Lady Be Good (aircraft)

In 1943, Lady Be Good was a new B-24D Liberator bomber that had just been assigned to the 514th Bomb Squadron of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) on March 25. The squadron was part of the 376th Bombardment Group (Heavy) based at Soluch Field in Soluch in Libya. The plane, which had the AAF serial number 41-24301, had the group identification number 64 stencil-painted on its nose. Its given name, Lady Be Good, was hand-painted on the starboard, front side of the forward fuselage.

Lady Be Good's crew were also new, as they had only arrived in Libya a week before on March 18. On April 4 they flew their first mission together, one of twenty-five B-24s assigned to bomb the harbor of Naples in a two-part late afternoon attack. The first wave of twelve B-24s was followed by a second wave of thirteen planes, including Lady Be Good.[1] After the attack, all planes were expected to return to their bases in North Africa.

Lady Be Good, which was one of the last planes of the second wave to depart, took off from Soluch Field near Benghazi at 2:15 p.m. It joined the formation and continued on to Naples. However, a sandstorm caused eight B-24s to return to Soluch, leaving four aircraft to continue the operation. When Lady Be Good arrived over Naples at 7:50 pm at 25,000 ft (7,600 m), poor visibility obscured the primary target. Two B-24s attacked their secondary target on the return trip while the other two aircraft dumped their bombs into the Mediterranean Sea to reduce weight and save fuel.[1]

Lady Be Good flew alone on its return trip to its home base in Libya. At 12:12 a.m. the pilot, Lt. William Hatton, radioed to say his automatic direction finder was not working and asked for a location of base.[1] The crew apparently overflew their base, failing to see the flares fired to attract their attention. They continued southward over North Africa, deeper into the Sahara Desert, for the next two hours. At 2 a.m., as fuel became critically low, the crew parachuted to the ground. The abandoned Lady Be Good flew a further 26 km (16 mi) before it crash-landed into the Calanscio Sand Sea.

Largely because it was believed that the aircraft had probably crashed at sea, a subsequent search and rescue mission from Soluch Field failed to find any trace of the aircraft or its crew. The disappearance of Lady Be Good became a mystery.[1]

After the crew abandoned the aircraft, it continued flying southward. The mostly intact wreckage and evidence showing that one engine was still operating at the time of impact suggests that the aircraft gradually lost altitude in a very shallow descent and reached the flat, open desert floor and landed on its belly.

The first reported sighting of the crash site was on November 9, 1958, by a British oil exploration team working for British Petroleum (BP) in the northeast of Libya's Kufra District. The team contacted authorities at Wheelus Air Base, but no attempt to examine the aircraft was made as no records existed of any plane believed to have been lost in the area.[1][2]^: p.25 However, the location of the wreckage was marked on maps to be used by oil-prospecting teams that were due to set out to explore the Calanscio Sand Sea the next year.[2]^: p.25

On February 27, 1959, British oil surveyor Gordon Bowerman and British geologists Donald Sheridan and John Martin[3] spotted the wreckage near 26°42′45.7″N 24°01′27″E, 710 km (440 mi) southeast of Soluch. This followed up the first sighting from the air on May 16, 1958, by the crew of a Silver City Airways Dakota, piloted by Captain Allan Frost,[4] and another flight on June 15. A recovery team made initial trips from Wheelus Air Base to the crash site on May 26, 1959.[5]

Although the plane was broken into two pieces, it was immaculately preserved, with functioning machine guns, a working radio, and some supplies of food and water. A thermos of tea was found to be drinkable. No human remains were found on board the aircraft nor in the surrounding crash site, nor were parachutes found.

Most of the evidence from the wreckage indicated that the men had bailed out. However, the log book of the navigator 2nd Lt Dp  [sic] "Deep" Hays,[6] which was still on board, made no mention of the aircraft's movements after the crew commenced their return leg from Naples.[1] Hays had been on his first combat mission.

In February 1960, the United States Army conducted a formal search of the area for the remains of the crew.[7] Five bodies – those of Hatton, 2nd Lt. Robert F. Toner, Hays, T/S Robert E. LaMotte and S/Sgt Samuel E. Adams – were found on February 11. The team concluded that other bodies were likely buried beneath sand dunes after finding evidence that at least three of the surviving crew members had continued walking northward.

With the news that five bodies had been recovered, the US Air Force and US Army started an expanded search called Operation Climax in May 1960. The joint operation used a USAF C-130 cargo plane and two Army Bell H-13 helicopters. However, it was a British Petroleum exploration crew that found the remains of S/Sgt Guy E. Shelley, on May 12, 1960, 38 km (24 mi) northwest of the recovered five bodies. A US Army helicopter found the body of T/Sgt Harold J. Ripslinger on May 17, 1960, located 42 km (26 mi) northwest of Shelley's body, over 320 km (200 mi) from the crash site, but still 160 km (99 mi) from Soluch airbase.[1] These two bodies were the only ones found during Operation Climax. Another British Petroleum oil exploration crew discovered the remains of 2nd Lt John S. Woravka in August 1960. His body was then recovered by the US Air Force.

The remains of one of the air gunners, S/Sgt Vernon L. Moore, have never been officially found. However, his remains may have been recovered and buried by a desert patrol of the British Army in 1953. As they were unaware that any Allied air crews were missing in the area, the human remains were recorded but then buried without further investigation.[note 1]

After the Lady Be Good was identified, some parts of the plane were returned to the United States for evaluation while the rest of the wreckage remained. In August 1994, the remains of the craft were recovered by a team led by Dr. Fadel Ali Mohamed and taken to a Libyan military base in Tobruk for safekeeping.[8] They are now stored at Jamal Abdelnasser Air Force Base, Libya.

Over the years pieces of the plane were stripped by souvenir hunters. Today, parts can be seen at the National Museum of the United States Air Force. A propeller can be seen in front of the village hall in Lake Linden, the home of Robert E. LaMotte.

A damaged propeller from the Lady Be Good displayed in Lake Linden, Michigan.

The U.S. Army Quartermaster Museum at Fort Lee, Virginia has a collection of personal items, such as watches, silk survival maps, and flight clothing from the crew members who were recovered. Several of these items are on display. An altimeter and manifold pressure gauge were salvaged from the plane in 1963 by Airman Second Class Ron Pike and are on display at the March Field Air Museum near Riverside, CA. A Royal Air Force team visited the site in 1968 and hauled away components including an engine (later donated to the US Air Force) for evaluation by the McDonnell Douglas company.

After some parts were salvaged from the Lady Be Good and technically evaluated, they were reused in other planes belonging to the American military. However, some planes that received these spares developed unexpected problems.[9] A C-54, which had several autosyn transmitters from the Lady Be Good installed, had to throw cargo overboard to land safely because of propeller difficulties. A C-47 that received a radio receiver crashed into the Mediterranean. A U.S. Army de Havilland Canada DHC-3 Otter with an armrest from the bomber crashed in the Gulf of Sidra. Only a few traces of the plane washed ashore and one of these was the armrest from the Lady Be Good.[9]

Memorial at Wheelus AFB, circa 1967. Maj. Don Schmenk seated, Bob Fitzsimmons (L) and Ron Green (R)

A stained-glass window was installed in the chapel at Wheelus Air Base to commemorate Lady Be Good and her crew.[1] As part of the US withdrawal from Wheelus, the window was disassembled, shipped to the National Museum of the United States Air Force, and reassembled there.[10]