Death in the Desert: Lady Be Good...

By

Scott 

Schwartz

It was 11:30 PM, and pilot Lt. William Hatton had descended below five thousand feet, so that he could see the coast.  

Activating his Automatic Direction Finder ("ADF"), Hatton was hoping to track the radio signal from Benina.  Another B-24, which had also turned back from Naples, was just landing at Soluch.  This aircraft - Liberator number 90 was the last B-24 to return to base, that night.

Apparently, Hatton was having trouble with his ADF, because the following transmission was heard by the 376th Bomb Group's commanding officer, Col. Keith Compton and his crew in the radio tower at Benghazi:  

"Faggart sixty four (Lady Be Good's radio call sign) to Lifebuoy (Soluch airfield's call sign); Faggart Sixty Four to Lifebuoy...my ADF has malfunctioned.  Please give me a QDM (navigation fix)."  

Col. Compton and his crew is also supposed to have heard the sounds of an aircraft's engines at around the same time that the radio broadcast was heard.  It was just after midnight on April 5, 1943.

More to come.

                                           Lady Be Good.  Photograph courtesy of the United States Air Force.