The broken carcass of the Lady Be Good was spotted from the air and her position noted, on November 1958, by a member of the D'Arcy Oil Company. The Sahara was littered with downed aircraft, and abandoned vehicles, mute reminders that men found even this arid wasteland fertile enough for war. In March 1959 a ground team made their way to the wreckage of the B-24, and examined the bomber. She had every appearance of a ghost ship, the crew's equipment still remained, log books were scattered about, and aside from her broken back and dislodged engine, looked as if she had just put down. One of the men, probably out of curiosity, swung the barrel of a machine gun out into the desert, and fired. The whole ship shook from the discharge of the heavy gun -- the Lady Be Good was alive again.

Monday, April 5. All but Woravka met this A. M. Waited awhile and started walking. Had ½ sandwhich & piece of candy & cap of water in last 36 hours.
-- Diary of Technical Sergeant. Harold J. Ripslinger, engineer, Lady Be Good, 1943

2nd Lt. John S. Woravka, bombardier, was mentioned as missing in both diaries and would not be found by his comrades. In fact the mystery within a mystery was not resolved until Woravka's body was found sixteen years after the plane went down. The airman's chute did not properly deploy when he abandoned the aircraft. He was saved a lingering death.

As the oil men made their way around the wreckage, and in and out of the fuselage, they found no sign of the crew or their parachutes. The inference was obvious -- Lady Be Good's crew had abandoned her.

The air force and the U.S. Army Quartermaster Mortuary System were notified, and for four months in 1959 they conducted a search for the remains of the bomber's crew. They found equipment and evidence that the men, or at least some of them, had started across the desert.

Lady Be Good's crew started walking across the desert on April 6, 1943. Ripslinger's entry carries a hint of optimism. The rest of the boys are doing fine, he wrote, but they had virtually no food or water, and they were in one of the most hostile environments on earth. The crew had received survival training, but nothing could have prepared them for the ordeal that had to endure.

After bailout, the light rayon cloth of your parachute should be retained above everything else except food and water. The cloth weighs very little, and it can serve many purposes. If you are in the tropics it can shelter you from the rays of the sun, either as headgear or as a lean-to shelter, and it can be used to catch precious rain, or to soak up dew which can be squeezed into the mouth from the cloth. The cloth can also be used to make larger-than-man panels along the ground to be sure that the search plane sees you when it goes overhead.

Some of the parachutes were torn into strips to make markers in case rescuers happened on the trail. There were no rescuers to follow the path of the men into the desert. There would be no rain, dew or search planes. There would be the unrelenting sun, and cold nights. Soon the food and water would be gone, and the men would begin to die.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

It wasn't until February 1960 that five of the crewmember's remains were found -- a remarkable 65 miles from their downed bomber. 1st. Lt. William J. Hatton, the Lady's pilot; 2nd  Robert F. Toner, co-pilot; 2nd. Lt. Dp Hays, navigator; Technical Sgt. Robert E. LaMotte, radio operator, and Staff Sgt. Samuel R. Adams, tail gunner. Sixty-five miles across the Sahara Desert with little water, nights near freezing, and days under a pitiless sun that turned the sand into a cauldron. And the wind, constantly blowing sand into a man's nose, ears, mouth, and eyes. In the end, the sun, and sand, and dehydration blinded some of the men. They had come that distance only to die. In May 1960 two more bodies were found nearly 27 miles from the group of five. Staff Sgt. Guy E. Shelley, and Technical Sgt. Harold J. Ripslinger, showing remarkable determination, struck out to find help, but were defeated by the Sahara. Woravka's body was found 12 miles from the bomber, four months after Ripslinger and Shelley's remains were located. One man is unaccounted for, Staff Sgt. Vernon L. Moore, assistant radio operator.

The crew bailed out, knowing that they were lost and their bomber was running low on fuel. Eight of the men were able to find one another, and set out for help, walking at night. They survived on a cap full of water, and little food. "Same routine," Toner noted, "everyone getting weak, can't get very far--"

And far behind them, as silent as the desert herself, the Lady Be Good, waiting patiently for her lost airmen to return.