In April of 1943, a plane known as the Lady Be Good took to the skies over Libya for a military mission in Naples, Italy. Later that evening, communication abruptly stopped, and the whereabouts of the plane and its crew wouldn't be known for almost two decades. When it was finally learned what happened, it was far more horrifying than anyone could have imagined.
This is the disturbing disappearance of the Lady Be Good, and as always, viewer discretion is advised. [intro music] On April 4th, 1943, the world was in the midst of World War II, and it was still more than two years away from coming to an end. On a small airstrip known as Soluch near Benghazi, Libya, pilot William Hatton sat in a brand-new airplane that was about to take off for its first-ever flight with a crew of 9 aboard.
William's B-24D Liberator aircraft was one of 28 belonging to the US being sent on a bombing mission over Naples, Italy that day. His plane was assigned to the second of a two-wave attack, so William's would be one of the last planes to take off from Soluch that day, and the instructions for the mission were simple: Take off, fall into formation with the planes ahead of them, and bomb strategic targets in the Italian harbor to cut off supplies and reinforcements from coming into Naples. It's less often discussed when the topic of World War II comes up, but North Africa was a critical theater for both Allied and Axis forces.
Fighting in the region began in June of 1940 and continued until 1943 with almost 400,000 combined casualties from both sides in the campaign. The area's geographic location made it strategically important for the Allies to control access into, out of, and over the Mediterranean Sea. And countries like Libya, Algeria, and Egypt were perfectly positioned for launching aerial campaigns to keep Axis powers from concentrating around the Mediterranean.
In fact, had the Allies not won control of North Africa, the all important invasion of Sicily in the summer of 1943 that led to the fall of the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, may have never occurred. Now, the US military's favorite tool for aerial attacks was the very plane William was piloting, which was a heavy bomber aircraft with an exceptionally long flight range and the ability to cruise at high speeds. The Liberator was such a beloved plane that it still holds the record as the most produced bomber in American military aircraft history— at least the generals loved it.
This is likely because of its ability to fly great distances on a single load of fuel while carrying a heavy bomb load. Airmen, on the other hand, much preferred the roomier B-17s because, comparatively, the B-24 had lower ceilings and much less free space. But this is also part of what made it such an efficient aircraft.
Compared to others, it also featured what is known as the Davis wing, which produced much less drag. After World War II, the use of this Davis wing came to an end, but it served its purpose in helping make the Liberator the US military's aircraft of choice during the war. As good as the B-24 was, however, the conditions on April 4th weren't cooperating enough to call the mission to Naples routine.
Winds were strong, and despite sitting relatively close to the Libyan coast, Soluch was prone to sandstorms. This caused visibility to be greatly reduced by all the sand in the air, and after the first wave of B-24Ds took off, many of their pilots decided it was unsafe to continue on. As those planes turned around to head back to Soluch, William's plane, which was nicknamed the Lady Be Good, took to the skies for the first time and got onto its course toward Italy.
As the plane headed in the direction of where William expected the formation to be, he heard pilot after pilot come on the radio to report that they were returning to Soluch because the conditions were so poor that they threatened the functionality of the aircrafts. This is because, sandstorms present a type of danger to planes that regular storms don't. Because sand is coarse and rough, it can be abrasive and cause damage to everything from windscreens to engines.
William, however, believed the Lady Be Good was holding up nicely despite conditions, so he and the crew pressed on alone. Then, just 30 minutes from reaching Naples, he didn't like how the engines were performing, and he knew that the sand was to blame. Just like the 27 others who were part of the mission, William decided to turn the plane around and head back to Soluch.
Almost as soon as the Lady Be Good was pointed to the south, its automatic direction finder stopped working. This failed piece of equipment is critical in the navigation of an airplane because it constantly displays the plane's heading. Ironically, it was a problem not caused by the sandstorm, but it was a major issue nonetheless.
And located more than 700 miles, or 1,100 kilometers to the southeast of Naples, Soluch would be nearly impossible to find if William had no idea what direction the plane was pointing. In better conditions, the crew would navigate by sight using landmarks on the ground, but there was no chance of that happening during a sandstorm in and around Libya. Since Soluch was located in the northern portion of the country, the Libyan shoreline with the Mediterranean Sea would have been about the best landmark the men could have hoped for, since cities are sparse in the area.
In fact, even today, the region has few established towns and cities because it's an area dominated by the vast, barren Sahara Desert. It's unclear exactly why officials and radio operators made the decisions they did that night, but either way, it would result in the plane not getting navigational help. And soon enough, not only was a sandstorm still causing visibility problems in the region, but night had long since fallen, making flying by sight all the more difficult.
In the end, the Lady Be Good never did find Soluch that night, and when crew stopped replying to radio operators, US military officials in North Africa, feared the worst. Early the next day, a search and rescue mission was launched, but no one even knew where to look, as the plane's last known location was over the Mediterranean Sea. This is when the automatic direction finder stopped working.
Then, finally, when it was clear the plane and its crew were unlikely to be found, the US military reported that it was operating under the assumption that the Lady Be Good went down in the Mediterranean Sea, and that all 9 of the men aboard were presumed dead. And with that, the military considered the matter closed. By 1958, the world's growing dependence on fossil fuels had created a race among oil companies to locate new and more fruitful drilling sites.
And North Africa just happened to have an abundance of them. During a scouting flight over Libya, several British geologists working for an oil company, looked out their windows for any signs of oil when one of them spotted some sort of debris field below. This was then pointed out to the others, and the pilot circled the area at a low altitude so they could get a better look at what it was.
And it didn't take long for them to figure out that it was the remains of an airplane that had clearly crashed there. Since it appeared to be a military plane, the pilot contacted Wheelus Air Force Base in Libya about the discovery, but initially, there was little interest in it from officials there. They had no record of a missing plane, so the discovery was more or less none of their concern.
Over the following months, more and more surveys of the area were conducted by geologists— one of which happened to be a good friend of the commander at the same airbase. After inspecting the crash site from the ground one of these times, the geologist wrote a letter to the commander with detailed information about what he observed from the crash site, including maintenance records and crew names found on clothing still inside the plane. Then, in crosschecking the names, Wheelus officials finally realized the importance of the find.
A military investigation team was then sent to the coordinates of the crash site in May of 1959— six months after the wrecked plane was first reported, and it was indeed the Lady Be Good. Many years earlier, when William called into Soluch for help that night in 1943, radio operators made a crucial mistake. Rather than providing verbal instructions right from the get-go, instead, during the sandstorm in the middle of the night, Soluch officials decided to fire off a series of flares in hopes that the Lady Be Good would spot them.
Obviously, while well-intentioned, the plane wasn't able to see the flares. William then unknowingly flew right past the airstrip and continued south. For two hours after the plane overshot the airstrip, communications between the crew and the ground were kept up after officials realized that maybe flares weren't the best idea.
Verbal guidance then began hopes of getting the plane to the ground somehow, but it was too late by that point. The plane had been flying in an unknown direction for too long, and no one on the ground or in the air knew where it was. Then, suddenly, the plane's radio went silent, and all attempts to reestablish contact failed.
The best anyone could figure was that the plane and its crew were lost in the Mediterranean Sea. In reality, the Lady Be Good overshot Soluch by 440 miles to the south, and the military was correct in that the plane did go down in the sea, but it wasn't in the Mediterranean. Instead, the plane skidded to a stop in the heart of the Calanshio Sand Sea.
This area is an astounding 24,000 square miles (62,000 square kilometers) of arid, inhospitable land. There's no water, no vegetation, no shade, and very little wildlife that could be considered food. When the investigation team arrived many years later and began a thorough search of the crash site, there was a curious absence of human remains or activity in the area.
Curiously as well, the plane itself was in surprisingly good condition. A further examination then revealed that when it crashed in the desert, it did so without a drop of fuel in its tanks. Three of the four propellers were also rippled, indicating that they weren't operational at the time of impact, and there was no sign of an explosion or fire, so it would have been completely survivable.
The crewmen, however, weren't in the plane when it went down as evidenced by the lack of parachutes in the Lady Be Good. It was then realized that they must have bailed from the aircraft before it crashed, and they could have been anywhere when that happened. The investigation team then expanded its search area outside the crash site, and around 19 miles, or 31 kilometers to the north, the first sign of the crew was found.
Sitting in the middle of the desert were half-buried parachutes and a pair of rubber flight boots with their toes forming an arrow pointing northwards. But, despite now having some indication of where the crew of the Lady Be Good might have gone, nothing further was found in the initial search. For three months afterward, investigators continued to look for the remains of the men until desert sand started to cause their vehicles and other equipment to fail.
So, just like in 1943, the US military closed the book on the Lady Be Good and assumed the bodies of the 9 men had been buried in the sand after 15 years of exposure to desert elements. Another 6 months passed after the search was called off when oil company employees made another shocking discovery during a scouting flight. Scattered in a small area were the remains of 5 human bodies all dressed in military uniforms.
And shortly after that, it was discovered that the names on those uniforms matched those of the crewmen aboard the Lady Be Good on its maiden and final flights. Military personnel then returned to the Libyan desert to investigate the site and recover the fallen airmen. Among the items found with the 5 bodies were flashlights, flight jackets, and bits of parachute material, but the discovery that told a more complete story of what happened was the diary of Second Lieutenant and Co-pilot, Robert Toner.
Between April 5th and April 9th, 1943, Robert made daily entries in the journal which told a harrowing story of the nearly impossible. What follows is what can be pieced together from those diary entries. After getting lost on the way back to Soluch, the Lady Be Good was running dangerously low on fuel, prompting the men to jump out of the plane shortly before it impacted the ground.
They then touched down at around 2am, and the crewmen started to gather, but only 8 of them met up. The men found that Second Lieutenant John Woravka was missing, but it was too dark to do anything about it. Once the sun came up on April 5th, the 8 crewmen looked around for John, but there was still no sign of him.
And if they were gonna survive, unfortunately, they'd have to start moving without him. The men then set off on foot to the northwest. Although Robert didn't explain why William chose the direction he did, it may have been that he knew he overshot Soluch, and he believed the airstrip was much closer than it actually was.
Either way, all the men had as they set off on April 5th were the clothes on their backs, a few food rations, and one single canteen that was only about halfway full. That was literally all the water they had. Thankfully, their first day in the desert was surprisingly mild and even came with a breeze, but once the sun went down that night, the ordeal of the Lady Be Good crew was just getting started.
No one could sleep that night due to near freezing temperatures after the sun went down which might seem counterintuitive considering the setting. But in fact, the desert is actually known for getting quite cold at night. Sand isn't a great insulator so it doesn't retain heat very well.
Deserts are also very dry, and since there is virtually no moisture in the air, sand cools at night just as fast as it heats up during the day. To combat these frigid temperatures, the men decided instead to keep moving at night and rest during the worst parts of the day, which would reach temperatures of 130F or 54C. So at 11:30 the following morning, the 8 crewmen stopped to rest and didn't get moving again until 5 o'clock that afternoon.
During that time, they became fully aware of just how much danger they were in. The breeze they had was long gone, and the sun was relentless. As Robert describes it in his journal, they were essentially in hell.
As the sun set, the men spent that night walking in intervals of 15 minutes, then resting for 5 minutes, over and over, well until the sun came up on April 7th. By then, the lack of food, water, and sleep was taking a significant toll on them, and none of them could go very far without having to stop and rest. They began praying more often than walking, and it was around this time that they realized they likely weren't going to make it out of the desert alive.
Despite the realization though, the men continued on. The next day, they came upon a field of high sand dunes they'd have to climb to keep going. The wind had also returned, which was a welcome change in terms of temperature, but it was also strong enough to kick up sand, causing all the men to suffer from eye issues.
This was so bad, in fact, that one of them even temporarily lost their ability to see completely. Then, another couple of days later, on April 9th, the ordeal would mercifully come to an end for some of them. 5 of them, including William and Robert, were so weak from everything they had endured to that point, that they couldn't go any further.
It was decided that the other 3 were still fit enough to walk, so Harold Ripslinger, Guy Shelley, and Vernon Moore continued on, promising the others that they'd return with help to get them all out of there. One of the last things Robert wrote in his journal as he lay in the sand, was that they were all so tired they just wanted things to be over. Tragically, they'd all get their wish sometime after the final journal entry.
After the discovery of the bodies in 1960, there would be one final organized search for the rest of the Lady Be Good crew. Under the name Operation Climax, 6 desert vehicles, 2 helicopters, and 19 troops and airmen were involved, and now that at least some of the crewmen were located, officials could concentrate on a much smaller area. By May 12th, this strategy paid off as Guy's body was found 21 miles northward of the site of the 5 bodies.
And 5 days later, searchers found Harold's body another 5 miles northwest of Guy, in an area of sand dunes 600 feet, or 183 meters tall. When Operation Climax officially came to an end, just two men, John and Vernon, were still missing. As had already happened twice before, oil company employees would come across another body in August of 1960.
If you recall, John was the one crew member who never met up with the rest of the men after they all bailed from the Lady Be Good. He was found 12 miles north of the crash site, and it was apparent that John's parachute never deployed correctly. And while the chute did slow his speed somewhat, it wasn't enough for him to survive the landing, so his remains were found still inside his flight suit with the deployed and tangled parachute still attached to his back.
As for Vernon, his body was never located despite covering a search area of 6,300 square miles, or more than 16,000 square kilometers. Now, although the discovery of the men more or less solved the mystery, it also revealed even more tragic circumstances. Had the 8 men made one decision differently, they very likely would have survived the desert crash.
When the crewmen gathered after jumping out of the plane, they were about 19 miles north of the mostly intact Lady Be Good. The plane was in exceptionally good condition relative to most crashes, and what investigators found inside was heartbreaking. Inside of it were days' worth of ready-to-eat meals, canteens filled with water, and even a thermos full of coffee that was still drinkable more than 15 years after the plane crashed.
Even the machine gun still worked, and that's not all. The plane that brought the members of Operation Climax to the Libyan desert also suffered radio failure shortly after they arrived. Since the radio inside the Lady Be Good was still intact, Operation members removed it and replaced the broken radio inside their plane, and it worked perfectly.
After all those years in the desert, there were still enough resources for the 8 surviving crewmen to be rescued, and all it would have taken for them to survive would have been to walk south instead of northwest. Obviously, however, that takes nothing away from the heroic effort and seemingly superhuman will to live the men exhibited. From their gathering spot in the desert and after they jumped from the plane to where the 5 bodies were found, it was determined that the men walked an incredible 85 miles, or about 137 kilometers, and that was with just half a canteen of water between them.
Even more incredibly, Guy then walked another 21 miles for a total of 106, and Rip made it another 5 more before succumbing to the elements. Sadly, despite the great distances they each covered, they were still a long way from civilization. And while they didn't know it at the time, the only search that was conducted while the men were still alive, was over the Mediterranean Sea.
Robert even noted in his diary that the men didn't see one single plane overhead that they could signal to. This lack of search activity must have underscored their need to save themselves, and obviously, they managed an effort worthy of admiration. In fact, after learning about what the men accomplished, desert experts were completely stunned.
In their estimation, the 8 men had enough supplies to sustain just two of them for a total of 25 to 30 miles. This was a feat that redefined what desert survivalists believed was possible. In any case, with the mystery of the Lady Be Good's disappearance completely solved and put to rest, one final investigation was done to determine the cause so that the military could learn from its mistakes and oversights.
In the end, it was determined that a mix of poor visibility, navigational errors, and strong winds that carried the plane further south than believed, were to blame for the incident. If you made it this far, thanks so much for watching. If you have a story suggestion, feel free to submit it to the form found in the description, and hopefully, I will see you in the next one.
