Maine's Sebago Lake is the deepest lake in the state. Who hasn't enjoyed a day on the lake boating, fishing or swimming? But did you know that beneath the surface lie relics of World War II?

Gerry Metzler
Gerry Metzler/Flickr
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Maine's Sebago Lake is the deepest lake in the state. Who hasn't enjoyed a day on the lake boating, fishing or swimming? But did you know that beneath the surface lie relics of World War II?

In 1944, two Royal Navy pilots were on a training mission over Sebago Lake flying Vought D4U Corsairs like the one seen above, when they collided and were killed as their planes crashed into the water and sunk 200 feet below the surface.

Amazingly, they have stayed there for over sixty years and were visited in 2003 by a dive team with a camera.

Here's the description from the YouTube video posted by Dustin Harper

This is footage taken around 2003, of 1 of 2 Vought F4U Corsairs that collided during training on May 16, 1944. Both Royal Navy pilots were killed. They were both out of Naval Air Station Brunswick and Sebago Lake was used as a safe place to train young pilots on how to fly over water. The Corsair shown is # JT160, and the second one it collided with sits 1.3 miles away. She is sitting on her nose straight up and down, both wings were torn from the fuselage, and the right wing is 100 feet from the rest of the plane. The landing gear was down (she is equipped with a tailhook) when she crashed (not sure why) and the Canopy is open. Maybe the pilot tried to get out before she sank? The men behind the dive was David Tallichet, A well known warbird collector and WWII bomber pilot, and Alfred Hagen, Who very recently recovered the "Swamp Ghost", The B17E that bellied into a Papua, New Guinea swamp

It's amazing how well the plane has been preserved.

A recovery team wanted to raise the plane from the bottom of the lake, but a Maine court denied their request, so it will remain at the bottom of the lake as a remembrance of the pilots who lost their lives all those years ago.

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