In 1990-91 I was fortunate enough to be assigned to work in the Calanscio sand sea in the Libyan desert. Fortunate because a little to the east (in those days) lay the wreckage of the ‘Lady Be Good', a WWII era Liberator Bomber. The plane failed to return to Suluq airbase after the crew's first combat mission to bomb Naples on April 4, 1943. The wreckage was discovered from the air on May 15, 1959 and visited on the ground on May 26, 1959, more than 16 years after she was reported missing in action. The bodies of 8 of the nine airmen were found in 1960 – the body of the ninth has never been found. In 1994 the wreckage was removed from the desert crash site to a yard in Tobruk.
I had been interested in this wreck for many years having seen a film (that I now believe to be ‘Sole Survivor', made for TV in 1970 and starring William Shatner) loosely based on the story of the ‘”lady be good”. I don't recall now where I got some of the details from but I do remember having been disappointed at not getting to the wreckage on my first tour of libya from 1984 – 1986.
In 1990 I had been working on the Algerian border when I got an unexpected promotion to lead my company's seismic exploration crew that was working on the eastern edge of the Calanscio sand sea close to the Egyptian border. The crash site was a little over an hour's drive from our camp. I made one visit in 1990 and and second in 1991 before leaving the area.
The image was made with a Canon EOS 10 on Fujichrome Velvia.
