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All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.

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And welcome to Veterans Radio.

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I am Jim Fossone with veteransradio.net.

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We are recording today from the Legal Help for Veterans Studio in Northville, Michigan.

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Legal Help for Veterans is a Veterans Disability Law Firm.

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You can reach us at 800-693-4800.

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We want to welcome to Veterans Radio today, Tarris Lisenko, an Army veteran who, with

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his colleague Alan Olson, are the founders and owners of ANT Recovery, which is involved

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in a fascinating slice of military history.

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Tarris, welcome to Veterans Radio.

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Thank you for having me.

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Well, let's start because you both are Army veterans.

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Why don't we start there and then we'll come back around to how you got yourself involved

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in this interesting endeavor.

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So tell us about your military experience.

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Well, mine, I'm a commissioned officer, branched infantry, Ranger Qualified.

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And that's, it was a fun part of my life, interesting part of my life.

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And in the 80s under Ronald Reagan, so it was, I called him the great commander.

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I don't know what other people called him, but that's what I called him.

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Al is considerably older to me.

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He is actually considered Vietnam era, but he didn't participate in Vietnam.

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And he worked on, I think it was Pershing Missiles in Germany.

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It was maintenance on Pershing Missiles in Germany.

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So that's pretty much it.

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That's a great experience for what you were doing at A&T Recovery.

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Not really.

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It has nothing to do with what you do at A&T Recovery.

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So let's talk about how a couple of Chicago boys dreamed up the idea about A&T Recovery.

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We are, you just used the term boys, and I try to get this across to people to always

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see the world through the eyes of a child.

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Sometimes they say the eyes of a puppy.

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If you notice puppies and children, they have this great sense of wonder about everything

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they see.

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And the trouble is we become adults and we lose that sense of wonder.

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And we get into this routine of just going to work nine to five for 40 years and planning

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for retirement.

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And that is something we never, ever, ever thought about.

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And there was a philosopher named Alan Watts, and I never heard of him until recently, but

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he did this wonderful thing, what do you desire?

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Alan Watts, what do you desire?

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And he said, we have it all wrong.

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And I think Alan and I and the rest of our crew all along knew that we all had it wrong.

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And what we should do as humans, we should not just exist, we should really live.

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And the way to live is to do what you desire.

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And so we have always sort of looked at the world like through the eyes of a child, just

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looking for wonder, what's around the rock, what's under the rock, under that rock, what's

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around the side of that mountain.

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We've always explored no matter where we are.

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You can drop us in any part of the planet and we'll start exploring almost instantly.

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There was a comic strip years ago, Calvin and Hobbes, where I give students when I give

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a presentation, I give them a copy of the one where he's digging in the ground and his

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stuffed tiger says to him, why are you digging that hole in the ground?

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He said, I'm hunting for treasure.

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And the tiger asked, have you found anything?

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And he says, a bunch of disgusting grubs, these worms, these rocks, there's treasure everywhere.

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And that's kind of how we look at things.

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We just know there's some sort of interesting something you can call a treasure or whatever

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you want to call it, but there's something everywhere to be seen and discovered.

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Well what you were discovering, and again this started when you guys were just young

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men, was this idea that there were World War II aircraft that had crashed in Lake Michigan

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off of the Chicago area because of the training that was done outside Chicago to make folks

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aircraft carrier qualified.

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So tell us a little bit about kind of how that pecued your interest.

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Well so this is before we did college and military, before we did that, and we were

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teenagers, at least I was a teenager.

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Actually I kept correct that Al actually had done that stuff and I was still a teenager.

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And so we were scuba divers from early on, young ages, we became scuba divers.

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And just so you know, we went to the same grade school, the same high school.

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I kind of think so.

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I've known Al since I was three years old when I moved on to the street where he was

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already living on with his family.

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But we actually were scuba divers and Al had this idea of buying this boat that was pretty

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bad.

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I swear it was literally held together with duct tape.

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And so we went out of the lake, we knew about the ships.

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We knew Chicago had been one of the busiest ports in the 1800s so we were looking for

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ships and a scuba group located a TBF Avenger, Torpedo Bomber Avenger type, the type that

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George Bush Sr. would have flown in the war.

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And so that's when we found out about the aircraft.

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So we shifted our attention and it didn't take us long.

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It was less than a year.

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Al and I located a Wildcat fighter.

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So we actually turned that over to a private salvage company and they actually salvaged

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it for a guy named Kellege who owns those, I think it's 57 Aerosquadron restaurants

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and he made a deal with the Navy that he could have it or whatever.

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I don't know exactly the details because I was young and flippant.

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I was still a teenager.

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And so anyway, I'm college, military and came back and I said, you know, we should turn

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this looking for the aircraft into a business.

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And I had money, he had money and we bought a much better boat.

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And we bought the equipment needed, which was called Side Scan Sowner, to actually find

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the aircraft.

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And boy did we find aircraft.

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It's really, it's really amazing how many you've found and we're going to talk about

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those and these are all in a book that Tarris has written called The Great Navy Birds of

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Lake Michigan.

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Yes, thank you for the pitch of the book.

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Oh no, it's a capture in the true story of the privateers of Lake Michigan and the aircraft

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they rescued.

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Well, you rescued over 40 or so aircraft from Lake Michigan and elsewhere, but this isn't

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an easy couple of things here.

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This isn't, they're not easy to find.

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And then you get into this whole issue of who really owns them.

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Let's start with, these aren't easy to find, are they?

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They're not easy to find.

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And it's all about logistics.

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And one thing, I'm the gregarious public face of ANT recovery, but L is the electronic

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how you put the vessel and the equipment together to do it expert.

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I would say he's a genius with electronics.

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It's amazing.

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And then together with our other crew members, Keith Pearson and Paul and Bruce and a number

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of others, they're able to fabricate anything needed on the fly.

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And when we're operating, we're army, we mentality, we get into trouble, something goes wrong,

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we don't quit.

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We figure out how to fix it.

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There's always another way up that hill, isn't there?

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You might be digging under it, right?

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It might be tunneling.

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In reading the book, one of the interesting things is you do hit, okay, you found it.

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Okay, side scan radar helped you out, the ship logs probably didn't help you out.

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Where exactly it crashed, nobody GPS'd it at the time, there's no black box that's working

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for you.

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All of that, you find it.

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We still find it.

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Now you have to pick it up off the ground.

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Yeah, pick it out under the link bottom.

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Not an easy task, is it?

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No, and it's not an easy task because of our wonderful, and I don't want to complain at

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all, but our government has too many tentacles interfering with too much stuff where they

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shouldn't, and they should sometimes just sit back and let us do what we do.

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Every bureaucrat needs to put their stamp of approval on it.

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I say my book is really, the title is misleading.

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It's not really so much in my mind about the aircraft, it's about American humanities.

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It's an actual micro study of, well, my observation, my personal view of how our government doesn't

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really help us, help ourselves, it doesn't let us help ourselves.

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So the aircraft are owned by the US Navy, alright, and they're for the American population.

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And the reason for that is, I use an example, I say if you're walking through a parking

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lot of a grocery store and you dropped your wallet and someone else finds it, it's not

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their wallet, it's still your wallet, right?

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You lost it.

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Same thing applies to the aircraft, the US government lost the aircraft in Lake Michigan,

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and so you have to go to the US government and say, specifically the Navy, and say we'd

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like to do something with this, and they have to grant you permission.

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They can either divest themselves of ownership.

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Now, for years, we've had this thing called amity law, the laws of fines and the laws

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of salvage, which says, doesn't say you own it because you found it underwater, it says

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the owner should compensate you for helping what's been lost, return what's lost.

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So we actually were able to work with the National Naval Aviation Museum, I think I

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said that right, National Naval Aviation Museum, director and deputy director.

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In those days, it was Captain Robert Rasmussen and Buddy Macon, that was the director and

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the deputy director, and they found a way for us to work with the US Navy to recover

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those 40 or so aircraft, and because of their determination, as well as ours, we were able

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to get all those aircraft recovered, restored, on display at almost two dozen prestigious

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museums across the country, including their museum, the National Museum of the United

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States Marine Corps, the National Museum of the Pacific War, Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum,

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Kalamazoo Aviation History Museum, we also noticed that Kalamazoo Air Zoo, cradle of

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aviation, Long Island, New York, the aircraft carriers, Yorktown, Lexington, Midway.

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So additionally, some of the aircrafts worked because they understood this, that the population

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needs better chances to see them.

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A number of the aircraft, we were allowed to, they exchanged them for us in a sense of payment

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and to other people for things, and they've been returned to the public, and there's

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aircraft that have come out of Lake Michigan that were restored to flying position, and

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they're seen at air shows across the country every year.

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Well, it's really amazing the book talks about how, well, it's the government's aircraft

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still, we're spending all the effort and time in raising this, but we can't get paid for

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it, we've got to get something in that's traded like bartering exchange for it.

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It isn't a finder's keepers, it's really, you might be lucky enough to get a reward.

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Yeah, yeah, and they don't make it easy.

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They really don't make it easy.

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They, there's, it's amazing all the entire permitting process, there was a Navy lawyer

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that said, well, we think the permitting process takes about a year, and it's, aside from

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CNY, you know, the people didn't not understanding how to find them.

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When you look at the average person doesn't have all the expertise to find them, and then

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to go through the government stuff, and that's why we were able to put together a team that

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could figure out how to do all that.

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And then when they, they, the Navy stopped using that exchange thing and shut off the

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exchange thing, we had to go raise private money.

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And it's very interesting, the private money that came into, to support the recovery restoration

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and public display of these aircraft.

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Enterprise Renekar, well, Enterprise Holdings, which owns Renekar, Enterprise Renekar, CEO

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and son of founder, a lot of people don't know.

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Enterprise was, was named after the Enterprise aircraft carrier because the founder, Jack

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Taylor was a Hellcat pilot aboard the USS Enterprise during World War II.

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So in honor of, of his father and that ship and the men, his son, Andy Taylor, sponsored

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the recovery and restoration of a Hellcat fighter.

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McDonald's Corporation, which was under, at the time was under direction of a man named

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Fred Turner, who I think was the second CEO after Ray Kroc, back at least three of the,

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the recovery restoration display projects.

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And that's an interesting story.

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And then there's other people such as a guy, a man named Chuck Greenhill, who sponsored

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two of the recoveries and restorations.

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So, so we have a, so, so, and the Navy can't help us do that.

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The Navy can't help us raise money to do this stuff.

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We have to go do it.

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I want to go back to the challenge of actually lifting these airframes, which have been sitting

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on the bottom in like Michigan, at least it's freshwater, but you've also had recoveries

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elsewhere sitting on the bottom, 150 feet or 100 feet below the surface or all kinds

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of,

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How about 400?

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Oh, I, okay.

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I mean, we, those of us who's, who's ever scuba dive knows that, you know, the pressure is

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building, building, building.

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This is a logistical challenge and different each and every time I suspect.

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Can you tell us a little bit about that?

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Well, all the aircraft, Navy aircrafts were more towards designed to be lifted.

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And you, you, you understand that because say an aircraft carrier pulls into port, it,

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it might have aircraft that are damaged beyond what the aircraft carrier has capabilities

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to repair.

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So it's got to be lifted off the ship onto the dock and taken to repair facilities.

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So they're all designed to be that way, except for the design works if the aircraft is standing

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on its wheels the way it's, it's built, right?

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The design doesn't work if it's flipped over, twisted on the side, half upside down.

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So they could be in any position because when they crash into water, the, they, they, they

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don't just, they don't just gently flutter to the bottom, they flip and spin and twist

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and right because they have control surfaces, which might be called the air surfaces or

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whatever.

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So we never know exactly how the aircraft is going to be.

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So we, so say we have an aircraft that's 300 feet deep, we have to, we have to, we videotape

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it with what's called remote, remote operated vehicles, ROVs, what they call them.

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It's an underwater robot is what it is that we control from the surface and it's got a

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nice camera and it has what we call manipulators, which are mechanical hands or arms, which

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could be anything you could be kicking, caught, it can grab, it can attach things.

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My joke always is cause we, we tease each other about operating, operating, operating

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those things.

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And my joke is we need to, we need to hire some 14 year old video game players because

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they have the skill set.

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Yes.

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Absolutely.

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Anyway, it's a very lengthy, tedious thing, but, but as I said before, you know, Al, Keith,

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Paul, Bruce, it can fabricate just about anything we need.

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So no matter how the aircraft is resting on the bottom, they can figure out how to pick

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it up generally.

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They can figure it.

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And we have all the engineer drawings of the aircraft and what's called the erection

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maintenance manuals where we know how to disassemble and assemble and we have guys like Pete and

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Ty who are A&P mechanics or even aircraft inspectors that just can look at that stuff

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and tell us, you know, hey, you need this here and you need that there.

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So we put together an absolutely unbelievable team that does this really well.

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We have Todd who's just great with logistics and, and you, and one of, it's one of those

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things, you know, the stars line up, our team lines up because they just whatever, whatever

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weaknesses one has, one of the other ones makes up for it.

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And well, it's the kind, it's the kind of project where you never know what you're

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going to walk into.

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So having that kind of team is important.

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And we're talking to Tarris Lascensko, who is the one of the founders and the author

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of a new book called The Great Navy Birds of Lake Michigan put out by the America through

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time, which is an imprint of Font Hill Media LLC.

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The pictures in this, Tarris are amazing and, and worth the book right there.

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The, I think you really tell the story through the pictures of the airplanes that you find

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both on the bottom and as you bring them up to the surface, they're in all kinds of

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different conditions, aren't they?

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Oh yeah.

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The one thing about it, nice thing about it in general, the crashes were, you would

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call them a ditching because they were either generally on takeoff or on landing to the,

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the makeshift aircraft carriers.

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So there's not, they're not like combat crashes where, you know, they were fighting a Japanese

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zero and the pilot got hit by a round and killed.

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So the aircraft went into the, into the water at 300 miles an hour.

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They generally were at close to stall, very close to stall speed, which, and I don't think

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you want me to get into all the pilot stuff, but basically the stall speed, landing speed,

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takeoff speed, right?

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They were just, just, just at that point.

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So generally the damage isn't too bad.

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Now you see some of them that actually impacted the water wrong and the, the wings are the

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front end edges of the wings are folded back and that kind of stuff and pilots, if any actioners

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reports the pilots would hit their faces on the instrument panels and fracture or skulls

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sometimes and, but, but in general that's pretty good.

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But there are ones where they lost their engine power on takeoff and crash right front of

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the ship and the ship hit them.

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And so, you know, they are, that aircraft is going to have a lot of gammon.

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Interesting thing, we've recovered at least two aircraft and I know that that happened

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in both pilots survived.

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And I talk about having nine lives.

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I just, those pilots used a few of them and in those instances, but you look at the aircraft

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and they're heavily damaged by the ship.

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And does any, anybody who's ever been in the service knows and our veteran radio listeners

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would know training accidents, training in the military is a serious, dangerous business

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and this just sort of highlights all that.

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But I want to swing a little bit from the recovery to the restoration.

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It's one thing to pull these things out of the water and just let all the mud in the

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goop and drain out of them.

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But almost all of them then get restored and that's got to take years and dollars.

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Who does the restoration?

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I've got to say ANT Recovery doesn't do restoration.

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It is a tedious artisan work and our hats off to these restores and most of them are

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volunteers.

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And the sad thing is most of them are in their 80s and 90s are generally retired people

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that have done something else and they're brilliant.

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And if I think we look at it, we look at something and say, oh my God, they look at it and say,

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oh, that's a wonderful challenge.

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Yes, they take years.

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And for many years, the main restoration of these aircraft was being done at the National

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Naval Aviation Museum until the Naval History and Heritage Command shut down their restoration

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facilities and I won't go into that.

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But if you read the book, you see what they did.

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And but we were fortunate.

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The Kalamazoo Aviation History Museum or the Air Zoo stepped up to expand their restoration

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facilities.

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So if you're anywhere in Michigan or the Midwest, it's a great thing to go.

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They allow actually the public to participate in restoration, which is really interesting.

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We began a project by requesting of Dick and Betsy DeVos, our present education secretary,

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that they have a charter school called the West Michigan Aviation Academy.

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We made a request to them that they bring their students to become involved in the restoration

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of some of these aircraft and they responded to that right away and favorably.

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And so we began with the West Michigan Aviation Academy students back by 2013 or 2014.

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And since then, the schools all across the region, I would call it the South Central

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Michigan region, all the way as far as Chicago, the Chicago has high school military academies,

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their students come and work on them.

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So it's middle school students all the way through university level students and then

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lots of members of the public participate in the restoration of these aircraft now.

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Well, and as you said earlier, these aircraft once restored have ended up all over the country

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as far away as Pearl Harbor and San Diego at different museums, the National World War

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II Museum.

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So somebody's doing a whole lot of restoration work to keep this history alive, which is what

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you're really bringing to the table, isn't it?

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Bringing history alive.

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Yes, that's, I talked about the naval history in heritage command, part of their mission

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is to make naval history come alive.

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Well, I would argue that they're not doing it, but we are.

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So all of us from the National Naval Aviation Museum, the Air Zoo, all these other museums,

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all these restores, it takes thousands of people to participate to make this work.

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And so it's thousands of people doing what their mission is.

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Well, you're out, you're out talking to different groups.

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I know you're coming to the Yankee Air Museum in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and they're working

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on a plane restoration for their museum.

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It's really that hands on that I suspect you find motivates people to be involved in this

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work.

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You know, people like the real thing.

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If Shoma photograph of an aircraft or Shoma video, so what?

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But if they can go and actually see machines built by the men and women of the greatest

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generation that were used to protect the world's liberty and freedom, that's what they want

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to see.

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And that's where they learn.

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And they can, in the Midway airports, the Chicago airports, Chicago, O'Hare and Midway,

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those are the most viewed naval artifacts in all the Navy's collection.

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And millions of people a year stop and press the little buttons or read the plaques that

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just tell them about things such as butchow hair and in the battle of Midway.

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And they see the two aircraft recovered from Lake Michigan.

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And so every year, just those two aircraft educate millions of people because most of

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our society has forgotten all that.

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They've forgotten that the greatest generation protected us.

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Well, and that's why we like telling these stories on Veterans Radio because so many

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people would never have really connected the dots about the training out of Great Lakes,

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the birds that crashed into Lake Michigan.

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And we're talking to Teras Lysenko, founder of ANT Restoration.

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He's recently written a book called The Great Navy Birds of Lake Michigan.

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And Teras, if folks want to find out maybe where you're speaking next or where the next

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plane is going to, is there some way that they can stay in touch with you and know what's

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going on in this area?

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There are author's pages, but those are hard.

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We do, I do a lot of posting on Facebook, LinkedIn.

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It's really easy to connect up or follow me on any one of those things.

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Whether or not my email is all over the internet, my phone number's all over the internet.

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So I actually say more importantly than following me is if people know an organization that

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would like a talk, I do lots of them.

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I think over the past 30 years, I've done a thousand.

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And I do them all the time.

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I have yet to say no to any group.

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I've given presentations to a small number, six, and as many as several thousand.

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And so it's really easy if they know how to spell my name.

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They just put that into Google and it's really easy.

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They can contact me through any number of ways.

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My email address, my phone number, Facebook, LinkedIn.

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There's an interesting story in the book about the use of LinkedIn.

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I don't know if you were able to see it, but it's a heart-wrenching story.

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But I recommend people read it because it talks about even though we win in a war, there's

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a lot of pain for even the winners.

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Oh, absolutely.

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Let me help our listeners out.

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It's Taurus T-A-R-A-S, L-S-I-N-C-O, L-Y-S-S-E-N-K-O.

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And I hope they reach out and follow you on Facebook and LinkedIn and sort of stay in touch

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with what you do.

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And we really appreciate you taking some time to talk to us here today on Veterans Radio.

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Well, thank you for the opportunity and keep up the good work.

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And I want to thank everybody for listening to Veterans Radio today.

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I am Jim Fawcone.

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It's been a pleasure to be your host.

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I'm a Veterans Disability lawyer at Legal Help for Veterans and you can reach us at

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00:27:40,840 --> 00:27:48,400
800-69-348-00 or legalhelpforveterans.com on the web.

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00:27:48,400 --> 00:27:53,300
You can follow Veterans Radio on Facebook and listen to its podcasts and internet radio

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00:27:53,300 --> 00:27:57,360
shows by going to veteransradio.net.

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00:27:57,360 --> 00:28:00,600
And until next time, you are dismissed.

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00:28:00,600 --> 00:28:05,000
If you have a VA claim denied by the Board of Veterans Appeals, contact Legal Help for

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00:28:05,000 --> 00:28:09,240
Veterans at 1-800-693-4800.

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00:28:09,240 --> 00:28:13,280
They're experts in handling cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims.

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00:28:13,280 --> 00:28:17,240
Their number again, 1-800-693-4800.

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00:28:17,240 --> 00:28:19,000
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