US Army Air Force

First and last mission, view from above

Initially, the US military did not pay any attention towards the discovery, but later they sent a team of researchers to investigate and find the remains of the crew members. Research teams scoured the area surrounding the crash site. They followed a few trails; however, they were unsuccessful in finding any trace of the crew members’ remains. The mission was called off due to equipment failure and the harsh conditions in the desert; but, fortunately, the remains of one of the crew were found in the latter part of 1960. Almost 16 years after the disappearance of ‘Lady Be Good’, search teams had a breakthrough about the doomed plane. Connecting the dots between the crash site and one crew member’s remains, the team was able to piece together the circumstances that surrounded the mysterious disappearance of ‘Lady Be Good’. On 4th April 1943, ‘Lady Be Good’ took to the skies for the first time with its nine crew members on a bombing mission on Naples. The conditions were not favourable from the beginning, and a severe sandstorm engulfed the plane soon after it took off from Benina airstrip in Libya. Lieutenant Hatton decided to carry on with his mission despite the bad weather, which turned out to be a fatal mistake for everyone on board. Almost zero visibility and thick clouds caused the plane to drift further away from its intended target. The crew tried to make radio contact with the base, but due to some miscommunication their request for a location was not addressed.