The Lady Be Good

by Dennis E. McClendon, Lt. Col. USAF (Ret.), was first published in 1962, just a few years after the discovery, in the Libyan desert, of a an American B-24 bomber, named the Lady Be Good. The Lady disappeared on April 4, 1943 during the first combat mission for the William Hatton Crew of the 376th Bomb Group based in North Africa. Until the Lady was discovered in the desert, 440 miles south of its original base in 1959, by a crew of oil workers, it was thought that she was shot down over the Mediterranean sea by German night fighters on her return from a bombing mission to Naples, Italy.

The Lady became separated from the rest of her squadron on a pitch dark night and flew right over their base on the Mediterranean coast. When they realized that they might be lost, they radioed for assistance and got a bearing with their Automatic Direction Finder, unfortunately they had already passed the base and their ADF was reading off the backside of the loop, making them think they were still on course, so they continued on. Running out of fuel an hour later and several hundred miles deep into the desert, they bailed out. 8 of the 9 crew members met up on the desert floor, feeling lucky to be alive and surprised to find temperatures around 35 degrees. The 9th crew member never met up with the crew, having died when he impacted the ground. The Crew had little food and they were allowed only one canteen cap full of water each day (at the most) by their pilot as they began their journey northwards, thinking that search planes would find them in a day or two. The environment couldn't have been worse, almost freezing at night and reaching almost 130 degrees by day, coupled with the fine blowing sand that scratched their eyes and parched throats. The men, amazingly, made it 8 or 9 days under these conditions before their superhuman efforts at survival were overcome. Before dying, one of the men had walked 90 miles! In the early 1960's this story intrigued the American public and a massive search for the bodies of the missing crewmen turned up 8 of them, almost perfectly preserved (mummified) by the dry desert conditions. The parachute marker arrows (showing their direction of travel for the search planes that never came) the crew made were still intact as they left them, plus many other items. One item that spoke volumes about their predicament was a piece of parachute, made into a face shield with two slits cut out for eye holes. Two diaries kept during the ordeal were also found. Some of the entries are unbearably, hopelessly sad. A week into the ordeal and at least 2 days without any water at all, the co-pilot, Robert Toner wrote:

Saturday, Apr. 10, 1943. Still having prayer meetings for help. No signs of anything, a couple of birds; good wind from N. Really weak now, can't walk, pains all over, still all want to die. Nites very cold, no sleep.

He would make his last entry two days later. The Lady, except for a few parts that were salvaged and displayed in museums, still remains in the Libyan desert where she crash landed by herself. A haunted ghost ship.

The Hatton Crew, after their initial navigating errors (which may have been exacerbated by the German night fighter attack she survived on that crews first mission) put on a clinic of human endurance and desert survival that is still studied today.

The author concludes the book with a bible verse that in this case was particularly fitting about the role that luck, in this case bad luck, can play in our lives:

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor riches to the men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill, but time and chance happeneth to them all. --Ecclesiastes, 9:11