The wreckage of the plane and 8 remains deep in the desert, leading to the mysterious disappearance during World War II

A World War II bomber that appeared bizarrely in the desert was involved in a missing aircraft 16 years ago. When the truth was finally restored, we felt sorry for the 9 young victims and regretted the lives that were lost.

There are countless soldiers killed and missing in the war, and it is not easy to find them

It is not uncommon for air crashes to occur frequently on the turbulent World War II battlefield. Only the US Army Air Force lost 18,000 planes and 43,000 crew members in the more than three years of its strategic bombing of Germany.

Aircraft crashes and deaths in wars are common, but a US bomber and 9 crew members that mysteriously disappeared during World War II were discovered by accident 16 years later. The wreckage of the plane and the remains of the crew members were scattered throughout the impossible desert. Searchers spent two years recovering only 8 of them. In addition, there is a diary with scribbled handwriting and brief content.

Why did they end up in this barren desert? What kind of air catastrophe did they experience? 16 years after the plane crash, when the bomber that sacrificed for the country was also forgotten, the truth suddenly surfaced.

On November 9, 1958, an oil exploration aircraft flew over the Libyan desert as usual. This is the British Darcy Petroleum company's plane, on board a British geologist and pilot, their mission is to find traces of oil-bearing rock formations in the desert.

However, in an almost unobstructed barren desert, before they could find the oil-bearing rock formation, they were surprised to find some strange black spots. I thought it was a bare rock in the desert, but when I looked closely, it turned out to be the wreckage of a crashed plane.

The Libyan Desert is located in the northeastern part of the Sahara Desert, 620 kilometers away from the nearest city. If it weren't for oil exploration, how could planes fly into this desert? Geologists intuitively believe that the appearance of this aircraft is unusual.

When their plane circled the wreckage, they recognized that it was a large US military plane during World War II. It has been more than ten years since the end of World War II, and this pile of obtrusive aircraft wreckage on the desert vaguely conveyed to them an unknown past.

The oil company’s exploration team immediately reported the discovery to the Wheelers Air Force Base in the United States, but unfortunately the air base was not willing to take over the investigation of the crashed aircraft. They claimed that there was no record of the loss of American aircraft in the area, so they refused to send people to the scene to inspect the wreckage.

It was not until a few months later, on February 27, 1959, that BP people came again near the wreckage of the plane. This time it was an oil surveyor Gordon Bowerman and two geologists. The purpose of their visit this time was to determine the specific coordinates of the wreck.

You know how exciting it is to have an obvious marker in the endless desert. Drawing the coordinates will save a lot of trouble in future exploration. So they switched to off-road vehicles and trucks this time and went by land. This also brought them closer to the mysterious wreckage of the plane, to find out what happened.

This time, they approached only to find that the crashed plane was not badly damaged. The wreckage is not corroded from the inside to the outside, even the engine can rotate normally, the machine gun on the plane can fire bullets, and the radio switch has not been turned off. Thanks to the extremely dry environment of the desert, these machinery and equipment have been preserved almost intact.

The most important discovery is the clear record of the flight log with the mission time "April 4, 1943", the maintenance manual with the origin of the aircraft and the clothes with the names of the crew members. But there was no one in the cabin, and the life jackets, food, water and other survival equipment on the plane disappeared. It seems that the crew members parachuted and fled before the plane crashed.

It just so happened that Surveyor Ballman knew the commander of Wheelers Air Force Base, Lieutenant Colonel Walter B. Kolbs. Bowerman immediately wrote a letter to the commander, which contained the names of the crew members they found in the wreckage of the aircraft, aircraft maintenance inspection records and other information.

The Air Force base believed that the crashed plane was indeed from the US military. They found out that this was a bomber that disappeared during World War II 16 years ago! But the strange thing is that the crash site was deep in the Sahara Desert, 708 kilometers away from the nearest base at the time, far away from any possible battlefields. Why did this plane appear here?

This is a pink B-24 Army Aviation bomber, which was once the most widely used bomber by the US military during World War II. Since pink is difficult to recognize in a desert environment, this aircraft is painted pink.

The American Army Aviation has a tradition of naming military aircraft with female names, so people used the song "Lady Be Good" (hereinafter referred to as LBG), a popular song and dance film of the same name, to name the aircraft.

However, this bomber carrying a beautiful meaning was mysteriously buried in the desert along with 9 soldiers who went to the battlefield. What happened to the crew members, and where are they now? Investigators can only come to the crash site to find the truth.

On April 4, 1943, LBG took off from Soluk, Libya. The purpose of this flight is to cross the Sahara Desert and rush to Naples, Italy for a bombing mission. The aircraft formation of the bombing mission originally arranged 25 B-24 bombers, which were sent in two batches. The first 12 planes have already set off first, but the remaining 13 planes unfortunately encountered a sandstorm after taking off.

Among them, 9 aircraft temporarily suspended their missions due to engine failure caused by the dust vortex in the Libyan desert, so only the remaining 4 aircraft continued to fly. During the sandstorm, the LBG engine also sucked in some sand, but it was still operating normally, so they decided to continue the task.

However, the disaster they face next will make them regret it. During the flight, the aircraft was gradually blown off course by strong winds and separated from the group of bombers travelling together. In the thick clouds, LBG lost its way, and even the positioning equipment malfunctioned.

At this time, the crew hurriedly contacted the base via radio to request support, but did not receive a reply from the position report. Soon, the missing LBG fuel was about to burn out. They always thought they were flying over the Mediterranean, so they released their bombs to the Mediterranean and continued flying on dangerously low fuel.

But considering that once the fuel burns out, the plane will crash, and the Mediterranean Sea below the clouds obviously directly reduces their chance of survival to zero. So the nine people decided to abandon the insufficiently fueled airplane, bring the little food and water, and parachute to escape.

However, if the picture is switched to the third angle of view at this time, a dramatic scene will appear: after the 9 crew members parachuted through the clouds, they will see not the ocean below, but a vast desert. In other words, there is no problem if the aircraft is forced to land manually, but the wrong judgment caused them to lose the aircraft with the wireless transmission equipment intact.

The people who landed on the desert fired shots and found each other in the desert. But at this time they made another wrong judgment. They didn't know that the place where the plane crashed was only about 26 kilometers away. They estimate that they should be no more than 160 kilometers away from the base, and they firmly believe that walking northwest will be able to return to Soluk Air Force Base.

So they set off toward the imaginary base, which is indeed northwest, but the distance is 708 kilometers. This is the end of the matter, and the nine soldiers who suffered unexpected encounters are doomed to not survive. However, after more than ten years, people re-discovered their deeds in the desert, only to find the remains of 8 crew members.

After BP visited the scene for the second time to confirm the identity of the crashed plane, the US Wheelers Air Force Base finally dispatched a rescue team to investigate. In May 1959, the rescue team arrived at the crash site for the first time and found a prominent "Lady Be Good" sign on the front fuselage. After three months of rigorous search, no remains of any crew members were found. They only found some parachutes, flight boots and other equipment.

It wasn't until February 1960 that the rescue team launched a second search operation and finally gained something. This time, they found the bodies and personal belongings of five crew members about 129 kilometers north of the crash, including a daily exile diary recorded by Lieutenant Colonel Robert Tona.

The diary succinctly described the general situation of the 8 days since the plane crash. After they landed and joined their companions, they could not find a member named John. The remaining 8 people consume the few rations and water extremely economically every day, and endure the harsh weather in the desert. Later, everyone became weaker and weaker. In the pain of blindness and wind and sand, his companions gradually died.

Since then, the U.S. Army and Navy have jointly launched a "High Tide Operation" operation to speed up the search for other victims nearby. Sure enough, two other crew members were found 34 kilometers northwest and 42 kilometers northwest of the first group of crew members.

In August 1960, British Petroleum discovered the remains of a crew member. When he was found, his parachute was still hanging. It seemed that something went wrong during the evacuation. The parachute could not be opened, causing him to fall to death. But in this case, he has never experienced the pain of exile in the desert, and he may be the luckiest of all pilots. There is still one person who has never been found.

Based on more than a year of search operations, people roughly restored the scene after the LBG crash 16 years ago: when it was found that the aircraft was about to run out of fuel, and based on the wrong coordinates, 9 crew members decided to abandon the plane and parachute; 1 of them When the pilot landed, he fell and died. The 7 crew members landed about 26 kilometers away from the crash site, and the remaining one was still missing. After meeting the 7 people, they decided to walk north back to what they thought was only 160 kilometers away. In fact, it was a military base of 708 kilometers; but after walking 100 kilometers, five people actively or passively gave up survival and died in place; the remaining two people were also unable to escape death after walking a certain distance.

When the truth came out, the wreckage of LBG was recovered and taken to a Libyan military base for safekeeping. Other parts of the aircraft are scattered all over the country. Some of them are put on display in the National Museum of the US Air Force, some are in private collections, and some are re-used on other US military aircraft after technical evaluation.

A World War II bomber that appeared bizarrely in the desert was involved in a missing aircraft 16 years ago. When the truth was finally restored, we felt sorry for the 9 young victims and regretted the lives that were lost.

But they may be lucky. There are countless soldiers killed in the war. 16 years after the accident, there is still a chance for future generations to understand the truth at that time, and it is already very rare to pass the story down. Their bodies were not buried by wind and sand, but were transported back to the country covered with national flags, which is also a belated honor.