The water at the bottom of the lake is great for preservation too, so the planes are usually in very good condition, except for whatever damage occurred when they hit the water.

I had a book from the ship's library of the U.S.S. Sanangamon, and I had read the wiki on the ship. (It suffered a grievous attack, but survived, and was scrapped after the war.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Sangamon_(CVE-26)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQCh1mLTIGk

I guess "horizontal" here just refers to the shaft?

At first I was disappointed; I had visions of an obscure drive mechanism where the wheel itself lies flat. Kind of like https://d36ndnmww3x0xq.cloudfront.net/trix-files/admin/pages... with interlocking gears that either suck water in through the front and spit it out the back via an internal channel... or alternatively external teeth that sweep out the sides of the ship.

Then some sleuthing led me to an 1840's prototype the Germ which really did have an underwater, horizontal paddlewheel: https://navalmarinearchive.com/research/docs/hunter_horizont...