Lady Be Good is a B-24D Liberator bomber that disappeared without a trace on its first combat mission during World War II. The plane, which was from 376th Bomb Group of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), was believed to have been lost—with its nine-man crew—in the Mediterranean Sea while returning to its base in Libya following a bombing raid on Naples on April 4, 1943. However, the wreck was accidentally discovered 710 km (440 mi) inland in the Libyan Desert by an oil exploration team from British Petroleum on November 9, 1958. A ground party in March 1959 identified the aircraft as a B-24D. Investigations concluded that the first-time (all new) crew failed to realize they had overflown their air base in a sandstorm. After continuing to fly south into the desert for many hours, the crew bailed out when the plane's fuel was exhausted. The survivors then died in the desert trying to walk to safety. All but one of the crew's remains were recovered between February and August 1960. Parts from Lady Be Good were salvaged for use in other aircraft following its rediscovery, while the majority of the wreckage of the aircraft was removed from the crash site in August 1994 and taken to a Libyan Air Force base for safekeeping.
Circumstances
Mission 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 (not to be confused with another nearby airfield, Benina). 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. The aircraft had been named after a popular George Gershwin song of the same name. 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. After the attack, all planes were expected to return to their bases in North Africa.
Operation 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.
Disappearance 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. 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.
Discovery
Wreckage: 1958 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. 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 Calanshio Sand Sea the next year. On February 27, 1959, British oil surveyor Gordon Bowerman and British geologists Donald Sheridan and John Martin 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, and another flight on June 15. A recovery team made initial trips from Wheelus Air Base to the crash site on May 26, 1959. 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, which was still on board, made no mention of the aircraft's movements after the crew commenced their return leg from Naples. Hays had been on his first combat mission.
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