Aircraft Down: Landings, Crash Landings and Rescues

by Alec Brew

  Goodlet and his crew had only a tin of rock-hard biscuits to sustain themselves; apart from the knowledge that their SOS had been acknowledged, and that they had not been totally abandoned. Realising that they could not be rescued from their present position, they made plans to drag their dinghy to the coast, from where they could paddle to the nearest settlement 100 miles away, if they were not picked up by a ship or flying boat.

  On the sixth morning the weather had cleared enough for them to make the attempt. They destroyed the bomb-sight and burned all the aircraft’s papers, as required in standing orders, though it is hard to see how any Germans would have come across them, lost in the wilderness of Greenland. They removed the life raft from its compartment behind the cockpit, and after inflating it, began dragging it across the snow.

  Without any snowshoes they made only slow progress, struggling through the deep snow, and after two hours had only gone half a mile. Then it started snowing again. They took the sensible course of retreating to the aircraft where they survived the night as they had the previous five.

  In the morning, the weather brought a welcome rise in temperature to about 54°F, and the snow turned to rain. They set off again for the coast, and that night was spent in soaking wet, freezing cold clothes, crouched under the dinghy for a little protection. The following day they continued their tortuous path, working their way around each crevasse in their way. They heard the engine of one of the searching aircraft and fired one of the flares from the dinghy.

  Luckily, it was seen by the aircraft crew, who parachuted a bag containing food, clothing, sleeping bags, snowshoes, rope, and a very welcome bottle of scotch. It also contained instructions to rope themselves together, in case they fell down a crevasse, and to head in as straight a line for the coast as they could as a US Coastguard cutter was heading through the ice towards them.

  After filling themselves with food and changing clothes, they spent a more comfortable night in the sleeping bags and then continued their arduous trek in the morning, made easier by the snowshoes. When they finally arrived at the coast they could see a ship about 10 miles out, and though they tried to light a fire to attract its attention they had nothing dry enough to burn. They spent that night helplessly watching the ship play its searchlights over the shore, without ever seeing them. In the morning a Catalina took off from near the ship and flew right over them without seeing them desperately waving their parkas.

  That evening they watched in horror as the ship pulled up its anchor and started to sail away. After a dry day the wind had dried out their parkas, and in desperation they set light to them and got a good blaze going. Almost immediately the ship began firing flares and a Morse lamp began flickering. It told them to move back from the edge of the ice and to head south to meet a rescue boat.

  They dragged themselves along the shoreline, working their way round obstacles until they came to a place where a boat could reach the shore. Six hours after they had been seen by the Coastguard cutter, Northland, they were finally picked up by one of its boats and taken on board, to its warm, welcome cabins. They had spent ten days in the icy Greenland wilderness, and against all the odds they had survived.

  CHAPTER 15

  Downed Lady

  Occasionally, aircraft vanish without trace and then the wreckage is discovered many years later, usually with enough clues to reveal the reasons for the disappearance. Few such events have been quite so dramatic as the disappearance of a Consolidated B-24D Liberator named Lady be Good, and its rediscovery sixteen years later.

  The name Lady be Good, from the George Gershwin song, was given to the B-24, serial 41-24301, at Morrison Air Force Base, Florida, when its new crew assembled in late March 1943, led by Flight Lieutenant William J Hatton of New York City. The second pilot, Second Lieutenant Robert Toner, came from North Attleboro, Massachusetts, but the rest of the crew came from a swathe across the states of the Mid-West.

  Two, Second Lieutenant John Woravka and S.Sgt Vernon Moore came from Ohio, and two others, T.Sgt Harold Ripslinger and T.Sgt Robert Lamotte, came from Michigan. Second Lieutenant DP Hays came from Lee’s Summit, Missouri, S.Sgt Guy Shelley from New Cumberland, Pennsylvania, and S.Sgt Samuel Adams from Eureka, Illinois.

  Lady be Good was a standard B-24D model with Pratt & Whitney R-1830-43 engines. It had twin 0.5-inch guns in dorsal and tail turrets, single 0.5-inch waist guns on each side, a 0.5-inch tunnel gun and two 0.5-inch guns in hand-held mountings on each side of the glazed nose.

  The crew were assigned overseas duty almost straight away and left for North Africa to join the 376th Bomb Group, ‘The Liberandos’, based at Solluch near the eastern shore of the Gulf of Sirte, on the narrow Libyan coastal strip south of Benghazi. The 376th Bomb Group had been activated at Lydda in Palestine on 31 October 1942 and began bombing raids almost immediately. They were later to become famous for the low-level raid on the Ploeşti oil fields in 1943, but for the first part of the year, together with the 98th Bomb Group they were engaged in operations against Italy.

  They had moved to Abu Sueir in Egypt, then Gambut in Libya, and Solluch on 22 February, where Colonel Keith Compton became the new CO, replacing Colonel George McGuire. Hatton and his crew were assigned to the 514th Bomb Squadron, within the group.

  On 4 April Hatton and his crew were briefed on their first mission, along with the crews of twenty-four other B-24s of the 376th. Take-off was planned for 13.30 hrs, timed to hit some of the airfields around Naples at twilight. If all went to plan they would complete the 1500-mile round trip by around midnight.

  The Liberators were having trouble with sand in the Pratt & Whitney R-1830 engines, and several experienced such trouble on the long flight over the Mediterranean. Nevertheless, eleven crews claimed to have bombed the primary target, with the others bombing the secondary. Four aircraft of the second section, including Lady be Good, found cloud cover obscuring the target, and turned back while still 30 miles away.

  One of these four landed on Malta, short of fuel, and two more landed back at Solluch, together with the rest of the force. The only aircraft that had not returned by midnight was Lady be Good.

  There was a heavy overcast over the whole of the North African coastline, and the rookie crew were fearful that their navigation had gone awry and that they were too far to the west. At 00.10 hrs they called Benina for a radio fix. The tower gave them a fix estimating them at 330 degrees, to the north-west, which was on the direct route from Naples. The fix was acknowledged by Hatton. That was the last contact anyone had with Lady be Good. Having apparently disappeared without trace, it was assumed that the Liberator had run out of fuel and had gone down in the sea. Despite air searches, nothing was found. The nine crew members were posted Missing in Action.

  ‘The Liberandos’ began the move from Solluch to Benghazi only two days later, later in the year moving to Tunisia, and then on to Italy. Lady be Good was a forgotten mystery.

  It was not for sixteen years that the final fate of Lady be Good was discovered. In November 1958 an aircraft operating with an oil prospecting team spotted the wreck and marked it on their maps. It was 440 miles inland in an area of flat, barren, sun-scorched desert. From the air it looked like a recent wreck. The B-24 lay on its belly with its fuselage broken around the site of the hatch guns, for all the world as if the crew had just made a belly landing; but no Liberator had operated in the area for many years. A C-47 was dispatched from Wheelus Air Force Base, with a doctor on board, and landed alongside on the flat, gravelly surface.

  The hundred yard walk from the C-47 to the wreck, in the absolute silence of the desert, and heat in excess of 50°C in the shade, was an apprehensive one. They did not know what they would find, though they expected the grisly remains of the Liberator’s crew.

  Around the bomber was a scattering of debris, sheepskin flying clothes, oxygen bottles, flak helmets, and first aid kits; which seemed to show that someone had got out of the wreck. The metalwork was bright and shiny with no sign of corrosion anyw
here. The aircraft number ‘64’ and the name Lady be Good being noted on the forward fuselage.

  Inside the fuselage, flying clothes hung limply on hooks, and vacuum flasks still contained warm drinkable coffee! The radio was still working, which came in handy for the C-47 crew whose own radio was unserviceable. The guns were still in the dorsal and tail turrets and in the nose, but there were no parachutes inside the aircraft, which was the first clue to what had happened.

  It was found that three of the engines were out of fuel and the propellers feathered. The automatic pilot was set and the aircraft trimmed for a high rate of descent even with the last engine running. The C-47 returned to Wheelus and an investigation into what had happened to Lady be Good was set in motion.

  54. The Consolidated Liberator Lady be Good as it was found in 1958.

  The early history of the crew and the official version of what had happened on their first mission was traced through official records. It was obvious that when Hatton had radioed Benina for a fix, thinking he was still over the Mediterranean, he had actually already overflown the base and was well to the south-east. The direction-finding equipment of the time could not distinguish between opposite headings. A bearing of 150 degrees (the actual direction of the B-24) would seem the same as 330 degrees, and the classic 180-degree error was made.

  55. Lady be Good, and in the background, the C-47 that flew in from Wheelus Air Force Base to examine the wreck.

  As Hatton and his crew flew on looking for signs of the coast, they were actually getting further and further inland. As the aircraft began running out of fuel, Hatton ordered the crew to bale out while he trimmed the aircraft to fly level on the one remaining engine. Attempting to make a forced landing in the darkness would have been a risky venture, especially as there was high ground near the Libyan coast, extending up to over 2500 feet. In any case, wheels-up landings in high wing aircraft are always dangerous. In the Liberator the fuselage tended to crumple up. It must have been something of a shock to the crew to come down on dry land, instead of in the sea. The aircraft flew on to make a passable crash-landing all by itself.

  A party equipped for a land search, including Hiller 12 helicopters, was sent out from Wheelus. They discovered signs that some of the crew had come down in a slight depression about 8 miles from the wreck. Three flight boots were arranged in the shape of an arrow. It seemed probable that the crew made their way to the B-24 to equip themselves to walk out of the desert. They probably signalled their whereabouts to one another with their side-arms, and an empty .45 calibre clip was found about 12 miles from the wreck.

  They must have thought they were not far from the sea, which they reasoned must lie to the north. The search party followed a trail of clothing and other items, some of them obviously left deliberately, including cut-up pieces of parachute harness and stones, marking their route to the north. They walked at night, sheltering from the blistering heat during the day in the shade of their parachutes. The realisation of their tragic navigational error must have dawned slowly upon them, and their mental calculations of the time spent in the air and therefore the distance travelled since receiving the bearing from Benina, will have weighed heavily on their sweating shoulders.

  The trail they left finally ended on the edge of the Sea of Calanscio, an area of huge sand dunes. It is possible the nine exhausted men thought they were at last at the edge of the sea, but as they struggled up the shifting sand of each massive dune, only a vista of more and more sand spread before them.

  After four months the search was abandoned, but in February 1960, oil prospectors found five bodies on the up slope of a sand dune, and one, Second Lieutenant Robert Toner, had kept a diary. He related how eight of the crew had joined up, and on the morning of Monday, 5 April had set out for the north. They struggled on through the heat of the day, probably still certain they were near the sea. That night the desert, as usual, became bone-numbingly cold, and they huddled in their parachutes, but could not get warm, so they decided to continue their trek. They walked on until 11.30 the following morning, and then rested through the heat of the day. They rationed themselves to a cup of water each per day per man, but by Wednesday morning the water was already half gone.

  By Friday, after travelling over 70 miles, they reached the sea of sand, and only three could continue, Vernon Moore, Guy Shelley and Harold ‘Rip’ Ripslinger. The five remaining huddled together praying for a search plane, hoping their companions would bring help, but none came. Toner’s diary told of their terrible pain, and his last entry was on Monday 11 April, after one week in the desert. It read ‘No help yet. Very cold nite’.

  The oil prospectors searched for the other three men but found nothing, three months later they came across the body of Harold Ripslinger 20 miles to the north, and then that of Guy Shelley 7 miles further on. As each had dropped, his companion had struggled on. Vernon Moore was never found.

  The sands of the Libyan Desert have hidden many things over the centuries, including the final resting place of the soldiers of many nations. For sixteen years they hid the fate of nine young Americans, the crew of the Lady be Good. One of the propellers from Lady be Good was used in a memorial erected at Wheelus Air Force Base, and later moved to the United States Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio, when Wheelus closed. The accompanying plaque read:

  The Propeller is from the four-engined

  B-24 Liberator bomber serial Number 41-24301

  ‘LADY BE GOOD’

  which crashed in the Libyan desert 880 miles

  Southeast of Wheelus Air Force Base on 5th April 1943

  after a bombing raid on Naples, Italy. The aircraft

  operating from an airfield near Benghazi with the 514th

  Bomb Squadron was reported missing

  in action and its fate was not known

  until discovery of the wreckage in

  May 1959. Subsequent searches in the Libyan

  desert recovered remains of eight of

  her nine crew members

  Placed 19th January 1961.

  Also displayed at Wright-Patterson is a machine gun from Lady be Good together with the navigator’s charts, compass and canteen. Also on display is a stained glass chapel window, which was paid for by the people at Wheelus Air Force Base to commemorate the crew of Lady be Good. It was also brought to Wright-Patterson when Wheelus closed.

  CHAPTER 16

  Down in the Arctic Ocean

  Ditching an aircraft in the iceberg-strewn, Arctic waters of the North Atlantic is not recommended, and seeking refuge on one of the barren islands of rock in those icy seas hardly increases your chances of rescue. Yet one Ferry Command crew ferrying an aircraft, unusually in a westward direction, had just such an experience.

  In the middle of 1943 the North Atlantic ferrying operation of ATFERO was taken over by the RAF’s new Transport Command, and the operation over the North Atlantic became the province of No. 45 Group of Ferry Command. Most of the aerial traffic was west to east, with the Liberators of the Return Ferry Service bringing the pilots back the other way. However, a few aircraft were ferried in the opposite direction, including twenty-two war-weary Handley Page Hampdens, only one of which failed to complete the journey.

  Captain Robert E Coffman from Louisiana, Flying Officer Norman E Greenaway from Alberta and their wireless operator Ronald E Snow from Nova Scotia were an RCAF crew assigned to No. 45 Group, normally ferrying aircraft east, and then returning by transport aircraft to Canada. In late October 1943 they found themselves with the job of flying themselves back to Canada in one of twenty-five Handley Page Hampdens, which were destined for No. 32 Operational Training Unit (OTU) at Patricia Bay near Vancouver. In the event, only twenty-two set off, the other three being too clapped-out even to attempt the journey

  The Hampden they had drawn was AE309, one of 770 Hampdens built by English Electric in Preston. Delivered early in 1941, it served operationally with No. 144 Squadron, flying from Hemswell and
then North Luffenham. It was then one of 144 Hampdens converted to torpedo-bombers. It did not return to No. 144 Squadron, which was one of two No. 5 Group bomber squadrons transferred to Coastal Command to operate Hampden torpedo-bombers, shortly afterwards being sent to Murmansk. Hampden AE309 remained in Britain and served with No. 5 OTU.

  The chance to fly an aircraft back themselves, even a war-weary veteran like the Hampden, was not completely unwelcome. The usual way back was a very uncomfortable journey in a Liberator, in which the passenger accommodation was sitting on the planked-over bomb-bay wrapped under several layers of clothes to protect against the freezing cold weather, and possibly sucking on an oxygen tube if the captain was forced to fly at any altitude. The temperature in the bomb-bay could fall to as much as -40°F, and cases of frostbite were not unknown. Against the prevailing wind, and with the uncertain weather reporting which existed, the return journey was far from safe. Several Return Ferry Service Liberators were lost, together with their precious cargo of aircrew.

  The flight in the Hampden, with its much shorter range, had to be by the Northern Route with relatively short stages, starting from Prestwick and going via Iceland, Greenland, and then on to Goose Bay in Labrador. The Hampden was unusual in having only room for one pilot, in a fighter-type cockpit and so Greenaway was accommodated in the navigator’s position in the nose of the aircraft, with Coffman doing the flying. They had no trouble as far as Iceland, but two hours out of Iceland, flying at 9000 feet, the starboard engine stopped. They set course directly for Greenland where they hoped to crash-land, but the port engine was also giving trouble, though the old Hampden had little single-engined performance anyway. It had a tendency to go into a spiral dive when on one engine, and did so about an hour later when they were down to 4500 feet and Greenland was still 100 miles away. Coffman managed to restore level flight with a masterful piece of airmanship, but they lost a lot more altitude.