cornelius R. Coffey, an instructor and a mechanic, whom she married and with whom she shared her passion for flying.

Brown participated in various flying events such as the Memorial flight for Bessie Coleman and air shows that featured entertaining flight demonstrations. She was also a shameless self-promoter by many accounts. One such account, reprinted on the Aeronautic Learning Laboratory for Science, Technology, and Research website, involved Brown seeking news coverage for a “negro” air show in 1936. Brown, who, evidently was tall, very good looking, and often wore the typical flight apparel of the day—a jacket, jodphurs, and boots—decided the best way to get the media interested in the show was to go to the media first instead of getting them to come and see her. Hence, she visited the Chicago Defender newspaper office. She was so striking and had such a strong presence that everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at her. She announced who she was, stating that she was an “aviatrix” and described the upcoming show. Her tactic resulted in an audience between two to three hundred people. The event was also covered by Enoch P. Waters, a journalist who, in 1939, along with Brown and Coffey, co-founded the National Airmen’s Association of America (NAAA), an organization established and designed to facilitate the acceptance of blacks into the United States Air Force. Waters continued to cover most of Brown’s recruitment activities for several years, with the support of the Chicago Defender’s editor, Robert Abbott.

On June 22, 1938, Brown earned her pilot’s license. The following year, not only did she help found the NAAA, but she also began to teach flight lessons through the Work Project Administration’s adult education program. In 1940 Brown received her Civil Aeronautics Administration ground school instructor’s rating. In addition, she and Coffey founded the Coffey School of Aeronautics. Brown handled the administrative side of the business and taught many of the flight classes. In addition, she ran Brown’s Lunch Room, a small restaurant at the Harlem Airport. During the early 1940s Brown also taught aviation mechanics for the Chicago Board of Education.

Having established herself in the aviation business, Brown, who became the president of the Chicago branch of the NAAA, lobbied the U.S. government to integrate the U.S. Army Air Corp and to include blacks into the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP). In 1940 Congress authorized the admission of blacks into civilian flight training programs, and Brown was appointed coordinator for the CPTP in Chicago. She also helped organize Squadron 613-6 of the Civil Air Patrol, earning the rank of lieutenant, which made her the first black officer in the Civil Air Patrol. Within the following five years, Brown trained over two hundred pilots, some of whom became part of the 99th Pursuit Squadron at Tuskegee Institute, also known as the Tuskegee Airmen.

The Coffey School of Aeronautics closed in 1945, shortly after the end of World War II. Brown, a tireless recruiter, went on to establish flight schools for children. She remained an activist, both in aviation organizations and politically, running for a U.S. Congressional seat in 1946, 1948, and in 1950. Although Brown did not win these elections, she attained another status as doing something “first”—she was the first black woman to run for Congress. In 1955 Brown married her third husband, the Reverend J.H. Chappell. During her marriage to Chappell, Brown became very active in the Westside Community Church in Chicago. She taught in the Chicago public school system until 1971, when she was sixty-five years old.

The following year, Brown was appointed to the FAA’s Women’s Advisory Board for her contributions to the aviation industry. Willa Brown did not have any children. She died of a stroke in Chicago on July 18, 1992 at the age of 86. She is buried at Oak Woods Cemetery in Chicago.

Brown was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award, posthumously, by the Indiana State University Alumni Association in 2010.

Compiled by Neil Gale,Ph.D.