Wisconsin Public Television	University Place		The Mysterious Story of	"Lady Be Good"		Dick Campbell		2/20/14	UP984  cc >> Dick Campbell, our speaker tonight, was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. He is a graduate of Butler University in 1954. He served in the military in the US Air Force from 1954 to 1957. He served as the director of many YMCAs for 35 years from 1958 to 1993 in Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Racine and then here in Oshkosh where he was the executive director for 22 years. He does live here in Oshkosh and volunteers quite extensively throughout the community in multiple venues, the Oshkosh Rotary. He works at the -- Division with the Oshkosh Chamber, Meals-on-Wheels as a driver. He is a docent and tour guide here at EAA, and also does many other programs that you will see tonight throughout the community. He is a longtime student of history with eight program presentations which he calls the Great Moments in History. Since 1999 he has given these eight Power Points. He talks to many local Oshkosh groups and many organizations here in Wisconsin, as well as way up in Fairbanks, Alaska. 

Please help me welcome Dick Campbell. [applause]  Thank you, Bob. I appreciate the introduction. Welcome to another one of my Great Moments in History presentations. Tonight we're going to go out in the desert. We're going to tell the story of the Lady Be Good and her crew. On May 16, 1958, a British oil exploration team was flying over North Africa's harsh Libyan Sahara desert searching for traces of oil-barring rock strata when they stumbled across something unexpected below. The wreckage of a US Army Air Force aircraft from WWII. The man who spotted the aircraft was Ronald MacLean, chief geologist in Libya along with his pilot, Tony Hunt. Upon return to their airfield Hunt reported the sighting to officials at Whelus Airbase in Tripoli, Libya. 

The officials did not investigate the sighting report, nor did they give it any importance at the time. A second sighting from the air on June 15, 1958, by Charles Hellewell and Ken Honey prompted another report, this time to the REF officials at Whelus. And again, no action was taken. This photograph taken of the downed aircraft was snapped by Honey from about 3,000 feet. He fixed the position of the aircraft to within one mile of its true location at that time. Eight months later, in February 1959, a party of three oil men, geologists Don Sheridan and John --, and a surveyor, Gordon Bowerman where conducting a ground search of the aircraft. They eventually located the site where they discovered the remains of a WWII B-24D Liberator bomber named Lady Be Good. The men found that the desert environment had preserved the aircraft in an excellent state of preservation. There was hardly a sign of rust anywhere outside or inside the bomber. The OX oxygen cylinders still held oxygen. 

The plane's 50 caliber machine guns still operated at the pull of the triggers. The radio was in working condition. In fact, the C-47 in which they flew in that day to land had a malfunction in its radio to talk back to Whelus. They took the radio out of the Lady Be Good and hooked it up, and it worked. There were some supplies of edible rations, water and thermos of tea fit to drink. No human remains, nor where parachutes, found on the plane. A maintenance inspection log on board indicated that the bomber's squadron number was 64, and that she was part of squadron 514 of the 376th bomb group. The oil men removed items from the aircraft including compasses, water bottles, a radio, weapons, navigational gear and numerous other mementos. After returning home one of the men, Gordon Bowerman did not let the matter rest. On April 2, 1959, Bowerman wrote his friend Lieutenant Colonel Walter Kolbus, commander of Whelus Airbase about the discovery of the American aircraft explaining how he and his friends had found it. 

He passed on all the known details gathered at the crash site. This letter is what sparked further US investigation. Bowerman's letter was written almost 16 years to the day after Lady Be Good and her crew took off on their first, and last combat mission. It contained information from the plane's maintenance inspection records and crew names found on clothing and equipment in the aircraft. Kolbus replied to Bowerman on May 4, 1959. This contact resulted in notification to the US Army Quartermaster Mortuary System in Frankfurt, Germany. This was responsible for the identification in recovery of deceased military personnel. If not for Bowerman and Kolbus the saga of the Lady Be Good might not have been known for years, if at all. In May, 1959, a small investigation team from the Quartermaster Mortuary System was sent to Libya to search for the remains of the crewmen. This team conducted extensive ground search and ground-controlled air search near the crash site from May to August, 1959. 

During this search items of equipment and several improvised arrowhead markers where found 19 miles from the crash site on an old WWII convoy trail leading northwest. The arrowhead markers were made from parachutes weighted down with stones, presumably to mark the crew's trail in an attempt to hopefully lead an air/sea rescue group to their location back in 1943. Still farther along the trail more parachute arrowhead markers were found. Not found from the last parachute discovered where the shifting sands of the vast Calancio Sand Sea surrounding the plateau on which the Lady Be Good was discovered. Dunes are as much as 700 feet high and the sands so loose that a man will sink to knee depth with each step. Despite months of searching, no remains were found. It was concluded early in September in 1959, that any remains had probably been just covered up by the blowing desert sand. On February 3, 1960, five months after the Mortuary System report, CBS Television broadcast a documentary program about the Lady Be Good in its Armstrong Circle Theater series. Given the facts then known about the story, the show tried to explain the illusiveness of the crew's remains, despite the prolonged and expansive, expensive search conducted by the US Army Mortuary System. The program concluded by suggesting that the remains of the crew lay buried under the sands forever. 

On a personal note, I happened to watch that program 53 years ago. The story was one that has fascinated me ever since and led me recently to develop this history talk. Then on February 11, 1960, only nine days after the CBS TV program, a discovery was made by another British oil exploration team who found the remains of five of the crewmen from the Lady Be Good on a desert plateau at a distance of 78 miles northwest of the crash site. The skeletal remains were found grouped closely together, and nearby were pieces of equipment and personal belongings. Among the effects was a diary kept by co-pilot Lieutenant Robert Toner. His short, poignant diary entries for eight days, from April 5 to April 12, told a remarkable story of the airmen's courage and the super-human efforts to survive. Two of the desert searchers at that time are shown here examining Toner's small diary shortly after its discovery. Here's a copy of Toner's diary account of their losing battle against sun and sand. "Sunday, April 4, 1943, Naples, 28 planes. Things pretty well mixed up. 

Got lost, returning. Out of gas. Jumped, landed in desert at 2:00 in morning. No one badly hurt. Can't find John. All others present. Monday, April 5, start walking northwest, still no John. A few rations, one-half canteen of water, one capful per day. Sun fairly warm. Good breeze from northwest. 

Nights very cold. No sleep, rested and walked. Tuesday, April 6, rested at 11:30. Sun very warm, no breeze. Spent PM in hell. No planes, etc. Rested until 5:00 PM. Walked and rested all night, 15 minutes on, five off. Wednesday, April 7, same routine. Everyone getting weak, can't get very far. 

Prayers all the time. Again PM, very warm, hell. Can't sleep. Everyone from sore from the ground. Thursday, April 8, hit sand dunes. Very miserable. Good wind, but continuous blowing of sand. Everyone now very weak. Thought Sam and Moore were all done. LaMotte's eyes are gone. 

Everyone's eyes are bad. Still going northwest. Friday, April 9, Shelley, Rip, Moore separate and try to go for help. Rest of us very weak, eyes bad. Not any travel. All want to die. Still very little water. Night's are about 35, good north wind. No shelter, one parachute left. Saturday, April 10, still having prayer meetings for help. 

No sign of anything. A couple of birds, good wind from north. Really weak now, can't walk. Pains all over. Still all want to die. Nights very cold, no sleep. Sunday, April 11, still waiting for help, still praying. Eyes bad, lost all our weight, aching all over. Could make it if we had water. Just enough left to put our tongues to. 

Have hopes for help very soon. No rest. Still same place. Monday, April 12, no help yet. Very cold night." By Tuesday April 13 all the Lady's men were dead. The first to die was probably the pilot, William Hatton, who back on October 20, 1942, while in Salt Lake City, Utah, awaiting his posting assignment had written to his mother, "There are about four places they can send me. I'm sitting here waiting to see which one it is. I hope it isn't Arizona because I'm tired of sand." Several questions still remained. Who was this bomber? Where had it been before the crash? What happened to her crew? What was her story? The plane. The Lady Be Good, a B-24D, four engine bomber was one of 6,726 built by the Consolidated Aircraft Company in San Diego, California, during the war. 

The B-24D had a wingspan of 110 feet, weighed 56,000 pounds loaded, carried 8,000 pound of bombs, maximum speed was nearly 300 miles per hour, cruising speed 175 miles per hour, range 2,850 miles, and had a service ceiling of 28,000 feet. For armament, it was fitted with 11 50-caliber machine guns and was powered by four Prat & Whitney R-1830 engines of 1,200 horsepower each. Consolidated was one of five large United States aircraft factories that built more than 18,480 B-24s, the most of any American aircraft during the WWII years. In 1994 with the Willow Run plant near Detroit, Michigan, was putting out a B-24 out the back door every hour on the hour. The mission. On April 4, 1943, the Lady Be Good, pictured here, departed Soluch Airfield near Benghazi on the northern coast of Libya with her crew of nine on her very first combat mission. She was the 21st of 25 bombers that took off in a sandstorm to strike the port of Naples, Italy. The 700 mile flight which began at 3:10 PM would be approximately nine hours round trip. The planes had enough fuel for 12 hours of flight time. Flight missions from Soluch were notorious for their high number of turn-backs because of weather and mechanical problems in sand. 

This mission was no different, as many B-24s returned to Soluch shortly after take-off due to malfunctions leaving the Lady Be Good alone and well behind the other planes. The crew had to make constant course corrections along the route due to strong winds. Having fallen further behind the other planes the Lady Be Good reached the vicinity of the target, Naples, where the other planes had already dropped their bombs and were on their way back home. Rather than drop its bombs alone the Lady Be Good headed back home towards Soluch and dropped it's bombs into the Mediterranean Sea along the way. The navigator, Lieutenant D. P. Hays, was now faced with a task for which he was not prepared, having received a minimum of training of only 20 weeks and very little night-time flight training. The Lady Be Good was now on her way back on a 150 degrees southeast course towards Soluch Airfield. The pilot, William Hatton, thinking he was over the Mediterranean Sea and flying with a very strong tailwind of which he was not aware, requested an inbound barring from the HFDF, high-frequency direction-finding station, near Soluch Airfield. He was informed that he was on an inbound magnetic barring of 330 degrees. The navigator, D. P. Hays, probably took a reciprocal heading off the backside of the radio direction loop --, from a position beyond and southeast of Soluch, but on course, he thought. Hatton flew on through the night into the desert thinking he was still over the Mediterranean Sea and on his way to Soluch. 

The Lady Be Good continued her fateful flight into the unknown and disaster. They were actually on the 150 degree outbound barring from Soluch which could have been verified by Hays who made no attempt to verify. It is proper to mention here that Hays' navigational logs were recovered completely intact in the aircraft. There were no entries in the log since the return trip started. The final judgement was that the navigator was non-functioning and was hopelessly lost. It's hard to believe that the pilot blundered on through the darkness almost two more hours into the unknown. On reaching the Libyan coast the Lady Be Good's course, as shown here, was close to 150 degrees and headed southeast over the desert at an altitude below 5,000 feet. Throughout this time Hatton was certain that he was still over the Mediterranean Sea. Urged along by the strong tailwind from the north, Lady Be Good flew further and further southeast away from Soluch at a rapid clip. By 1:00 AM on April 5 she had been in the air for almost 10 hours and fuel was running low. 

Approaching 2:00 AM the engines one, two and three were running out of fuel. Only the right outboard engine was running. Hatton feathered the propellers on engines one, two and three thereby automatically shutting them down. He then rapidly trimmed the aircraft so that it could fly as nearly level as possible on the number four outboard engine to enable the crew to bail out at that point. Believing they were about to jump into the Mediterranean Sea the airmen were wearing May West life jackets over their leather gear, under their parachute harnesses and had discarded all clothing and equipment not thought essential. Virtually no food or water was taken by any of the crew. It's likely that the men were very surprised when they hit the sand rather than the water. The Lady Be Good continued to fly on alone over the desert long after her men hit the ground, slowly descending to crash land 16 miles south from the men's gathering place after they bailed out. Hatton's success in nearly getting the bomber to fly level hands-off without engaging the unreliable auto-pilot was evident by the almost flat angle at which she struck the desert. A search and rescue mission from Soluch Airfield to find the missing bomber was unsuccessful at that time, and no trace of the crew or aircraft was found at all. 

But what then happened to the crew? Pictured here are the nine members of the Lady Be Good's crew. Lieutenant William Hatton, pilot, Lieutenant Robert Toner, co-pilot, Lieutenant D. P. Hays, navigator, Lieutenant John Woravka, bombardier, Sergeant Harold Ripslinger, engineer, Sergeant Robert LaMotte, radio operator, Sergeant Guy Shelley, gunner, Sergeant Vernon Moore, gunner, and Sergeant Sam Adams, gunner. After parachuting to the desert floor eight of the nine airmen had managed to meet up with each other. They had been unable to find the ninth crew member, John Woravka. Unknown to them, his parachute had only partially opened and he likely died on impact. Not realizing that their plane and it's supply of food and water was a scant 16 miles away to the south, the men estimated that traveling northwest would bring them back to the airfield in Soluch. They set out on foot with what supplies they carried. By their calculations they figured that they were only no more than 100 miles from their base at Soluch. In reality, the distance was over 440 miles. They were in an area where the temperature rises to 130 degrees during the day and drops to almost freezing at night. 

When the plane's wreckage was located in 1958 desert survival experts estimated that the airmen would have been able to travel no more than 25 to 30 miles under the harsh desert conditions, particularly considering the fact that they were unprepared for the unforgiving desert environment. But the experts overlooked one factor the Lady Be Good crew had going for it, the desire to survive. It would be this desire which would push the men to continue on to super-human feats with the hope that the sea was just over the next rise. Miraculously, the eight men who survived the bailout with only a half a canteen of water to share among them traveled for eight days to the site where the remains of five of them were found, 78 miles from the crash site. At that point crewmen Hatton, Toner, Hays, Adams and LaMotte could not continue due to exhaustion and remained behind. Shelley, Ripslinger and Moore continued on in search of help. Charles Hellewell of the Mortuary System searchers vividly recalls what they had found. He said, "I can still remember the shiver that went down my back looking at the scene. For some reason it looked so peaceful. I remember thinking that surely some of the answers lie here. 

Most of the remains were eroded by sand and wind, but the first object I saw was a USAF-type empty sunglasses case partly eroded. The name, Lieutenant Hays, was written inside. We had decided not to touch anything, but in looking for ID tags I gently, with a finger, scooped sand from around the neck of one body and found, just below the surface, hair and skin still intact. I stood up and quietly walked away thinking, there but for the grace of God go I. It was an emotional moment for me. These were fellow airmen 17 years ago, the conclusion for a mystery brought about by a chance flight by Ken Honey and me almost two years earlier." The body from around whose neck Hellewell scooped sand was that of pilot William Hatton. The finding of the five bodies and the Toner diary with its indication that three of the crew had separated from the group and continued toward the dunes triggered the Mortuary System's second major search to locate the remaining four crewmen. During their search two British petroleum men, Don Livingston and Dave Glover, while surveying a route for oil vehicles through the sand dunes on May 12, 1960, came across the skeletal remains of Shelley. Standing over Shelley's remains Livingston and Glover had deep feelings of sadness that someone so determined should have suffered such a cruel fate all alone so many miles from anywhere. In describing the site where Shelley's remains were found Glover said, "From the top of the dune where we found him and looking north in the direction in which Shelley was going, all we could have seen to the very horizon would be lines and lines of sand dunes. 

It is possible, I think, that having struggled up to the top of this dune and having seen what was ahead of him, he was probably overcome with the impossibility of walking much further." Among the personal items found near Shelley's scattered bones was a -- watch belonging to him. Sufficiently mysterious to be worthy of mention here was that, when the watch was wound, it worked perfectly. When tested later on back in America under laboratory conditions it was found to have lost 11 seconds despite its 17-year exposure to the heat and cold of the desert conditions. Shelley had walked an additional 37 miles north from where the first bodies where found, marked here in yellow. The amazing Shelley's body site, marked in red, showed that he had walk 115 miles from the crew's bailout point on perhaps six capfuls of water per day and virtually no food beyond a few energy sweets in his pocket. Then on May 17, 1960, two years to the day after Lady Be Good had first been spotted from the air, the remains of Ripslinger, marked here in blue, were found at an additional 26 miles north of the five men site. The Lady Be Good's crash site is marked here in green on this map. A copy of Ripslinger's diary, shown here in not very good condition, which read as follows, "Monday, all but Woravka met this AM. Waited awhile and started walking. Had one half sandwich and piece of candy and cap of water in last 36 hours. 

Tuesday, started out early walking and resting. It's now sundown and still going. One teaspoon of water today. The rest of the boys are fine. Wednesday, started early AM and walked 'til about near spent. Terrible hot afternoon. Started again at 6:00 PM and walked all night. One spoonful of water is all. Thursday, tired all out. We can hardly walk. 

Our fourth day out, a few drops of water each. Can't hold out much longer without aid. Pray. Friday, fifth day out and we all thought we were gone. All wanted to die. During noon it was so hot. Morn and night okay. Two drops of water. Saturday, walked all day and night. Suggested Guy, Moore and I make out alone. 

Sunday, still struggling to get out of the dunes and find water." This was Ripslinger's last diary entry. He had walked 104 miles from the bailout point. The final search operation to recover the remains of Moore and Woravka was conducted over the same area without success. By the end of May, 1960, the search was brought to a close and the investigating teams left Libya never to return. Still, the story of the Lady Be Good would not rest. On August 11, 1960, another oil exploration party working close to the plane's crash site discovered the remains of John Woravka. He was lying some 16 miles northeast of the Lady Be Good, face up, with his parachute piled on top of him, clothed in his flying suit and May West, with his first aid kit, shown here on the left in this picture, still in his left hand. It was obvious from the tangled shroud lines around him that his parachute had failed to open. Attached to Woravka's clothing was a canteen, shown here on the right, still three-quarters full of water despite laying exposed to the sun for 17 years. Following the discovery of Woravka's body the team came upon a pile of parachute harnesses, discarded flight boots and expended signal flair cartridges. 

These marked the spot where the crew of the Lady Be Good first assembled after bailing out. The distance between this point and the Woravka site was around four-tenths of a mile. The remains of the ninth airman, Vernon Moore, have never been found, although it is possible that in 1953 his body may have been spotted and buried by a British desert patrol unaware that any air crews from WWII had ever gone missing in this area. The discovery of the Lady Be Good and her crewmen's valiant efforts to survive the Libyan desert received world-wide media coverage. Life Magazine published as article on the Lady Be Good in their March 7, 1960, issue, shown here. At least two books, The Lady Be Good, by Dennis McClendon, 1962, and Lady's Men, by Mario Martinez, 1995, and numerous newspaper and magazine articles have been devoted to this subject. I might mention that I have copies of those books right down here and the 1960 copy of Life Magazine that, if you get close to it, it just came out of a basement. [laughter] It has that smell. But it has the whole story of before they found out what really happened with pictures of the crew's families. Various items from the Lady Be Good shown here went to the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio. 

Other collectibles went to the Air Force Academy in Colorado and the US Army Quartermaster Museum at Fort Lee, Virginia. Souvenirs were also removed from the aircraft by search party members and various oil exploration teams passing through the area. The aircraft had been largely striped down to its frame by the time the Libyan government, in 1994, finally removed the last of its remains from the desert floor and placed them in storage in Tobruk, Libya. As a matter of interest, this aircraft was supposedly named Lady Be Good by a member of her ground crew back in March, 1943, when it arrived at her base in North Africa just prior to her first mission on April 4, 1943. She was fairly new and had only 148 hours on each of her four engines. Also of interest, Lady Be Good was the featured song and title of a popular 1941 musical film roughly based on a 1924 George and Ira Gershwin stage musical of the same name. The song was written by Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern. It won the Academy Award for the Best Song of 1941. The film featured Eleanor Powell, Ann Sothern, Robert Young and Red Skelton. Thus ends the story of one of the most extraordinary combat missions of WWII, and one of the most -- and futile episodes in the history of desert survival. 

In summery, the story of the Lady Be Good has been a fascinating one for many years. One might ask why? Well, perhaps the story sticks to the imagination and refuses to let go in a why few others do. Even 54 years later after its discovery in the desolate sands of the Sahara desert, the story of the fallen Lady has somehow remained one of the most alluring and unforgettable tales of WWII. The mysteries that shrouded the aircraft's discovery were simply too provocative and contained all the elements of an enduring legend. Such as the stark image of an almost intact war bird with no sign of her missing crew, the area in which it was found being so woefully far off the beaten track that 15 years had passed without a single human having laid eyes on her, the slow unraveling and eventual heartrending of the crew's struggle to survive, and finally the poignant diary entries found among their remains. But there is more to the story than that. It challenges us to measure ourselves, to question our own sensibilities, to appraise our courage in the face of a sudden and formidable challenge such as the one faced by the Lady's crew so long ago. The Lady's men were, like so many others, simply ordinary human beings who were suddenly thrust into an extraordinary situation and who, even in the face of a potentially fatal circumstance of their own doing, had to act as quickly and clearly as possible and think on their feet if they were, hopefully, to save their lives. Though the tragic miscalculation that placed them in their predicament should not be minimized, what they did after the fact in their struggle to somehow rectify their blunder is an inspirational example of the unyielding tenaciousness and resilience of the human sprit. In the scope of what we now know to have been their unenviable predicament, hopelessly stranded in a very harsh environment, their attempt to save themselves was quite astonishing, and their endurance impressing even the most experienced desert survivalists. 

Now you know the rest of the story. I thank you for your interest in this Great Moment in History. Thank you. [applause]