Since I recently posted some detail shots of the Lady Be Good some of my readers have asked to see more of my images so, since today, April 4, is the 51st anniversary of the raid that started the mystery I've decided to post a number of photos over the next few days. Several of the photos I will post are not mine so will not be click-able. where I've been able to find attribution I will give it.
The Lady Be Good was built at the Consolidated Aircraft factory in San Diego and had the Army Air Force serial number 41-24301. She was one of a group of 629 B-24D Liberators ordered by the Army Air Force. She was a model 32 ordered by the British government in March 1941 but the US Army Air Force took over the order to accelerate their build-up as it was apparent that the United States would be entering the war. The completed aircraft was accepted by the Army Air Force on December 8th which was the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the same day President Roosevelt made his ‘Infamy Speech' and Congress passed a formal declaration of war. The serial number designates the fiscal year in which the order for the aircraft was placed and the sequential order in which it was ordered. Thus, 41-24301 means that the Lady Be Good was the 24,301st aircraft ordered by the US Army Air Force in 1941.
After acceptance on December 8th she was flown to Fort Worth to the Consolidated Aircraft modification center. Later Ford and Douglas would start producing the B24 (Ford at the rate of one every 100 minutes, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week!) and design changes were coming too quickly to stop production so the planes were modified after delivery. According to Walker, the Lady Be Good was painted ‘desert pink' in Fort Worth (she left San Diego painted ‘olive drab') and was declared combat ready on February 15th, 1943 and flown to a staging center in Topeka, Kansas. The photo above may have been taken at Fort Worth but more likely was taken at Topeka and I've just colored it wrong. I've read somewhere else (I don't have the reference) that the British Long Range Desert Group and Special Air Service vehicles of WWII were also painted a shade of pink. That's likely because much of the gravel plains of North Africa have a reddish tinge to them.
On March 23rd, the Lady Be Good arrived at Soluch, near Benghazi in libya and was assigned to the 514th squadron of the 376th Heavy Bombardment Group. I've not read any definitive version of where or who named the plane the Lady Be Good but it appears to have been after arrival in libya. In the period between being declared combat ready and arriving in libya, the aircraft suffered a number of mechanical failures that required remediation and the same occurred after arrival in Libya. So, the crew that had ferried the aircraft from the US to Soluch were assigned a different aircraft for a raid on April 2nd. That aircraft had mechanical issues during the mission and the crew had to divert to Malta. When they arrived back in Soluch on April 4th they found that the Lady Be Good had been assigned to a different crew for the raid that was due for later that day.
The April 4, 1943 mission was to bomb the docks and shipping in Naples harbor. The Lady Be Good was assigned to Section B. The mission was flown without fighter escort and so was timed for the bombers to arrive over the target at sundown and then return at night to their base. Locating Soluch at night was a challenge. There was a low-power radio transmitter with a 50 mile range and a light beacon near the airfield but both were only on when returning planes were expected.
The first plane took off at 1:30pm local time. The wind was already kicking up fine sand and as the aircraft taxied and took off they increased the dust clouds such that visibility was less than a mile. Also, each subsequent aircraft was ingesting the grit raised by the aircraft taking off ahead of it. Walker has all the aircraft taking off between 1:30 pm and 2:00 pm but Martinez has the Lady Be Good taking off between 2:50 pm and 3:10 pm based on logs and flight diaries.
Consequently, the formation started to have mechanical problems and aircraft started to return or divert to Malta. Of the 13 planes in Section A, only 8 made it to the target. Of the 12 planes in section B, none made it to the target. With five planes ahead of him having turned back, Hatton found himself at the front of the flight of four aircraft. Although the section could see Section A bombing Naples, for reasons known only to Hatton he turned the flight East and passed over Sorrento, to the South of Naples. There navigator Dp Hays determined a course of 140 degrees for the return to Soluch. The Lady Be Good was last seen as the formation broke up over Licosa, italy, for the flight home. On the way, all the aircraft encountered stormy weather. 21 of the 25 Liberator made it back to Soluch, 2 landed in Malta and 2 were missing. I find it interesting that Martinez is adamant that the Lady Be Good was not leading the flight of 4 bombers that turned back 15 minutes before reaching Naples while Walker is very persuasive that it was. McClendon and Martinez accounts both have one of the two missing aircraft also landing in Malta which makes Hatton's Lady Be Good the only aircraft unaccounted for from the mission. McClendon also has Lt. Worley as the last of the B-24s to land at Soluch after the raid, stating in his mission debrief that Hatton was leading the flight as they abandoned their run on the target. However, Walker has Lt. Swarner landing 20 minutes later with his bombs still aboard. Martinez agrees with Walker that Lt. Swarner landed at 11:30 pm.
At 12:12 am the following morning a radio operator at Benina airfield (modern day Benghazi airport, 30 miles North-East of Soluch) received a coded request from the Lady Be Good for a positional bearing. They were given a bearing of 330 degrees. The problem with this was there was no way to tell where Hatton was – if he was flying towards the airfield or away from it. Given that the last plane had landed some 40 minutes earlier, it's probable the Lady Be Good was already well on her way into the desert having long overshot the airfield at Soluch when they requested the bearing. This doesn't quite fit, however, with the reports of an aircraft being heard over Benghazi around midnight and at Soluch a few minutes later. Either way, the crew missed the coastline and kept flying their heading into the desert. At this point, Martinez' account passes into informed speculation, using the later recovered radio logs and navigation logs to construct a plausible scenario for the flight.
With the Lady Be Good missing and bad weather scratching the mission for April 5th, a number of attempts were made to find the Lady Be Good. Walker reports flights of up to 200 miles on the bearing given by Benina and Martinez reports flights up to 380 miles into the desert, just 40 miles short of where the Lady Be Good eventually ran out of fuel and glided into the desert, 420 miles inland. With nothing found, it was assumed the plane had ditched into the Mediterranean and the crew had drowned. Listed as ‘Missing in Action' the war moved on and the Lady Be Good and her crew became just another war statistic.
According to Walker, the B-24 was seen by Charles Hellewell flying an aerial survey for D'Arcy Exploration and British Petroleum on April 17, 1958. Martinez reports the sighting as having been made on May 17, 1958. Since the rest of the details are the same, one or other most likely has the wrong month. Martinez reports other sightings on 15 June, 1958, November 9, 1958, and 7 February, 1959. McClendon has the first sighting by Ronald McClean on November 9, 1958. Since McClean published in 1962, Walker in 1994 and Martinez in 1995, it's probable that Walker and Martinez were able to do more extensive research, hence the differences.
The two photos below come from an overflight by the US Quartermaster Mortuary System (QMS) team on May 14, 1959 to pinpoint the location of the wreck and search for possible markers left by the crew since the plane was only 10 miles off the 330 / 150 degree bearing line from Soluch.
As the crew flew on and started to run out of fuel, the crew feathered (shut down) engines 1, 2, and 3. The engines were numbered sequentially from left to right when facing forward so engine #1 was the outer port engine, #2 the inner port engine, #3 the inner starboard engine and #4 the outer starboard engine. The B-24 could fly on two engines but not on one so the crew would have known they would have to bail out once they were down to one engine. With the crew bailed out, the plane would have continued to descend in a clockwise spiral until hitting the ground. In the picture above, the aircraft would have come in from the lower right. The #4 engine ripped off on contact and other part of the aircraft including the bomb bay doors ripped off as the plane skidded along the desert floor still spinning clockwise. As the tail dug into the desert floor the plane would have whipped whipped around violently which cause the tail section to break off just behind the wings.
In the photo below, the plane would have come in from the lower left corner.
One of the things I find interesting is that several of the planes reported returning from the Naples mission very low on fuel, yet the Lady Be Good had enough fuel to fly on a further 420 miles. I'm not sure how this fits with the report of the single aircraft over Benghazi around midnight since to fly on 420 miles implies the Lady Be Good had lots more fuel left than the other aircraft, especially if she was the aircraft heard around midnight. Perhaps the crew feathered one or more of the engines much earlier in their flight to conserve fuel as they searched for a coastline they had already crossed. This is potentially even more confusing if the Lady Be good did take off around 3:00 pm, per Martinez, as she would have had to have flown faster to get into formation to be leading Section B as they approached the target, though Martinez doesn't believe she was leading at this point. Another explanation for fuel discrepancies might be leaking fuel tanks on other aircraft and worse fuel consumption due to worn engines, the Lady Be Good being the newest plane on the raid. All speculation on my part.
Tomorrow I'll post the next installment.
I have a photo book containing several of my images of the Lady Be Good available through Blurb, below:
