Case Closed
Mysteries solved, secrets revealed, and questions finally answered.
- Air & Space magazine, September 2010
Aircraft parts were strewn by the Consolidated B-24D "Lady Be Good" as it skidded to a halt amid the otherwise emptiness of the desert.
U.S. Air Force photo
The Lady That Didn’t Come Home
Had it not been for some sharp-eyed British oil exploration engineers in Libya in May 1958, a B-24D Liberator named Lady Be Good might have joined the ranks of other military aircraft that went permanently MIA during World War II. Instead, the aerial survey team from D’Arcy Oil Company (later British Petroleum) inadvertently found the Lady after a 15-year disappearance, making it one of the most famous aircraft to ever lose its way home in that war.
In the early hours of April 5, 1943, the airplane was returning from a night bombing run over Italy when it overshot its base at Soluch, on the Libyan coast, and ran out of fuel. The crew parachuted into impossible odds: Eight men (a ninth was killed when his parachute failed to open) and half a canteen of water in the Libyan desert, where temperatures reached 130 degrees Fahrenheit. But the wreckage, first examined in 1959, showed the men could have survived had they not made a fatal mistake.
When ground teams first inspected the Lady, they discovered its radio still worked, as did one of its .50 caliber machine guns. The airplane lay just 16 miles south of where the crew had landed. Had they trekked south, instead of northwest, they would have found life-saving water, food, and communications equipment aboard the Lady. (They had no way of knowing their base was actually 440 miles away; the last man made it an astounding 111 miles before collapsing.)
The discovery of the bomber and crew triggered worldwide media coverage. At least two books were written, along with numerous newspaper and magazine articles, and a 1960 episode of “The Twilight Zone” (“King Nine Will Not Return”) was loosely based on the incident. Over the years, the B-24 was stripped of most of its parts and the crew’s belongings; some items went to various U.S. Air Force and Army museums. What remained of the airplane, the Libyan government removed from the desert in 1994 and stored at the El Adem military airfield in Tobruk.
Why did the Lady get lost? The official investigation report blames the rookie navigator, saying he misinterpreted a directional reading sent from Benina airfield in Libya. But Mario Martinez, author of Lady’s Men: The Story of World War II’s Mystery Bomber and Her Crew, points to a different reason: failure by another radio operator at nearby Benghazi to respond to the bomber pilot’s plea for a position report, believing the airplane to be German. “Failure to acknowledge this call was probably the reason the Lady Be Good flew on and disappeared,” Martinez writes on his Web site, ladybegood.com.
Bombers from World War II still turn up today, mostly in the Pacific. “There are hundreds of crash sites in places like Papua New Guinea, with full skeletal aircraft remains plus crew remains, because culturally they [Papuans] do not touch sites like that, [mindful of] the aura of death,” says Larry Greer, a spokesman for the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office in Arlington, Virginia.
Paul Hoversten
Comments (5)
Part I:
Please don't let anyone deter you from a proper analysis of the Roswell case. I have extensively researched
the incident and interviewed many of the witnesses. I even have a piece of a Mogul Balloon from 1948. However, I do not agree with all the AF methods nor their interstitial arguments, but their net conclusions are correct.
If you should need any assistance navigating the case, please don't hesitate to contact me.
The first book written on the subject (The Roswell Incident), which captures much of the personal witness descriptions of materials, is the best and least afflicted accounting on the prosaic materials discovered that match fairly closely with those of the Mogul Balloon Project. The coincidence in both time and space of these concomitant incidences reduces the proponent's claims to rather mundane nit-picking of less viable aspects of the case: Those that are too difficult to nail down precisely given the large gaps of missing history, but are then blown out of proportion and hailed as equivalent of some extraordinary counter proof.
Note that the Primary witness, Marcel, actually stated that the material in one of the images of the debris material photographed in Ramey's office (that he was seen holding) was not that of a Rawin Radar reflector target, yet inspection easily confirms his mistake (insight gained by hindsight). Marcel was most likely startled at the number of Radar targets discovered at the debris field which did not reconcile with that of a single balloon carrying an single target, which was the cover story made for all of those not in the need to know. The number of Rawin targets aboard the Mogul balloon lifts were much greater and he was not informed of the specific top secret nature of this particular project nor it's size and why sensitivity to additional leaks, of this escaping story (one already on the world scene), be squashed as soon as possible.
. . . . Continues in Part II that follows
Posted by Victor Golubic on August 26,2010 | 01:43 AM
Part II
Also, note that large scale Aluminum foil was not sold until later that same year - familiarity with heavier and stiffer Tin foil was more common, making the discovery of Aluminum foil somewhat foreign in characteristics. Therefore, it is not necessary to attack Marcel, but rather to credit him with some subtle and astute observations given the historical context and knowledge available to him at the time.
The alien body issue can most likely be attributed to Mac Brazel's son Bill having tried to probe his father for more information after the incident - his father was most likely sworn to secrecy after his find, which had gained world prominence. Some years later, Bill, not being satisfied with his father's secrecy (his father couldn't further divulge information concerning a Top Secret Project even though he didn't need to know any of its particulars), had later heard from a working friend about a crash of a flying saucer containing alien bodies. This most likely originated from the fraudulent Frank Scully story floating around in the same time frame (had been published in a book about three years later). This story had gained much tantalizing exposure and was also recounted as having occurred in the New Mexico desert. Accordingly, Bill had probably made an erroneous connection of this story with that of his father's in an attempt to fill in some of the missing gaps in the wake of is father's silence on the matter - as anyone with a healthy curiosity and intelligent nature would. He then passed his suppositions along to others, thus growing the story.
The prospects that the Roswell Incident occurred as an extraterrestrial event is therefore quite remote since it lacks the necessary crust needed to forward the proof we've all have been told exists.
Posted by Victor Golubic on August 26,2010 | 01:45 AM
In two cases, Turner stated the Congressional General Accounting Office drew mundane or negative conclusions about Roswell, when instead these were unsupported statements by Air Force OSI agents (Pentagon counter-intelligence branch) doing a separate investigation. E.g., there is no official documentation to support the claim that a Project Mogul balloon caused Roswell, since the alleged balloon launch never happened. (Not in Mogul records and mentioned only as “canceled” in a private diary.)
The GAO actually drew no official conclusions about what happened, but privately told columnist Jack Anderson they felt the AF was deceiving them and engaged in a cover-up of something big. So did Congressman Steven Schiff who ordered the GAO investigation. This is all documented in the public record.
There were also lesser mistakes that space limitations prevented me from getting into, including the claim that Project Mogul balloons went to 40,000 feet to listen for distant Soviet nuclear tests. No, they were designed to float in the lower stratosphere between 50,000-60,000 feet, where the theoretical sound channel was believed to be. These are not the sort of factual mistakes that an air and space magazine of Smithsonian caliber should be making. And if made, they should be corrected.
EDITORS' REPLY (edited 8/31): (1) The GAO study our article referred to requested various organizations to review their records relating to the Roswell Incident. In response, the Air Force produced "Report of Air Force Research Regarding the 'Roswell Incident,' " which identified the Roswell debris as remnants of a Project Mogul balloon ("...the most likely source of the wreckage recovered from the Brazel Ranch was from one of the Project MOGUL balloon trains" [Conclusion, p. 30]). The GAO audit includes that identification, and does not include evidence that contradicts the Project Mogul identification. Nor does it include any other identification for the source of the debris. (2) The source for the 40,000-feet figure is a description of the balloons as being capable of operating at a "constant altitude of 40-60,000 feet." The quoted phrase comes from "Memorandum B," May 14, 1946, p. 2, Microfilm roll A1760, Frames 1970-71, Air Force Historical Research Center.
Posted by David Rudiak on August 28,2010 | 03:58 PM
I remember reading about The Lady years ago. If I remember correctly, the story of the how the crew survived in the desert,and managed to travel as far as they did, is all about their following their survival training. A true story of man's fight to survive. Unfortunately it did not have a happy ending other than the fact that their families finally knew what happened to them.
Posted by Garey Docksteader on September 15,2010 | 08:40 PM
The Lady was taken to Tobruk Libya. Since there was revolution there and if I remember correctly Tobruk did have fighting in it. What has since become of the Lady's remains?
Posted by Daniel on March 2,2012 | 03:07 PM