It was along way from San Diego.

She would always seem to be wanting, the B-24 Liberator (the British gave her the name), especially when it came to comparisons to her more famous, and graceful cousin, the B-17 Flying Fortress. The slab-sided, high winged aircraft was created, perhaps out of a moment of pique, or because Reuben Fleet saw an opportunity.

Fleet, President of Consolidated Aircraft Corporation, visited the Boeing aircraft plant in Seattle at the invitation of the United States Army Air Corps a few years before the war. He was invited, but declined to commit his company to building B-17s under license. Consolidated proposed developing a more modern aircraft, something with greater range and speed, and able to climb higher than the Fortress. The army agreed and in 1939 awarded a contract to Consolidated for what would become the B-24. It started life much more modestly as the Model 32.

The Model 32 was, well, not pleasant looking. She sported twin rudders, and high, thin wings, and flat sides that gave her the look of a boxcar. She was faster than the B-17, with four, twin row, 14-cylinder Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp Radials. Her tricycle landing gear was necessary. She had a high landing speed, and they helped distribute the 70,000-pound maximum takeoff weight, which included an 8,000-pound bomb load.

The bomb bay doors were as unique as the aircraft's profile. Rather than opening out (like the B-17s or virtually every other bomber), they rolled up, like the door of an old roll-top desk. The advantage was in reduced drag, the roll-up doors did not bleed away the aircraft's airspeed.

The B-24s entrance into the war was inauspicious. She was alternately a transport, a Very Long Range patrol aircraft for Coastal Command with a few, by 1942, being deployed as bombers in the Middle East for the Royal Air Force.

The United States Army Air Forces used their first B-24's as transports (perhaps it couldn't be helped -- they looked so industrial), but finally got around to employing them as bombers. In Mid-June 1942 a baker's dozen of the aircraft began the B-24s deadly relationship with the refineries around Ploiesti, Romania.

By 1943 units of the Allied air forces began receiving the significantly improved B-24Ds (almost 2,700 of this model were manufactured) making this greatly enhanced aircraft a numerous and formidable weapon. Her armament was increased to 10, fifty-caliber machine guns (two were in the planes "cheeks" -- Luftwaffe pilot found charging U.S. bombers head-on gave them an edge), her take-off weight was reduced to nearly 60,000 pounds, her engines were improved, and a Sperry ball turret was installed in the belly. Unlike the B-17, the B-24s belly turret could be hoisted into the interior of the aircraft.

Despite the modifications, there were still some aspects of the B-24 that her crews found troubling. One was her tendency to burst into flames when struck by enemy fire, at least according to some crews, and entering and exiting the aircraft (especially along the narrow catwalk through the bomb bays), could be challenging. By September of 1945 however, over 18,000 B-24s were built.

Consolidated Aircraft Production Plant #2 in San Diego, California, when it reached peak production, was manufacturing about one bomber each hour, or 162 a week. The cavernous buildings (there were three of them, identical in nature and purpose) never stopped vibrating to the sound of rivet guns, and hoist motors as the bombers were towed out the massive doors to nearby Lindberg Field. From there the aircraft would be dispersed to their destinations. Flown out over Coronado Island, and the North Island Naval Air Station, the bombers became just one more weapon to fight the Axis. In all, 2,381 B-24Ds began their lives under the harsh glare of the shop lights in Consolidated Aircraft Production Plant #2. One, Serial Number 41-24301, became known as the Lady Be Good.

B-24D Serial Number 41-24301 was delivered to Soluch, Libya (arriving on March 23, 1943), by way of Topeka, Kansas. Less than two weeks later, the bomber--now named Lady Be Good, set out for a bombing run against the harbor facilities of Naples, Italy. She carried nine men -- 1st Lt. William J. Hatton, the pilot; 2nd Lt. Robert F. Toner, co-pilot; 2nd Lt. Dp Hays, navigator; 2nd Lt. John S. Woravka, bombardier; T/Sgt. Harold J. Ripslinger, engineer; T/Sgt. Robert E. LaMotte, radio operator; S/Sgt. Guy E. Shelley, asst. engineer; S/Sgt. Vernon L. Moore, asst. radio operator, and S/Sgt. Samuel E. Adams, tail gunner. These nine men were not the Lady's regular crew. The crew (commanded by 2nd Lt. Samuel D. Rose) who had named Lady two months before, had been given a replacement ship when it was discovered that the newer aircraft had mechanical difficulties and could not make the scheduled bombing run on Palermo, Sicily. The disgruntled crew, provided with a "beat-up old spare ship," had to make do.

Fate brought Lady Be Good to Hatton's crew instead of returning her to Rose's. Hatton's crew was a spare crew as Rose's beat-up replacement aircraft was a spare bomber. No bomber, no mission, until Hatton was informed that a aircraft had just become available.  She was brand new and her name was Lady be Good.

She was ready in time for Hatton's mission to bomb the harbor facilities at Naples. Fortune was smiling on these nine men. It was their first bombing mission, they were to make the run in the company of 24 other bombers, and they were in the 514th Squadron's Section B -- the first flight. They were to fly to their target in daylight at an altitude of 25,000 feet, attack at dusk, and return. Total flying time -- nine hours, if things went as planned.

Mechanical failure of some sort forced Lady Be Good to turn back from her target while just thirty minutes away. It could have been sand. The howling Libyan ghibli winds swept up from the south, covering everything in a gritty coating; water, oil, aircraft, fuel, food, clothing -- fouling engines and defeating the best efforts of ground crews to get aircraft aloft. Sand had robbed Rose and his crew of flying a new aircraft to Palermo, and now sand likely forced Hatton and his crew to abort their mission.

She flew through the night, high above the clouds, over the thin waves of the Mediterranean Sea, headed home to Soluch. A little after midnight on April 5, 1943, a ground station reported a distress call, but nothing else was heard from the bomber. She over flew Benghazi, Benina (the station that had received the cryptic signal), and finally her base at Soluch, heading deep into the desert. Years later, 2nd Lt. Ralph O. Grace, Rose's co-pilot recalled hearing a lone bomber passing overhead. All other ships had been accounted for -- except the Lady Be Good.

There's a war on. The disappearance of a single Allied aircraft hardly impacts the advance of great air armadas that swept over enemy territory. Families grieved when they received notice that their loved ones were "missing in action and presumed dead," and comrades wrestled with the hollow realization that they might one day, be the subject of that morbid phrase. But defeating the enemy takes precedence over the mystery of one plane's final destination.

Sixteen years later, the search for oil changed that.