Continuing with my series of posts on the story of the lady be good.
Toner's Diary:
SUNDAY, April 11, 1943
Still waiting for help, still praying, eyes bad, lost all our wgt. aching all over, could make it if we had water; just enough left to put our tongue to, have hope for help very soon, no rest, still same place.
Ripslinger's Diary:
SUNDAY, April 11, 1943
Palm Sun. Still struggling to get out of dunes and find water.
Toner's entry implies that each of the group of five were still alive at this time. The first mention of prayers was written four days earlier by Toner and three days earlier by Ripslinger. I wonder where Toner's hope for help was coming from and can only think that it came from his faith. Toner's handwriting remained strong, despite their ordeal.
The five; Hatton, Toner, Hays, LaMotte, and Adams must have been wondering what progress Rispslinger, Shelley and Moore were making. Ripslinger, Shelley and Moore were probably also wondering about their five comrades as well as their own task of finding help. That Ripslinger mistook this day for Palm Sunday, still a week away, is taken as a sign of his confusion brought on by now proceeding on their seventh day without water or meaningful food.
The photo below is of sunrise at one of our camps on the eastern edge of the Calanscio Sand Sea. It's about maybe 35 miles South South West of where Hatton et.al. were found.
The image below was taken in the dunes about 35 ~ 40 miles South of where the remains of Shelley and Ripslinger were found. Depending on how well the eyes of the three were working, each time they crested a dune, this is the sight that would have greeted them – yet more dunes to cross. I can only marvel at their persistence. The vehicle in this photo is one of our near-surface drilling rigs – rated for a depth of up to 1,000 feet. It sits here idle, having run out of water.
Below is another of our drilling rigs in the dunes of the Calanscio Sand Sea and another indication of the land that Ripslinger, Shelley, and Moore were facing. Sand dunes as far as the eye can see. The drilling rig, a Mayhew 1000 is mounted on the back of a M.O.L. 6×6 truck. The two water tankers are M.A.N. 4x4s. Each one of these carried up to 1,500 gallons of water. We got our drilling water from a well on the concession – probably not more than 15 miles to the South East from where Hatton and the crew were found. I've no record of how far below the surface the water table was.
The photos below form a sequence as I circled around the wreck of the lady be good.
From a photo in Walker's book, the port side tailplane had been severed sometime before 1968. I suspect that the vertical piece of aluminum sticking out of the sand at the rear of the aircraft in the photo below is actually the horizontal section of the tail wing and that the vertical section was actually lying on the ground, covered in sand. Walker mentions that the RAF DRG team pulled the scattered pieces back into relative position but the report quoted in Martinez' book doesn't say this but instead reports that the team found the pieces in the correct relative position but is appeared that several pieces had been dragged away and then dragged back into place. An aerial photo that Walker attributes to the RAF taken in 1968 shows the wreck only marginally more complete than we found it some 22 ~ 23 years later.
In the image below you can see how the starboard tailplane has started tearing away at the wing root. If the tail section was dragged away and then dragged back that could account for this damage. I just wonder what these people thought they were doing at the time.
The control surfaces of the tail plane were covered in fabric. Although most of it was still in place when Sheridan, Martin, and Bowerman first visited the wreck in 1959, 40-years later it had all long since disappeared.
While generally it was the slip faces of dunes that were soft, sometimes you'd come across a flat section that was soft also. Walking across dry, soft, sand takes a lot of effort and makes the onward progress of Shelley and Ripslinger all the more impressive.
In the photo below, one of our surveyors has ground to a halt in a patch of soft sand. These were hard to spot at the best of times and virtually impossible when the sun was high in the sky. Usually the only indication was the tracks of a vehicle that had gone before. In this particular photo, the guy in white was our survey supervisor who had flown out from the UK for a visit. In sand dunes we'd typically reduce the air pressure in our tires to expand the surface area in contact and so lessen the pressure of the vehicle in the hope of staying afloat on the surface of the sand. The surveyors would also often carry sand ladders like the one you can just see in front of the rear tire here. Made of angle iron, the hope was you could get enough purchase to propel you out of the soft sand. If it didn't then it was a case of wash, rinse, repeat until you reached firm sand once more.
Below is another image of the Calanscio Sand Sea. Scattered throughout the dunes were occasional valleys that had sparse vegetation. I don't know if Shelley or Ripslinger encountered any of these valleys but if they did it may have given them hope of finding water.
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:
