Remembering "The Lady Be Good".

After reading this thread and checking out the links I remembered that I had taped a tv program about this crew several years ago. The program was first aired around 2000 on The History Channel and is from the “History’s Mysteries” series and is titled “Ghost Plane of the Desert: Lady Be Good”. It has some very good original footage of the plane in the desert and from the recovery teams expeditions. Also interviews with some of the D’Arcy Petroleum crews that first found the LBG. Highly recommended if you can find it. I have seen some parts of the plane and some of the personal items that are on display at the USAF Museum in Dayton, OH.

Assistant Radio Op/Gunner S/Sgt. Vernon L. Moore’s remains were never found and remain lost in the Libyan desert.

You know what puzzles me…? Why on earth was this not recovered ages ago before it was cut apart?

we did have our own version, but unfortunately at a time when we desperately needed the alloy from them!

Davis-Monthan and the long closed Litchfield Park were used for storing/scrapping aircraft since the end of WWII.

I stand corrected…..logical I suppose when very large flat areas of otherwise unproductive land are required…

…it is a pity the UK didn’t have any deserts to fill with Stirlings and Halifaxes! 😀

Cracking pictures Mk12, thanks for sharing.
Libya does seem to be the most fitting resting place.

I wouldn’t worry about the LBG being under cover…..I seem to remember that her amazing state of preservation in the desert was one of the factors that led to the ‘desert boneyard’ method of aircraft storage in the US.

No , I think the Americans figured it out long before the Lady be Good was found in the late 1950s.
Davis-Monthan and the US Navy’s long closed facility at Litchfield Park west of Phoenix were used for storing/scrapping aircraft since the end of WWII.

Now there’s a rebuild project for somebody!!
And – as an irrelevant aside – I’ve just discovered that Rommel stayed in Room 312 at the Palace Hotel in Tobruk. That room was part of my RAF Hiring when I arrived at El Adem/Tobruk, en famille, in the mid-1960’s.
HTH
Resmoroh

…I’d certainly like to see her placed under cover.

I wouldn’t worry about the LBG being under cover…..I seem to remember that her amazing state of preservation in the desert was one of the factors that led to the ‘desert boneyard’ method of aircraft storage in the US.

The Libyans have published plans and details/models of a major museum complex from which it can be reasonably assumed that the LBG will finally rest in a crash diorama context. They took an awful lot of trouble recovering every piece from the desert, without further damage, including the full width of the wing span.

I would rate the chances of it going back to the US as zero.

Mark

Thank you Mark12 – I think for a moment that I jumped to a conclusion that it was in the yard to stay, thinking again about the battles fought in Libya, a museum there with the LBG there would be quite fitting, I’d certainly like to see her placed under cover.

I know that in the past, the US and much of the West hasn’t had great relations with Libya! – But now we’ve all made up, have there been any recent attempts to recover whats left and take it back to the USA ?

The Libyans have published plans and details/models of a major museum complex from which it can be reasonably assumed that the LBG will finally rest in a crash diorama context. They took an awful lot of trouble recovering every piece from the desert, without further damage, including the full width of the wing span.

I would rate the chances of it going back to the US as zero.

Mark

I know that in the past, the US and much of the West hasn’t had great relations with Libya! – But now we’ve all made up, have there been any recent attempts to recover whats left and take it back to the USA ?

A couple of shots from me, passing through Libya in March 2007.

..and one taken by my uncle on 26 May 1965.

These shots were part of an extensive report in ‘another’ AvMag about 18 months back.

Mark

:confused: I also believe from memory that the ground wireless operators heard her transmitting but didn;t reply because they thought it could be a trap from the enemy night fighters.

I thought eventually they found all the crew including John Woravka who died when his ‘chute didn’t open………………..

Arc

Yes, I believe that they overshot their base and were flying away.

Certainly the documentary lays the blame fairly and squarely on the navigator…

Wasn’t the direction-finding loop that was read ‘off the back’ a ground-station? The reciprocal bearing given then (apparently) placing the Lady Be Good out over the Mediterranean when in fact she had already passed her base and was flying away from her base out into the desert.

I don’t know if it was ever more than speculation but wasn’t there some evidence of limited combat damage to the Lady Be Good?

IIRC on the Hermes a gyro-compass ‘correction’ setting was wrongly input and instead of six degrees, sixty degrees (or something of that order) were subtracted from the course set. The pilots assumed that the stand-by compass was faulty and then tried to ‘fit’ any other discrepancies into what the gyro-compass was telling them.

It reminds me of the infamous TBM Avenger ‘Flight 19’ incident and I wonder if a similar sort of mind-set wasn’t partly responsible for the scale of confusion aboard the Lady Be Good.

Wasn’t it a similar navigational error that forced a BOAC Hermes, G-ALDN, to perform a more successful forced landing on the edge of the Sahara desert somewhere? Apparently a seasoned passenger was the first to realise they were flying on the wrong heading when he realised the shadow cast by his pepper pot was in the wrong place.

The ‘Lady Be Good’ is one of those cases in history that I wish I could reach out through time and space to the crew and tell them what was happening.

I can’t remember the exact details but the crew of the ‘Lady Be Good’ certainly contacted a ground station for a navigational bearing during their return flight. However the bearing that they ended up using was a reciprocal of the actual bearing they needed, and based on that, they flew on, further and further into the desert that eventually claimed their lives.

Poignantly the low-budget film Sole Survivor contains diary entries in the script that are near identical to the actual diary entries of the real doomed crew of the ‘Lady Be Good’.

Certainly the documentary lays the blame fairly and squarely on the navigator; probably a little harsh, as the pilots were not incapable of navigation themselves, and in truth not that uncommon, the difference being that the plane lay there so long undiscovered, and seemingly intact.

Thanks guys so far, all very interesting and pertinent.

DVD is ordered XM-652, ( Thanks for that, look fwd. to seeing it again after all these years )

That’s ok VW093 😀

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