Document created: 11 December 03
Air University Review, March-April
1973
She was just another B-24, one of thousands of Liberators that rolled off
the production lines during World War II. Her aircraft number was 41-24301, and
she was assigned to the 514th Squadron of the 376th Bomb Group. However, these
rather bland statistics belie the story of probably the most famous B-24 of
World War II. But the reason for her fame was not fantastic feats during aerial
combat. In fact, this brand-new airplane flew only one mission—a mission from
which she never returned. By now the reader has probably guessed that the plane
about which we speak is the ill-fated Lady Be Good.
Since the plane was discovered in the Libyan Desert in 1959, thousands of words have been written about it and the probable reasons for its demise. The old TV show, Armstrong Circle Theatre, had a program on what happened to the unfortunate Lady. A final review of the resultant documentation shows some interesting and unexplained facts about the accident. Also, some of the facts relating to this incident are shown to be untrue, while others remain unchanged and in many cases unexplained.
Most of the facts are well known. The Lady’s lone mission, designated Mission 109, began from a makeshift airstrip called Soluch near Bengazi, Libya. The mission objective of the 26 B-24s was to strike the port facilities at Naples. As was true with many of the B-24 operations out of North Africa, the gritty sand got into everything that moved and caused great maintenance problems. And the Lady was probably a victim of the sand, as her engines sucked in large amounts of the desert at takeoff. It is probably also a good guess that this was a contributing factor to the engine problems it faced early in the flight on 4 April 1943.
Only 11 of the Mission 109 planes ever reached Naples. One aborted at takeoff, and the other 14 turned around and either struggled back to Soluch or landed at a British strip on Malta. Of the 14, only the Lady was not accounted for. It is known that she turned back some 30 minutes short of the target. And then the great mystery begins.
After all the other planes of Mission 109 had been accounted for, there was still hope that the Lady would turn up. And by this time her pilot, Lieutenant William Hatton, must have realized that he was not on course. Finally, he broke radio silence and contacted the control tower at Benina, the master control facility for the Bengazi area. Hatton probably figured that he should have seen the African coast by then, and he wanted a fix on his position. The tower gave him a heading of 330 degrees, north by northwest.
The Benina directional finder, unfortunately, was the type that could record the Lady’s signal from both 330 degrees and the reciprocal position, 150 degrees. The correct fix of 150 degrees was never considered by the tower, since Hatton thought (erroneously) that he was still over the water. (At night, it is extremely difficult to distinguish between the sea and the desert.) The Lady Be Good was already over the desert south by southeast at 150 degrees when the pilot radioed the tower. The Lady was not headed home but exactly 180 degrees away from it.
When the Lady took off for her mission, the wind had been blowing off
the desert. In the interim, though, the wind had shifted to the opposite
direction, and a strong tailwind had probably been mistaken for a headwind. It
is therefore understandable why the crew was probably not overly concerned
about being so long in getting back to Soluch. The ironic part was that her engines
were apparently heard droning overhead by several ground personnel as she flew
south to her end. It was reported that an air-sea rescue was initiated on the
same 330-degree course that had been given the Lady.
Since the Lady was heard flying south, why didn’t the search extend south as well as north? The fact that the crew was inexperienced should have caused a rescue attempt to be made in directions other than the 330-degree heading. If that had been done, the needless loss of a young crew probably could have been avoided.
As the Lady droned on, the fuel began to deplete, probably causing the engines to die one at a time. When the plane had only one prop turning, the crew bailed out. At the crash site, three of the Lady’s props were bent back, indicating that they were dead when the Lady belly-flopped onto the desert floor. The fourth engine had torn loose, still wheeling with a few last drops of petrol, and fought its way 50 yards farther through the loose pebbles and sand.
Just recently another bit of evidence has been added to the mystery. McDonnell Douglas Corporation was loaned one of the Lady’s recovered engines for analysis. Upon examination of the engine, McDonnell Douglas technicians discovered a flak hole, probably caused by a 20-mm cannon shell, in the rocker box cover. This evidence suggests that the Lady may have made it to the target area and encountered enemy fire. In fact, that particular engine might have been feathered once the damage was inflicted.
In the experience of B-24 pilots, the Lady, with only number 4 engine running, would have fallen in a sweeping arc to the left. The radius of the turn would have been from 5 to 10 miles. Analysis of the crash site showed that the Lady struck the gravel plain in near-level flight and skidded for about 700 yards from east to west, rotating in a clockwise direction. She came to rest with her nose pointing southeast. Her wingtips were unmarked, indicating that she remained fairly level during her death skid. At the end of the skid, the grinding stresses proved too much for her, and she “broke her back” just behind the main wing roots. Debris, including portions of bomb-bay racks, bits of tubing, and sections of cowling, marked the Lady’s route from initial impact to her final resting place.
The fact that three engines had been feathered was further verified when searchers examined the engine control positions. The mixture controls, generator switches, and throttle levers for engines 1, 2, and 3 were all set in the “off” position. Also, the propeller controls for these three engines were set to “feathered.” The number 4 engine, however, had all switch controls, generator, propeller, and throttle lever set for “full operation.” The wing flaps were not extended, and the landing gear had not been lowered for a pilot’s controlled landing. The Form 41-B maintenance record indicated that the engines each had a total time of only 148 hours. The log also indicated that the Lady had previously flown only a few test flights, and the fatal Mission 109 was her first combat mission.
In retrospect, would the Lady’s crew have survived if they had stayed with their plane? The chances are that they would have. And the chances are that, with their radio, they might have been recovered. At least with the provisions and water on board, they could have survived for a considerable length of time.
All of the 50-caliber ammunition was intact at each machine-gun position with the exception of a few rounds that were probably expended when the guns were checked out in flight. According to the official Air Force Investigation Report, there were no water jugs aboard the plane as reported in some accounts. A thermos jug three-fourths full of coffee was found on the floor at the flight engineer’s position. An earlier British party had removed the sextant, bombsight, and chronometer.
Both parachutes and Mae West life preservers had been worn by the crew when they left the old girl for the last time. The nine-man crew bailed out, undoubtedly thinking they were over the Mediterranean, but that body of water was some 400 miles away to the north. One can but wonder whether the crew felt any animosity toward the navigator, who was at least partially responsible for getting them into their predicament. The nearly blank navigator’s W6 sheet for the return portion of the mission certainly indicts him. None of the W6 reflects the standards that were representative of the times. All the crew knew was that they had landed somewhere in the desert; otherwise, they had no idea where they were. What a hopeless feeling it must have been!
The initial Air Force search party from Wheelus Air Base, Tripoli, was not equipped for full-scale search operations and found no trace of the crew. It was decided later that an extensive operation would be carried out to find the crew and close out the still open book on the Lady. But the task facing the search party was awesome—there was just no way of knowing where the crew had bailed out.
It was assumed, however, that the crew probably parachuted when only one engine was churning and therefore probably landed within 8 to 10 miles of the crash site. It was obvious that they had not found the downed bomber, and it is doubtful that they could have found her even if they had tried. It is interesting to wonder whether the possibility entered their minds. But the searchers theorized, and correctly, that the crew would have headed north toward the sea they probably thought was so near.
The medical people with the search party reasoned that it would be impossible to last more than a couple of days, even with water. The experts also gave the men, each with a canteen, a chance of going only 25 to 30 miles at best. But the experts overlooked one factor the Lady’s crew had going for it: the desire to survive. And it would be this desire which would push the men to continue on to superhuman feats with the hope that the sea was just over the next rise.
Moving north from the crash site, the searchers found the first clue some 19 miles away, where a pair of boots was found pointing north. The search then concentrated in that general area. Shortly afterward, the wheel tracks of five large, heavy vehicles were found. It was thought that the tracks were very old, made before the Lady went down. Therefore, the searchers speculated that if they were indeed present for the crew to see, they probably represented a great ray of hope to the stricken airmen—a trail they probably followed.
It was not long after taking up the trail that the search party found their assumption to be correct: more flight equipment was found. A parachute had been fashioned into the shape of an arrowhead, pointing north along the 5-vehicle track. It had been weighted down with stones and was still quite visible after 16 years. Still farther along the trail, more parachute arrowhead markers were found.
Just north of the last chute the search reached the sand sea of Calanscio, an area of shifting sand mounds that have been known to bury cities. Realizing that it must have been a tremendously discouraging sight to the Lady’s crew, the searchers felt the last chapter could soon be closed. After an extensive effort, though, the search teams gave up, and the mystery of the “ghost bomber” lived on. The final report of the investigation stated that “the crew members perished in the sand dunes and have been covered by the sands.”
So then the case of the Lady Be Good was laid to rest. But the quest
for oil in the desert still continued, and some four months later, in February
1960, the remains of five bodies were discovered on a plateau inside the sand
sea. The Air Force quickly identified them as five of the nine crewmen. The
area was littered with canteens, a Mae West life vest, and the diary of Second
Lieutenant Robert Tower, the copilot, which told of the last nine days of heat and
suffering. It was not long until the remains of three others were found. Only
Staff Sergeant Vernon Moore was never found; he still rests in the desert that
had claimed his Lady.
It is generally agreed that the circumstances which took the Lady Be Good to her appointment with death in the desert were a weird combination of mistakes and circumstances, a one-in-a-million fatal combination. Unfortunately, the inexperienced crew of the Lady fell victim to them on her first mission.
Many have suggested bringing the Lady back and displaying her at the Smithsonian or Air Force Museum. But that will never happen. She has become an intrinsic part of the desert that claimed her, and there she will remain. The plane today, after the ravages of souvenir collectors who at one point used axes, is little more than a shell and has long since ceased to be exhibitable.
The Vickers Division of Sperry Rand has long been interested in the effects of long-term storage on missile and aircraft components. To further this study, Vickers in March 1960 procured eleven hydraulic components from the Lady Be Good for examination, including the main system pump, relief valve, unloading valve, accumulator, turret transmission, and various engine components.
The results were surprising. All components were found to be in very satisfactory condition after their 17-year desert sunbath. There was little or no evidence of corrosion on most of the components. The piston rods moved freely and were coated with a film of oil when extended. The piston surfaces were bright and shiny, showing no evidence of corrosion or other deterioration. Both the pump and motor drive shafts rotated freely by hand.
About a quart of red hydraulic fluid was obtained from the system, and although slightly discolored, the fluid felt and smelled in very satisfactory condition. However, all the aircraft engine oil in the sample had evaporated, leaving only a black sludge in the engine oil reservoirs.
It was also reported that, as a result of the crash, the nose gear was broken off the aircraft and stuck in the sand with the tire sticking up. The slightest wind would rotate the wheel, indicating that the bearings were free and in good condition. Significantly, the conditions in the Libyan Desert are considerably better than those at the USAF aircraft storage area at Davis Monthan AFB, Arizona.
In 1970 Shell Oil Company completed a series of tests on an oil sample from the recovered engine. It seems remarkable that no appreciable evaporation of volatile constituents of the oil sample appears to have taken place.
Another equipment analysis was conducted by the Olin Company of East Alton, Illinois, on four .45 cartridges from the Lady Be Good. The tests were conducted in 1962 on ammunition manufactured by the Remington Arms Company in 1942. The 1962 standards for the ammo (the same as in 1942) were 820 feet-per-second velocity, and the average pressure was not to exceed 19,000 pounds per square inch. The Lady’s shells averaged 871.5 fps and 18,275 psi. Olin concluded that “from a ballistic standpoint, the ammunition appears safe.” One of the searchers also confirmed the adequacy of the Lady’s ammo when he checked out one of the bomber’s machine guns: when he pulled the trigger, tracers went zooming out across the desert.
The equipment of the Lady has made its way all over the world. Many small pieces of equipment were stripped off by members of the search parties and kept as souvenirs.
Many items of clothing and equipment, including two government-issue watches that would still run, were found with the remains of the crew. These items are on display at the Quartermaster Museum, Fort Lee, Virginia. There is also some Lady equipment in the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, one of the major items being a propeller. All the small arms went to the Libyan police, and all the rafts were eventually thrown away because over the years they had been ruined by the heat.
The first Air Force party at the crash site found flight suits hanging undisturbed in the bent fuselage, and in odd corners they found cigarettes, gum, and bits of flight rations. The butts in one ashtray had been smoked down to the last puff, probably slowly and almost confidently, the way a young flyer might drag on a weed during his first mission. In another tray they had been crushed out by nervous hands, the way a man smashes a cigarette when he is out of time.
The radio set from the Lady was removed and installed in the recovery C-47, where it worked perfectly in place of a radio that had failed on the flight from Wheelus. The story has it, though, that this aircraft some time later went down with all aboard lost. Thus began the “jinx” stories.
Several servomotors that had once driven some of the instruments on the Lady were installed in a C-54 assigned to Wheelus. On a Thanksgiving Day flight to Bengazi, carrying mail and Thanksgiving turkeys, one of the plane’s engines feathered, and even with maximum power on the other three engines the crew had to dump all cargo in order to make Bengazi safely.
But the most tragic of the “jinx” incidents involving parts from the ghost bomber happened with an Army Otter observation aircraft. Only the armrests had been removed from the Lady and installed in the Otter. Shortly thereafter, the Otter crashed into the Gulf of Sidra. No trace of its ten-man complement was ever discovered. Amongst the scattered debris washed up on the Libyan coast by the waves was an armrest.
These incidents have added an air of mystery to the old “ghost bomber.” In fact, it is said that native caravans skirt the site of the crash because they believe it is haunted. And as the years pass, the haunted aspects of the Lady Be Good will grow more fixed with each repetition of her anguished saga.
Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio
Acknowledgment
In preparing this article I had the help of Lieutenant Colonel William F. Rubertus (Retired), of Summerville, South Carolina, and Mr. J. W. Walker of McDonnell Douglas Corporation in St. Louis, Missouri. Their assistance is greatly appreciated.
W.G.H.
William G. Holder (B.S.A.E., Purdue University) is a space systems analyst with the Foreign Technology Division, Air Force System Command, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. He has worked with the Boeing Company on the Bomarc B and the Saturn V. As a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, he served three years as an air defense guided missile instructor. Mr. Holder is the author of numerous technical and historical articles and of a book, Saturn V—The Moon Rocket (1969).
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this
document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression,
academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official
position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force
or the Air University.
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