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

various educational sources ^

[U S Army EOD]

There was a flying boxcar during WWII that predated the C119. I am not sure what the number on it was.

[SAMWolf]

The C82 Flying Packet?

[U S Army EOD]

And now for my "And there I was, this ain't no bull feces", navigation story that I am ashamed to tell on myself.

In September of 1977 I was forced out of the Army during one of the reduction in forces after Vietnam. I was in Germany and took an European out since my wife and I had decided to buy a 36' sailboat in England and sail it back to the States. The original plan was to do it in two months but sometimes things just don't work out like you plan for them to.

The weather in the Bay of Biscay normally closes in for the winter around November at least most of the time according to sailing directions. We picked up the boat in Gosport, England and set off for Lisbon as our first stop in early October. I had on board my wife, two male friends, a dutch girl who was hitchhiking to Central America and my two children, ages 18 months and 6 months. Going down the Channel one guy hurt his back working with the water driven generator, so we put in a Falmouth for a doctor. We tied up next to a bunch of other boats and proceded to listen to weather reports that would give us a hole to go through headed south. All the boats headed from where we were going all had horror stories about the weather. Every third night it seem was a Force 9 storm. We decided that we could just heave to one night and ride one of those out because we were running out of time and had to leave.

So off went went around 29 October 1977. Just before we left, we had a going to sea meal at a nice resturant. My wife and I ordered steak and it was commented that they very rarely cooked that cut of meat. Mine didn't taste exactly right and when I mentioned that to my wife, she said that hers didn't either. The next day she started showing symptons of food poisoning and I the next day. We of course was listening to the BBC for weather reports. Everynight we would hear about the force 6 to force 8's in the different sea areas and after they told us how bad the weather was going to be, they would always sign off by saying, "And have a good night". RIGHT.

And then we picked up we had a FORCE TWELVE bearing down on us. For those of you that don't know what that is, there were 10 million books written on the Force 10 storm during the Fastnet races that lasted 6 hours. Anyhow we got set to ride this thing out and I have told this story during our threads on the hurricanes. Anyway, my mast was about 50 feet off the water line at the tip of the radio antenna and we had waves cresting and breaking about 3/4 the height of the mast with some higher. The boat did three 100 degree rolls that night that put the mast underwater and at times had waves break over her where you could look up and see water shooting through the hatches for up to 30 seconds which meant THE ENTIRE BOAT WAS UNDERWATER. My windspeed indicator was pegged at 60knots for 8 hours and when things really got bad, the 30 + foot waves were blown flat when the winds probably went well in excess of 100mph. The entire blow lasted for approximately 18 hours when the winds dropped to under 30knots. We learned later that a large freighter had sunk about 12 miles from us plus the British and Spanish rescue service were out looking for us. We were located approximately 250 miles north of Cape Finnestere when all this was going on.

And now back to the food poisioning. I basically passed out right after the storm and would go in and out for about three days. I was the only one on board that knew how to navigate!!!! We had gotten our position from a German ship we saw right after the storm but the guy who wrote it down lost it. I found where he had stuffed it about 5 years later when I was doing some maintenace on the boat. Anyway the same guy decided to attempt to take over the navigation. The compass declination from true north in that area is 18.5 degrees. Instead of adding it, he subtracted it which put us off course 37 degrees. As I would go in and out I would hear them discuss the problem such as I don't see land lets turn right a little bit and so on. Nobody was writing any of this down. Also I was basically the only one on board who could fix most of the things that were broken. When somebody noticed I was awake they would grab the safety line on the harness I was wearing and drag me over to work on whatever it was until I passed out again. (We had lost all electrical power so we had no radio, by the way).

When I finally came to for good, I got the water driven generator fixed which gave us enough power to start the engine and give us a radio. By this time we had sighted mountains to the south of us and started following the coast line. I tried to figure out where we were but nothing made sense. I did not know at that time we had been running for over 2 days up to 40 degrees off course at 7 or more knots.

We sighted what looked like an entrance to a port but could not identify it on the charts. Having seen John Wayne get his submarine trough the torpedo nets in a movie by following a ship, I decided to wait until I saw one going in to the port and follow it. This worked for me since John Wayne is never wrong.

After getting into the port and having the local police come down to check us out since we found out we were on the missing ships list, we asked the name of the port we were in. After they told us, I gave them some charts and asked them to show us where that particular port was located on the chart since we couldn't find it ourselves. We were only about THREE HUNDRED OR SO MILES FROM WHERE WE THOUGHT WE WERE.

After this I taught everyone how to navigate. It got better and we were able to get our longitude down to 1/2 mile and our latitude down to 200 yards using noon shots with a sextant. We hit Sumberro Light dead on the forestay within 30 seconds of predicted time on our crossing of 3500 miles between the Cararies and the BVI. Plus were able to find a bouy by the use of the sextant going into the Wilmington River, south of Savannah, GA at the end of the trip.

The only other time I had navigation problems after that was in the Gulf of Mexico when we had run for three days with out sights due to clouds. We asked a navy ship for our position and his reply was since he knew we were a little lost, "Where do you think you are at". My reply back was quick and to the point, "Right next to you, you wise ass".

[U S Army EOD]

Are you sure that isn't the Alaskan Singing Bears? You know the furry party animals we have heard so much about.

[SAMWolf]

WoW! What a story! Crossing the Atlantic in a sailboat is somethiing I would never even consider doing. What a story to tell the grandkids. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Doesn't sound like it was nay fault of yours that you got so off course.

[snippy_about_it]

My goodness, thanks for sharing. Lot's of oh no's were spoken while reading it. LOL.

How horrible to have the added dilema of food poisoning along with the storm and being lost! Your response to the Navy ship was priceless. LOL. Your wife must have been horrified with your young children on board.

Yikes is about all I have left to say.

[U S Army EOD]

At least two thousand or more small boats make the crossings back and forth each year. One out of every three seem to have children on board. Ages reign from born at the dock right before they left, to sixteen and above.

Most of the kids are incrediable. They usually take correspondence courses for their education plus they get an education on the trip. It is nothing unusual to see a 10 year old tear down and rebuild an engine or a 12 year old taking shots with a sextant plus standing their own watches. You never hear of any of these kids being hurt or going missing overboard. Also, very rare is the lost of one of the small boats, since their chances of survival in a storm is probably higher than a large ship. We were in several other blows after the one I mentioned but not as bad, we went through all of these with hardly any major damage. But we would go into ports and see large ships with their bridges stove in, life boats and containers ripped off the decks, etc.

I really wish I could someday do it again but I don't have the boat anymore.

[PhilDragoo]

Aviation wrecks qualify under Criterion D if they can provide important information about aircraft design, or construction. Shown here are the well preserved remains of a B-24D Liberator which crashed in 1942 in Alaska. As the oldest known surviving D model, the remains of the aircraft have the potential to yield information on construction features of early B-24Ds that differ from later models of the bomber. (Ted Spencer, Alaska Historical Aircraft Society, 1978)

The B-24D on an Aleutian island in Alaska is an example of an aviation property that qualified for the National Register under Criterion D for its information potential. All the pieces are "in the area," according to the nomination form. The aircraft is the oldest known surviving D model. It participated in the Aleutian Campaign of the World War II, and it is the only B-24D in Alaska. A combat veteran, the plane crash-landed in bad weather upon return from a weather observation mission. The historical context of the plane includes the war and military aircraft in general, and more particularly the history of Alaska as a United States territory and the history of Alaskan aviation. The geographical context or setting is the area in which the plane saw combat and where it crashed. The information potential includes construction features of the early B-24Ds that differ from later planes due to modifications introduced after this plane, the nineteenth 24D, was produced. The crashed plane also illustrates skillful emergency landing.

From zenoswarbirdvideos.com

From zenoswarbirdvideos.com

26. Radio Compass

#42-40387, "Beautiful Betsy" - the World War II American Liberator bomber photographed in Adelaide in 1945

USAAF B-24D-53-CO Liberator, #42-40387, "Beautiful Betsy", of the 528th Bomb Squadron of the 380th Bomb Group went missing on 26 February 1945 with the loss of 8 lives (6 American and 2 British service personnel). The Liberator was on a Fat Cat mission from Fenton to Eagle Farm airfield.

The wreckage of "Beautiful Betsy" was not discovered until 49 years later on 2 August 1994, when park ranger, Mark Roe, was checking the results of a controlled burn-off in the Kroombit Tops National Park, about 80kms from Gladstone. Standing on an escarpment, he saw something glinting in the sunlight about 800 metres north of his location. He found the wreckage of "Beautiful Betsy" which had crashed on the side of an unnamed hillside.

Remains of "Beautiful Betsy" in late 1999

Those killed were:-

1st Lieutenant William Emmett McDaniel - pilot
2nd Lieutenant Eugene A. Kilcheski,
2nd Lieutenant Hilary E. Routt
Lieutenant Raymond L. Owen
Technical Sergeant Raymond L. Tucker
Technical Sergeant Harold J. Lemons.

Flight Lieutenant Thomas John Donald Cook - British Spitfire pilot
Flying Officer Roy Albert Arthur Cannon British Spitfire pilot

The following items were found in the wreckage:-

Dental Prosthesis (bridge)
153 Bone fragments
Personal effects/material evidence
9 Dog tags
2 Bracelets
38 Coins
4 Gold rings
1 Aviator's ring
Flare gun with flare
Aviator badge
Bomber Badge
Whistle
2 Dress Uniform belt buckles
9 Expended .45 cal rounds
2 British buttons
12 American buttons
Razor
Cigarette lighter
3 Eyeglass frames
Pocket watch
1938 Class ring

~~~

At least one episode of Rod Serling's "The Twilight Zone," perhaps the first regular TV show focusing on the paranormal, was filmed at Edwards.

"King Nine Will Not Return" featured Bob Cummings as a bomber pilot who crashes in the desert and is haunted by the images of his dead crew. The episode originally aired Sept. 30, 1960.

~~~

On The Bob Cummings Show the photographer-playboy flew a Beech 18. Disappeared over Jarvis and Howland with Schultzie (Ann B. Davis) navigating.

[SAMWolf]

Good Morning PhilDragoo.

Thanks for the additional info on "Beautiful Betsy". I;ve heard of Bomber crash sites in remote areas in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and out here in Oregon. For the most part the wrecks are still there because the areas are so remote.

[Aeronaut]

Whew! I didn't have to read very far into that to stop being sleepy! Thanks for the ping. I got my own "stupid" stories, but they sure don't top that one!

[snopercod]

Now THAT's a hair-raising story. Thanks for relating it.

[snopercod]

The kids will never forget a crossing like that. It will shape their whole lives.

BTW, you mis-spelled "balls" in the last paragraph <grin>

[colorado tanker]

Wow, what a story, EOD. I'm most definitely a landlubber, but I've read all the Aubrey/Maturin novels, many of which are set in the Bay of Biscay. The weather there in the winter sounds awful, or as Jack Aubrey would say, "dirty."

[U S Army EOD]

One night while listening to the BBC ship weather reports there were FIVE different low pressure system in those sea areas at one time. Yep, its a rough place.