Lady's Men: The Saga of Lady Be Good and Her Crew

Lady's Men: The Saga of Lady Be Good and Her Crew by Martinez, Mario. Paperback edition. ISBN: 9781848845688.

In April 1943, an American Liberator bomber, based at Soluch in Libya and christened Lady Be Good, vanished mysteriously after an abortive mission over Naples. No one at the time had any idea what had become of the plane or her crew. She simply disappeared with no reports of a crash, or of her having been the victim of enemy fire. But in wartime life falls in value and the crew were simply reported as Missing, presumed dead. Then, fifteen years later, in May, 1958, BP oilmen on an aerial reconnaissance over south-central Libya spotted the remarkably well preserved remains of a Liberator bomber on a gravel plain 440 miles from Benghazi, a town near Soluch, the original destination of the missing plane. It seemed impossible that this could be the wreckage of Lady Be Good, so far from her intended flight path. But so indeed it proved to be. Intrigued by this remarkable story, Mario Martinez set out to discover what had really happened to the ill-fated craft and her crew. His detailed examination of all the available evidence make this book a compelling story of the tragic end to a mission destined for disaster.