Continuing with my series of posts on the story of the lady be good.
Toner's Diary:
THURSDAY, April 8, 1943
Hit Sand Dunes, very miserable, good wind but continuous blowing of sand, everybody now very weak. thought Sam & Moore were all gone. LaMotte eyes are gone, everyone else's eyes are bad. Still going N.W.
Ripslinger's Diary:
THURSDAY, April 8, 1943
Tired all out. We can hardly walk. Our 4th day out. A few drops of water each. Can't hold out much longer without aid. Pray.
I guess these entries were made at a stop later in the afternoon as the sun was setting. They seem to me to have an ‘end-of-the-day' feel to them. It's been pointed out elsewhere that both Toner and Risplinger only used the space allotted in their diaries for the day in question. Was this just a habit or some, perhaps unconscious, expression of hope that they'd survive to fill out the remaining days that year. Clearly Risplinger knew that they were in serious trouble.
The dunes in the area where they were at this point are ‘linear dunes' running roughly North-South. From the maps, they would appear to have been in a broad valley. The photo below is from somewhere relatively close – within 25 miles – and shows a gravel valley floor between two lines of dunes – in essence, showing how the dunes sit on top of the gravel plain.
Below are a couple of photos, again within 25 miles of the fateful final location for five of the crew, that shows my seismic crew working in the dunes in this part of libya. At least these workers had clearly marked routes to follow and distance markers. I find it hard to imaging what it must have been like to have been walking across this expanse, without food and water, and just seeing the same terrain continuing as far as you could see. Oh, and all the trucks in these photos had food and water on board, just in case. I did have two of my crew spend a night in the dunes when they got lost but we worked out where they were and got them home the next day. Thankfully they follow their training and stayed with their vehicle.
Toner also mentions the wind. The dunes are not a good place to be when the wind kicks up as you can see from the photos below. The sand just gets in everywhere and without goggles it would have been really painful on their eyes. The dehydration factor would also have made it very difficult, if not impossible by now, for them to have teared up to clear the grains of sand. The blowing sand also reduces visibility which makes the ability of the eight crew to stay on their chosen heading all the more remarkable in my opinion. Some have questioned the capabilities of navigator Dp Hays because of the absence of entries in the navigation log found in the plane but someone was keeping them on track.
The wind-borne sand that bedeviled the crew on their doomed trek also worked on the wreck of the lady be good over the years to scour away the paint on the fuselage. I've had some people comment over the years on my color balance in these photos as the lady be good was known to have been painted Desert Pink. In the photo below you can still see the Desert Pink on the top of the fuselage but much of it has been sanded away over the years. In some places the underlying olive drab remains while in others all the paint has gone and the bare aluminum is exposed. What really confuses me though is the order of paint layers of the star. My current guess is that this was factory original and the Desert Pink was painted around it. I'm thinking a blue disc was painted first and then the white star on top of that. With only one layer of blue paint that would explain (to me) why all the blue disc has been blasted off and why some is peeking through where the white paint of the star has been abraded off. Perhaps also the different pigments affected the adhesion qualities of the different paint layers.
Inside the fuselage I imagine it looked very close to the way it did on the day of the flight. The stenciling on the fuselage was near pristine.
Channeling their inner Julius Caesar's (I came, I saw, I left some graffiti), some of my colleagues read names and comments left by other visitors over the years.
Here's the holder for a portable oxygen bottle – possibly for the use of tail gunner, Sgt. Samuel E. Adams.
And below, brackets for securing ammunition boxes. Note that the brackets are made of steel but the minimal corrosion indicates the general lack of humidity. I recall from one of my survival/health training seminars that the lack of humidity makes the sweat evaporate almost instantly. Consequently it's difficult to know how much fluid you are losing through sweat. Thus the need to monitor the time between needing to pee and noting the color of the urine as a guide to one's level of hydration.
In the photo below, three of my colleagues are having a conversation over the remains of the No.1 engine while another explores the rear section of the fuselage. I'm North-East of the wreck looking South-West. The accumulation of sand and the greater stripping of the paint on this side of the wreck shows that the prevailing wind at the wreck site is from the North East.
More images to come in my next post.
I have a photo book containing several of my images of the Lady Be Good available through Blurb, below:
