The FReeper Foxhole Remembers the Recovery of the "Lady Be Good" crew - Oct. 10th, 2003

various educational sources ^

[snippy_about_it]

Lady Be Good Exhibit - Army Quartermaster Museum



In April and November 1960, the Army Quartermaster Museum at Fort Lee, Virginia received a number of U.S. Government issue items of uniform and equipment found on or in the vicinity of crew members by Quartermaster Graves Registration personnel during search efforts.

These items include bits of parachute, a flight jacket, shoes, belts, caps, flashlight, batteries, two watches, a canteen, a survival map, life vest and part of a survival kit containing eight squares of carmel. Many of these items are on display in the museum's Mortuary Affairs exhibit dedicated to the Lady Be Good.



In 1968 the museum loaned several of the items to the McDonnell Douglas Corporation for analysis of the desert's effect on these items. The flashlight and "Mae West' life vest showed evidence of erosive effect from blowing sand. The Army issue Elgin A-11 wrist watch still ran and was accurate to within 10 seconds per day. The survival map, which was British issue, was tested for fading and shrinkage.

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Today's Educational Sources and suggestions for further reading:

www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/history/
www.qmfound.com/
www.ladybegood.com/

[snippy_about_it]

[snippy_about_it]

.......FALL IN to the FReeper Foxhole!

.......Good Friday Morning Everyone!


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[Support Free Republic]

Let's keep the Dem's on the run!
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[E.G.C.]

A very pleasant good morning to everyone at the Freeper Foxhole.

[texas booster]

Great read, as usual.

I've been searching the IMDB for the movie about a WWII plane crash in the desert, where the guys wait for years until found. Great ghost story. Anyone remember the name of the flick? Seems like it was made in the 60's.

No mention is made on the LadyBeGood site about a movie. Thanks for your help.

[SpookBrat]

Good morning to you Snippy. I'll be back in a bit after I've had my coffee. :) Have a blessed day.

[snopercod]

Hi Snippy-- Fascinating story. I think the author is confusing a "DF steer" which does not involve any direction-finding equipment onboard the aircraft, with the DF equipment on the B-24 which uses the loop he mentioned.

Modern ADF (Automatic Direction Finding) equipment on an aircraft can determine a bearing to an AM radio station. It has a needle that points to the station, and you can just turn the aircraft so the needle is aligned with the nose of the aircraft and follow it to the station. You can also triangulate with two or more stations to determine your position.

I guess they didn't have Automatic DF equipment in those days, since you had to crank around that loop antenna until it presented it's open side to the station. IIRC, this old equipment would only tell you that the remote transmitter was on bearing so-and-so, or it's reciprocal. I don't think they had discovered quadrature, yet, where you could mix the signal from the loop antenna with another signal from an omnidirectional antenna and eliminate the spurious bearing. (I'm probably not getting this exactly right...)

A DF (Direction Finding) steer is where you key your mike in the aircraft and just say "Ahhhhhhhhhhh...." for about ten seconds. In this case, the remote station has the direction finding equipment and determines a bearing to your aircraft. They then tell you what heading to fly to get there (possibly taking winds aloft into account).

I was wondering, also, if the military in those days did not provide any kind of survival equipment for their crews. Anybody?

[The Mayor]

[snippy_about_it]

Good morning EGC.

[snippy_about_it]

Good morning texas booster.

My partner SAMWolf was just talking to me about a movie about this last night. I recall he said they used a B-25 in the movie instead of a B-24 and that the leader was looking for his men in the desert and couldn't rest until he found out what happened to them and then realized that he, himself, was dead.

He is on the west coast so won't be awake for awhile but I'll have him ping you when he signs on, he'll be able to tell you more.

Thanks for 'falling in' with the compliment too.

[snippy_about_it]

Morning Spooky, good to see you, how's it going?

[Darksheare]

Ouch.
And they survived longer than they should have.

[snippy_about_it]

Good morning snopercod. There are some additional theories at the website I've linked below. Lots of pages and had I included them the thread would have been too long. This site is listed for further reading on my list, but it does seem to be a lot of conspiracy stuff including the writer's theory on the last crewmember yet to be found, so I avoided using the information but it is good reading. Link

Here is an excerpt:

Blame it on the navigator?

From the outset, blame for the loss of the Lady Be Good has been aimed at Lt. Dp Hays.

It has been said that his Log was poorly filled out. This is only partly true—it was only incomplete after 8.52 p.m.

It has been said he was inexperienced. This is true.

It has been said that some of his instruments were unopened and never used. This is also true.

It has been said that the locations he noted in his ship flying up the Ionian Sea are wrong.

It is, however, most likely that the Lady Be Good was over the Ionian Sea. If Hays had been so at odds with events, why did the Lady Be Good fly over or very near Benghazi and Soluch around midnight?

This ill-considered criticism of Hays implies that he was incompetent, that he had no idea where his ship was and that he had no sense of direction. This certainly was not the case.

Hays and crew knew that they were off course to the East, that 360 degrees was towards the North, that 140 degrees was towards the South, and that the latter led back to Soluch.

Evidence of this is that at 8.52 p.m., Hays wrote in his log: "Depart. 140 degrees."

Hays, like any navigator on his first mission, may have had his faults, but he was not a fool.

(The log with Hays' position reports is on view at the Lady Be Good museum in Dayton, Ohio.)


snopercod, I also recall they thought that the men believed they were over water because the life vests were not on the plane. As far as survival equipment, food, water, etc. I hope someone here will be able to comment.

Thanks for the good dialogue, we love it when we can get a good conversation going about a topic we cover. :)

[snippy_about_it]

Good morning Mayor.

[snippy_about_it]

Mornin' Darksheare.

Yep, that was quite remarkable to have survived that long, expending energy to move about too. Amazing.

[Darksheare]

Yes.

[manna]

Present!

[snopercod]

Direction finding is very confusing, even for experienced pilots.

You have bearings to, and bearings from a station, which are reciprocals of each other. Neither is related to the direction the aircraft is pointed, but are related to the position of the aircraft over the earth.

But the direction finding equipment on the aircraft is oriented whichever way the aircraft is pointing. It only gives you the Relative Bearing between the nose of the aircraft and the remote station. So if you are lost and want to fly TO a station, you have to use the formula:

Relative Bearing + Magnetic Heading = Magnetic Bearing To Station

Their loop antenna would give the navigator the Relative Bearing (the angle between the nose of the aircraft and the station), and adding that to the Magnetic Heading (taken from the compass), would give the compass heading the pilot would have to follow to reach the station. Further complicating matters is the fact that these numbers add up to more than 360 degrees, you have to subtract 360 to find your BEARING TO. If you do the math incorrectly, you will be going the wrong way for sure.

And all this assumes there is no wind up there. If there is a crosswind (there almost always is), the pilot has to adjust his magnetic heading left or right to compensate for that. It can all be very confusing and requires a lot of SA (situational awareness) to keep it all straight in one's head.

I was wondering if the navigator ever looked at the stars to determine which way they were going. Maybe it was cloudy above as well as below...

[snippy_about_it]

Good morning manna.