When treasure hunters Al Olson and Taras Lyssenko found a WorldWar I submarine in Lake Michigan a few weeks ago, their sonar lookeddown on it from 250 feet away.
Tuesday they viewed it from inches away, without getting wet.
Al, 37, and Taras, 31 - the A & T of Berwyn-based A & T Recovery- sent down a sled-size remote-operated vehicle carrying a videocamera.
Skimming it over the silt-covered surface of the 182-foot craft,they saw the deck, slotted to allow water to escape, and the wheelthat sailors once turned to tighten a hatch cover. "It looks prettygood," Lyssenko said.
The same could not be said of the news media. As the 33-footsearch boat rocked in 4-foot waves, a seasick TV producer, TVcameraman and Sun-Times reporter were too busy rushing to the side towatch the on-board TV monitor for very long.
Lyssenko was no help. On the 20-mile trip back to MontroseHarbor, he slurped pudding and observed, "Isn't it glamorous being atreasure hunter?"
The intact condition of the sub, the UC-97, will make it easierto raise, which Olson and Lyssenko hope to do next year.
They want to put it on display, perhaps at Navy Pier. That'swhere Chicagoans viewed it after World War I, until all seized Germancombat vessels were ordered destroyed.
Sinking something in the lake was not frowned on then, and theU-boat was hauled out and used for target practice on June 21, 1921.Until Olson and Lyssenko found it, no one had seen the UC-97 since.
Finders keepers? Not exactly. Unless a previous owner - say,the U.S. Defense Department - claims the sub, it becomes stateproperty. David Blanchette of the Illinois Historic PreservationAgency said, "We may determine it's best to leave it there, or raiseit, or something in between."
But Lyssenko said the state is being cooperative so far. Notingthat the craft is too deep to be a state-sanctioned site for scubadiving, he said, "Where it is now, only we get to see it."
The pair, whose boat is loaded with $500,000 worth of searchequipment, have found about 25 shipwrecks in the lake - "most of themajor ones," Olson said.
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