For the second day, the eight members of the crew of the Lady Be Good that had formed up after bailing out continued their trek across the featureless gravel plain. Since the markers they left show a steady bearing they must have had a compass. The only real way to maintain a heading while walking in such a featureless area is to pick a rock ahead of you, walk to it, then look at your compass and pick another rock, over and over.
Toner:
TUESDAY April 6, 1943
Ripslinger:
TUESDAY April 6, 1943
It's not clear when in the day these two were writing these brief notes in their diaries and neither provides any other information. Both McClendon and Martinez speculate dialog among the crew but there's no way of knowing if their speculation has any validity. However, it is clear that the crew stayed together.
By April, the winter is long gone and sub-zero nights are behind you but there's still a tremendous range of temperature between the heat of day and the coldest time, just before sunrise. Neither diary mentions any cloud cover so there's nothing to keep the heat in at night. I first arrived in Libya in December 1984 and spent my first week in Benghazi. I thought the weather there was quite pleasant (but one year, 1985, I think, I did experience a very brief snowfall that melted as soon as it landed). The next week I transferred to the desert (in a Twin Otter filled with frozen meat) and found I was really not at all prepared for how cold it got at nights in the winter – sometimes cold enough to gel the diesel in the fuel tanks of our trucks!
Another aspect of the desert is how reflective it is. The sun not only beats down from above but reflects up from the thousands of grains of sand below you. We used to wear heavy polarized sunglasses – often ski glasses – to both cut down the glare and also help provide contrast. The remaining 8 members of the crew of the Lady Be Good didn't have those luxuries. I read somewhere but cannot now find the reference that the crew had taken strips of parachute material and poked holes in them as a form of goggles to cut down the amount of light.
As the group continued to walk, they periodically left markers from parachute material, discarded flying boots, parachute harnesses, to help any rescuers that found the aircraft to follow their tracks. It's not clear in any of the accounts if these markers were removed from the desert or left in place.
For a while, the team followed a set of vehicle tracks they encountered which were made by Italian trucks in 1941 following a raid on Kufra to the South. But then they encountered another set of tracks made by the British Long Range Desert Group when they moved their operations HQ from Siwa to Kufra in 1942. There's no way to know what was going through the minds of the crew at this point and neither diarist mentions any tracks. From my experience, even though the tracks would have been easily visible, they would not have appeared fresh to the crew of the Lady Be Good. Fine sand particles, blown by the wind, would have filled any trace of the tire treads. The depressions in the surface of the gravel would be evident but the crew would have known they were not recent. And, it was found, near the point that the two sets of tracks intersected, Hatton and the others altered their bearing from a heading of 340 degrees to a heading of 325 degrees.
The two photo's below I found on the Internet but cannot find any attribution. However, they must have been taken before April 19, 1968 because the #2 engine is still clearly attached to the aircraft. On April 19, 1968 the RAF team, at the request of Walker who was then heading a McDonnel-Douglass project concerning long term missile storage, removed the #2 engine and various other samples including a section of the starboard main gear tire. These items were removed to the US. I've no idea what the yellow paint behind the roof hatches is for or when it might have been painted but since the registration number on the starboard tail is also painted in yellow I suspect this might be original to the aircraft. Note that things like the navigator' cupola in front of the cockpit have been removed along with service panels from the #1 and #2 engines.
Even by now the erosion of the desert pink camouflage is evident. In the photo below, which from the color cast I think was taken by the same person at the same time as the image above, clearly shows the word ‘Good' painted on the nose. It's interesting that both black and white paint can be seen. I've yet to see a photo that shows the name to have been written on the port side of the nose also.
Below is how the top turret looked in 1959. Unfortunately this image doesn't show enough of the fuselage to tell whether the yellow line was present at this time.
And below is the tail turret in 1959:
In Walker's book he has two photos he attributes to the RAF visit of April 1968 showing the gutted wreckage. The yellow line on the fuselage is certainly evident in the aerial photo in his book but I have to question the date of the aerial photo since the #2 engine is gone and there is no obvious evidence of the tire tracks of the truck onto which it was hoisted. According to Walker, when the RAF team got there they found the tail section had been dragged several hundred feet away. For what purpose, only those that did it can know. Also in that photo it shows the #3 engine had also been removed and positioned in front of the #4 engine spot on the wings. The port tail is also shown to have been severed. Walker doesn't say but I assume the RAF team pulled the wreckage back together which is why the tail section when I saw it is more aligned with the fuselage than when the plane was originally found.
I can only imagine all those souvenirs being taken off to desert camps and then being lost on subsequent camp moves. I doubt most of what was taken ever left Libya but was dumped or buried elsewhere in the desert. I, for one, would love to know what happened to the ‘Good' that was carved off the starboard nose – if it still exists somewhere.
Below is a photo of the starboard main gear from the trailing edge of the wing looking forward.
And here is a view of the same tire taken from the leading edge of the wing looking back. The section removed by the RAF team in 1968 is clearly visible.
The next series of photos were taken around the tail section of the aircraft. You can clearly see that the port tail was cut off at some point. I believe the vertical post sticking up at left is the cut-off piece of the transverse section and that the vertical panel is lying on the gravel and now covered in sand.
The photo above of the starboard tail shows the largest then remaining area of the desert pink camouflage. If you look closely at the serial number you'll see there is another serial number just above it. Also, you'll see that the pink paint is covering part of the ‘2', ‘3', ‘0', and ‘1'. This suggests to me that the yellow numbers are the originals painted on in San Diego. After the Lady Be Good was painted desert pink in Fort Worth, the serial number was again painted over the pink paint. I think that second, ghostly, serial number is the remains of the one the crew would have seen as they approached the aircraft for boarding on April 4, 1943.
More images to come in my next post.
I have a photo book containing several of my images of the Lady Be Good available through Blurb, below:
