All this Liberator stuff brings to mind the ‘Lady be Good,’ a B24 that rested in a Libyan desert for 15 years before being discovered after crash landing in 1943. There’s a nice exhibit on her and her crew in the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio (a must see place for anyone with even the slightest interest in military aviation).
From WIKI we have this: “Lady Be Good is a USAAF B-24D Liberator that disappeared without a trace on its first combat mission during World War II. The plane, which was from 376th Bomb Group, was believed to have been lost—with its nine-man crew—in the Mediterranean Sea while returning to its base in Libya following a bombing raid on Naples on April 4, 1943. However, the wreck was accidentally discovered 710 km (440 mi) inland in the Libyan Desert by an oil exploration team from British Petroleum on November 9, 1958.
“Investigations concluded that the first-time (all new) crew failed to realize they had overflown their air base in a sandstorm. After continuing to fly south into the desert for many hours, the crew bailed out when the plane's fuel ran out. The survivors then died in the desert trying to walk to safety. All but one of the crew's remains were recovered between February and August 1960. The wreckage of the Lady Be Good was taken to a Libyan Air Force base after being removed from the crash site in August 1994.”
All this Liberator stuff brings to mind the ‘Lady be Good,’ a B24 that rested in a Libyan desert for 15 years before being discovered after crash landing in 1943. There’s a nice exhibit on her and her crew in the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio (a must see place for anyone with even the slightest interest in military aviation).
ReplyDeleteFrom WIKI we have this: “Lady Be Good is a USAAF B-24D Liberator that disappeared without a trace on its first combat mission during World War II. The plane, which was from 376th Bomb Group, was believed to have been lost—with its nine-man crew—in the Mediterranean Sea while returning to its base in Libya following a bombing raid on Naples on April 4, 1943. However, the wreck was accidentally discovered 710 km (440 mi) inland in the Libyan Desert by an oil exploration team from British Petroleum on November 9, 1958.
“Investigations concluded that the first-time (all new) crew failed to realize they had overflown their air base in a sandstorm. After continuing to fly south into the desert for many hours, the crew bailed out when the plane's fuel ran out. The survivors then died in the desert trying to walk to safety. All but one of the crew's remains were recovered between February and August 1960. The wreckage of the Lady Be Good was taken to a Libyan Air Force base after being removed from the crash site in August 1994.”
resting in a Libyan desert reminds me of https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2016/02/ww2-built-vehicle-was-designed-to-take.html
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